Download: Dinosaur Jr. “I Want You To Know”

(from Farm out now on Jagjaguwar)

Rather than interview J Mascis ourselves, we thought it would be more fun to continue our tradition of getting famous people to interview famous people for nothing more than the thrill of schmoozing with each other and taking work off our hands. This interview was conducted by director Allison Anders, who cast Mascis in films such as Grace of My Heart, and Tiffany Anders, the musician/singer/co-curator of Don’t Knock the Rock and also Allison’s daughter. Though the transcript below may make Mascis seem like a lively, free-spirited music buff, rest assured that on tape he sounded like Benicio Del Toro in The Usual Suspects as interpreted by Cookie Monster on lithium. This interview was curated and painfully transcribed by Dan Collins, with much-needed help by the Anders.

Allison Anders: We want to talk about the fact that you were never in Mi Vida Loca when you were supposed to be, so you’ll have to be in it this time!
Tiffany Anders: He does need you to make another movie. His acting career is starting to slip.
Allison Anders: Well, I’m going to do Mi Vida Loca II. Tiffany, remember? You, Jason and Spike ended up buying drugs, but it was supposed to be you, J and Mike.
J Mascis (guitar/vocals): What happened?
Tiffany Anders: I think it was your schedule. You guys were recording, and they showed up to the set the day that the other girl shoots Ernesto, so you didn’t have time to shoot the scene.
J Mascis: I don’t want to buy drugs.
Allison Anders: It would have been really interesting twenty years ago, but it would be a little inappropriate now that you’re a father.
Tiffany Anders: What’s up with the Dino movie?
J Mascis: He’s just filmed a lot of interviews with different people, a lot of shows and … I dunno. I don’t know if he’ll ever finish it. Give him a date that he has to finish it by and maybe he’ll finish it.
Allison Anders: Actually, you know what? Krakow!
J Mascis: Krakow? Auschwitz!
Allison Anders: How did you know? Have you been there? To Krakow? It was kind of surprising when we were over [in Europe]. There are so many young people with babies! And they were not stressed out! Young people who didn’t look totally broke and that were really in love with their babies. And then Tiffany’s friend said that they get quite a nice subsidy from the government.
Tiffany Anders: For babies. And dogs.
J Mascis: I think that’s why the punk rockers have dogs. I don’t know if they do that anymore, though.
Allison Anders: Has fatherhood changed your records? Do you think you would have made the same record if you hadn’t become a father?
J Mascis: Possibly no.
Allison Anders: I think sometimes I know if I hadn’t had a big experience, the work may have gone in a different direction.
J Mascis: I have no idea. But there seems to be a lot less time. So we did it in less time. Three or four months. The last album was probably over nine months.
Tiffany Anders: Lou’s a dad too?
J Mascis: And another one on the way.
Allison Anders: Dinosaur Jr. juniors!
Tiffany Anders: So I am supposed to ask about Witch? What’s up with Witch? What are the plans? I saw they were playing All Tomorrow’s Parties.
J Mascis: Yeah, we had one gig! Woo hoo!
Allison Anders: I love that song ‘Isadora.’ That’s my favorite. I’m a big Isadora Duncan fan. It reminds me of—I don’t even know what. I would say Quicksilver Messenger Service, but that wouldn’t be right. But it reminds me of a San Francisco band.
J Mascis: Flipper? Are there any good bands from San Francisco? We were having a discussion the other day in the van.
Allison Anders: I don’t like things that people are jumping around with their fists to. You know, just kind of doing a little hoedown. I’m not into hoedown kind of things.
J Mascis: What’s a hoedown band?
Allison Anders: The Grateful Dead! I don’t mind the psychedelic kind of dancing that’s like, ‘Ooh, I’m on acid, and I’m floating through air!’ But I don’t like the jug band-y kind of thing.
J Mascis: Thigh slappin’?
Allison Anders: I’m not into that! It bothers me a little bit. And somehow—I may be wrong—but it seems like the Flying Burrito Brothers never inspired that kind of hoedown dancin’. But who knows?
J Mascis: Well, it’s because they didn’t have any fans.
Allison Anders: Ha! There were just people standing around going, ‘I want to party with these guys when the set is over.’
J Mascis: They were all backstage, maybe.
Allison Anders: Who are some people that you are listening to now that we should know about? Because you are the first person who alerted us to Scott Walker. All those many years ago—in the ’90s.
Tiffany Anders: He was the first person who alerted me to Sandy Denny!
Tiffany Anders: But I have a feeling that you turned him on to Nick Drake!
J Mascis: I’m sick of Nick Drake since he’s on the cover of MOJO every week.
Allison Anders: Well, that’s kind of the problem. We have to wait a while before we can get close to him again. It’s hard when the whole world finally discovers somebody. But back then, nobody knew! I tried to tell her about Rodriguez and she already has his records! I can’t tell her anything anymore. I thought I was really going to be onto something! I buy a lot of tunes. If I go into a record store, I get too overwhelmed. You should be doing ‘What’s in your bag?’ at Amoeba. You shop, and then you open your bag. They just videotape you saying what you bought. They want me to do one, and I haven’t gone and done it yet. Maybe I’ll do it this weekend.
J Mascis: It’ll be like one single. For a hundred dollars!
Allison Anders: For a while, the only Bags single was there for a hundred bucks, for the longest time. But it’s not there anymore! Somebody bought it.
J Mascis: What do they have back there, behind those doors?
Tiffany Anders: Oh, tons! And apparently there’s another warehouse off-site.
J Mascis: I found a record there I’d been looking for since I was 15. And it was there on the wall for 30 bucks. I know a lot of record nerds and none of them knew about it. This band called the Mirrors. ‘Cure for Cancer.’ I guess they’re English, but there’s some Detroit band same name. I had to have it.
Allison Anders: I love that there are still some records that people don’t know anything about. Except Tiffany!
J Mascis: It’s weird what people know about, like kids. They know really obscure things about certain things, but there are these big holes where they don’t know things. It’s really odd.
Allison Anders: I found out with my students because often I make them do a mix CD as part of their assignment. It’s supposed to be like the songs of their life—it’s supposed to have a kind of narrative. I’m always amazed at the vast knowledge they have, but yet if you mention a certain band in the class, somebody really obvious, they don’t know anything about that band. But they’ll know something super-obscure. Needless to say, they know that funk stuff so well. I’ll never catch up to their knowledge of that. I didn’t grow up with anybody aspiring to be a DJ, you know? They’ve actually grown up thinking, when they were 14 years old, I want to be a DJ some day!
J Mascis: I need to go to Amoeba to get out of some crappy interviews. They’re filling up my schedule with crap. It’s so weird, because Al Gore’s TV channel—
Allison Anders: Current TV?
J Mascis: Yeah. They wanted to go with me where I would go in L.A., but then they wouldn’t let me go where I would go! ‘No Amoeba. Too many bands have gone there.’ I wanted to go to Erewhon. They’re like ‘That’s a grocery store.’ So what if it’s a grocery store? That’s so weird.
Allison Anders: Like, ‘Where do you want to go? Go here!’ After you’ve been coming here for like twenty years.
J Mascis: Black Market Music is closed. I used to go there.
Allison Anders: I do have a record store for you out in the valley. Freakbeat!
J Mascis: That already sounds like somewhere I’ll never go!
Tiffany Anders: Apparently Jimmy Page was in Freakbeat. He likes to go to record stores.
J Mascis: He used to go to Black Market.
Allison Anders: In fact, this Sunday, I just got a coupon for Freakbeat! Ten percent off! Because it’s a vinyl record day. So I’m gonna buy some vinyl.
J Mascis: Ten percent isn’t much of an incentive. How about like 87 percent off?
Allison Anders: They have a documentary this year about the death of the independent record store, which is a sad thing. Thurston’s in it. Which is a sad thing. I don’t like that—I need a place to go and listen.
J Mascis: And some nerd to talk to you to tell you what records to buy.
Tiffany Anders: If those nerds are nice and not jerks!
Allison Anders: You really need that! That’s in the documentary. This guy is saying, ‘When I was a kid in the ’70s, everything on the radio was just this crap, classic rock shit! And then I went to a record store and learned about Gun Club. That record saved my life!’ It’s like countless people saying how they were steered in the right direction by somebody in the record store. Because you can’t rely on radio to do that.
J Mascis: And guitar stores are similarly closing.
Tiffany Anders: Why is that, do you think?
J Mascis: The Internet! The people who make it still have stores, just somewhere where people can come in. But if they don’t also sell stuff on the Internet, they can’t make it.
Allison Anders: Seems to be like that guitar we sold, that we sold on eBay with you playing it! It was like a bright yellow guitar, a really terrible color. But you were playing it—I used that picture on eBay, ha ha! Played only once by this guy! But there are a lot of people who collect these guitars. Guys who were in bands when they were teenagers, and now they have made a fortune in real estate or something, and then they collect guitars and just buy them.
J Mascis: As an investment it’s kind of weird. But it seems to have done better than the stock market. It’s hard. I can’t really think in that way. ‘Investment-grade guitars.’
Allison Anders: I just think about which ones are pretty. Jesse Ed Davis’ guitar was really pretty, and had all the flowers painted on it and stuff. Where do these guitars go? When somebody like that is dead, where’s the guitar? Or do you think maybe they get rid of it beforehand?
J Mascis: Probably.
Tiffany Anders: Or it goes in a museum, like J’s guitar.
J Mascis: A Jazzmaster. I don’t know if it’s in a warehouse somewhere that the museum has. What’s it called? The one in Seattle? The Paul Allen Experience Music Project. But they always rotate stuff and store it.
Allison Anders: So you just donated it.
J Mascis: No, they paid me. They paid a lot of money. I wonder how much he’s got left. Still, if you have 40 billion and now you only have 20 billion, I wonder if you feel it. I saw somewhere how Bill Gates went from 58 billion to 40 billion, but somehow he had gone up in Richest Guys, because all the other guys had all gone down and he was still the richest guy. He’d only lost like a third.
Tiffany Anders: I’m also supposed to ask about the Witch album cover of [Dave] Sweetapple’s dog and your dog. But I haven’t seen it!
Allison Anders: I like how she keeps saying, ‘I’m supposed to ask you …’
J Mascis: I dunno. I’m just the drummer.
Allison Anders: Is playing drums like a break for you? Do you have as much pressure? Is it a little more fun?
J Mascis: Yeah, I’m really tired of electricity. I need a break from having to rely on electricity, of things breaking all the time. I like that. I really don’t do much! I’m waiting for it to become bigger. I’m waiting for our legend to build.
Allison Anders: Maybe it will happen at ATP.
Tiffany Anders: Maybe! Maybe you should get up to some shenanigans. Fistfight with Kevin!
Allison Anders: That would definitely make NME. That’s all you gotta do over there. Get some scandal in NME and then Witch is like, everybody knows.
Tiffany Anders: ‘Didya hear about the fight between Kevin Shields and Witch?’
J Mascis: The kung fu master.
Allison Anders: I’m tellin’ ya, that’s some good advice there! Look at these punch-ups. Look at what that did for Oasis!
J Mascis: I know! I like when that guy pushed the guitar player over. That was funny. Some guy knocked over Noel … I mean, you’re just standing there and he just pushes you over—you’re not really ready. And then the brother, you know—I read somewhere he was like, ‘Yeah, it was just like a pub fight.’ He waits for all these other people to go run after the guy and then he takes a little fake swing like, ‘Noel’s gotta get in there.’ We have an open guitar spot. Maybe we need a wild man.
Allison Anders: Not hard to find in Britain. Harder to find in American rock ‘n’ roll.
Tiffany Anders: Like the Primal Scream guitar player worked in a guitar shop. J was saying that the Primal Scream guitar player was working at a guitar shop.
J Mascis: He was like the nice guy. Everybody liked him.
Allison Anders: What happens when Dinosaur Jr. plays in Japan? You played that crazy festival a couple years ago, right? It was on a mountaintop.
J Mascis: Kind of on a lame ski area. That’s weird—that festival—because everyone there is there for the show, and they’re all music fans. So it’s hard to like go anywhere. We played at another one, Summer Sonic, which is a bit more commercial. I saw Fergie at catering!
Allison Anders: Nice! What was she eating? She’s got quite a body.
J Mascis: It seems like a lot of girls hate Fergie.
Tiffany Anders: She’s kind of repulsive.
J Mascis: See?
Allison Anders: How does it work technically playing in a place that big? How do you hear everything?
J Mascis: They have in-ear monitors, and maybe they have little amps next to their guitar tech. So if you’re on the side of the stage, all you hear is like wimpy drums, that’s about all you can hear. Because they all have monitors in their ear, and it’s eerily quiet!
Allison Anders: That’s really weird. I’d probably want to keep everything a bit more organic and not get in that direction.
J Mascis: Yeah, I’ve always been more in a Woodstock frame of mind. ‘Oh, it worked at Woodstock, having all these amps and just playing loud!’
Tiffany Anders: I interviewed Nancy Nevins from Sweetwater and she was talking about how there were no monitors onstage at Woodstock. They were the first band. She was like, ‘You couldn’t hear anything at all!’ She thought it probably sounded horrible, being up there.
J Mascis: But monitors are the downfall of society! All these bands who rely on them now, especially English bands or something … ‘Where’s my monitor?’ If you have them, that’s fine, but you should be able to play without a monitor.
Allison Anders: All this second-guessing technology! We have the same thing in film. We have the video feed and people can’t seem to make movies without it now. It used to be that you looked into the camera. You could see the light! You can’t even see the light through a monitor. It’s a nightmare! Everybody’s crowding around. As a director, you’ll be sitting there and some makeup person is looking over your shoulder to make sure the makeup’s okay. Everybody’s hyper-reacting. I’m going to do this show ‘Southland,’ and he doesn’t allow any monitors, which I love. You have to rely on your own instincts and your own abilities to know what’s going on in the scene.
Tiffany Anders: Nancy said the sound system was just completely inadequate! She said that basically they were the soundcheck band because they were the first real band.
J Mascis: Did someone play before them?
Tiffany Anders: Richie Havens. They were supposed to be first, but it was so disorganized that they got to the Holiday Inn, and of course they didn’t know it was going to be as huge as it was. Traffic was a nightmare and they had to take a helicopter, so they were late. And Richie Havens was basically playing forever until they got there.
J Mascis: He comes off pretty good in that movie. It only got three stars in MOJO.
Allison Anders: I heard that the Grateful Dead started quite a set-up with their amps onstage, right? I always thought it was Blue Cheer that started the tower of amps.
J Mascis: All the Dead had was a PA, so they had the whole PA behind them so they could mix it themselves, and it was spilling out into the audience. It’s interesting. I had some Jerry Garcia skis! Somehow they were painted with some Jerry artwork or something. Like he had ties. He had glasses made.
Allison Anders: I can’t imagine Jerry Garcia on skis! I can’t imagine him wearing a tie either! J’s seen it though, I can tell!
J Mascis: I can see him skiing off into the woods and smoking a bowl with some other hippies.
Allison Anders: When is your son learning to ski?
Tiffany Anders: You put him on a snowboard, then you put him on a skateboard. There are Dinosaur Jr. skateboards.
Allison Anders: I’m sure you’ve seen the YouTube videos of the skating bulldogs, right?
J Mascis: In the video they say, ‘He just did it!’ Like they didn’t teach him. They’re lazy-ass fucking dogs! But he’s amazing. He can push and turn …
Allison Anders: It’s not you putting him on the board? He gets on the board himself!
Tiffany Anders: If I could teach my kitty to do that, it would be great.
J Mascis: Tell us about the knee?
Allison Anders: I fell down in Elysian Park! I went running to take a picture of these people in their low rider, and I tripped over a log and just went flying! If I keep it straight, it helps. It’s not feeling very well.
J Mascis: I had poison ivy and someone was like, ‘Why don’t you put bleach on it?’ And I did and it really helped. It dried out the oil.
Allison Anders: I don’t like the direction this conversation is going! L.A. RECORD doesn’t need to put that in there. Any last words?
J Mascis: Message to Japanese fans? They always ask me in Japan, ‘Can we have a message for the Japanese fans?’

DINOSAUR JR. WITH LOU BARLOW ON THUR., NOV. 5, AT THE HOUSE OF BLUES, 8430 SUNSET BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $25.50-$27.50 / ALL AGES. HOB.COM. DINOSAUR JR.’S FARM IS OUT NOW ON JAGJAGUWAR. VISIT DINOSAUR JR. AT DINOSAURJR.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DINOSAURJR.

Download: Kid Congo Powers and the Pink Monkey Birds “Rare As The Yeti”

(from Dracula Boots out now on In The Red)

Kid Congo Powers was a Cramp and a Bad Seed (and a founding member of the Gun Club) before striking off on his own with a flock of Pink Monkey Birds. His newest album is out now on In The Red and he speaks now just minutes after finishing recording a new album in a high school gymnasium in Kansas. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

So your drummer is now the proud owner of an abandoned Kansas high school?
Kid Congo Powers (guitar/vocals): Yes—my drummer Ron Miller and his girlfriend-slash-partner Nicole—who does a blog called Disgruntled Housewife—moved into a rural Kansas town with a population of 250 called Harveyville, and they were looking for an alternative space to live. And they came upon this 1940s high school that was not in use. And now they’ve got a lot of desks and furniture and projectors and record players and chalkboards. It’s an artists’ retreat. Different people come here—dancers, choreographers, writers, painters—every kind! It’s a cool thing. It was a dream of mine to record in a high school gymnasium. My whole rock ‘n’ roll fantasy—actually, as a pre-teen, I was seeing my teenage older sisters going out to dances in high school. They and their cousins would be so excited—they used to go see thee Midniters! To me that was always so exciting. They’d play great great records—weirdo obscure records at high school gymnasiums. And so when Ron suggested we come up here, it was like, ‘Duh!’ This is it! This is a fantasy realized!
How often do you get the opportunity to realize your fantasies?
Kid Congo Powers: It’s one more in long list! This was a particularly long-suffering one. Other ones came well before.
What’s the next one on the list?
Kid Congo Powers: Wow! Jeez—Lord Lord almighty! A good night’s rest—that’s a fantasy! My next fantasy is to do another record. I always think this is the last time anyone’s gonna let me make a record. I think, ‘Now I’ve REALLY done it!’
You finished the last one like ninety minutes ago and you’re already thinking about the next?
Kid Congo Powers: Yeah—time for the next one! You just can’t stop.
You’ve lived so many places and been in so many bands—is this a function of musical wanderlust?
Kid Congo Powers: It’s completely wanderlust. Funny you should say that. I was just talking to someone because I’ve been writing a memoir. I was writing about meeting Jeffrey Lee Pierce and that was what we originally bonded on. He’d been traveling a lot already. This was like 1979 and he’d been in Europe and Jamaica and New York. That’s a real thing. And musically it definitely makes sense. Music to me is places and history and learning history, and you have to go to certain places to see the history for it to happen. That’s why I came out to the Midwest. I wanted to make a record that sounds like it was from a Midwestern high school!
Is this more a blessing or a curse?
Kid Congo Powers: I think it’s both! I have cursed it but I’m more blessed by it, I think. It keeps things all new for me. I think that might be more important, though it’s been bad for any careerist sort of thing. If I had any illusions to ‘making it big’ at any point, I think I lost them. And I became really happy to be part of my tribe of people. And I was happy to do what I originally set out to do—explore new things and make music that is different than other kinds off music, and say things in a different way. So in that way, I feel a grand success. And actually—right now I’m enjoying quite some popularity!
What do you think of this new generation? The children of Congo?
Kid Congo Powers: It’s great! When I was a young kid, I was very into ‘60s and ‘50s music and finding out about that. I met Jeffrey and we were already collecting blues records and rockabilly records. I’d idolize Iggy Pop or the Stooges or the Sonics or the Velvet Underground or whatever it was—the 13th Floor Elevators! And for the kids now, maybe I’m the age the the 13th Floor Elevators when I was collecting music when I was 20. And it’s a fascination with an attitude toward music. When we were young, I was really obsessed with James Dean or Andy Warhol’s Factory or whatever. Whatever was really rebellious—it was really attractive and romantic to me. And it was the same for me with music.
You’ve said before that sex is part of rebellion—how?
Kid Congo Powers: I think being sexual is very rebellious! Being sexual can really be looked down upon by puritanical people. Rock ‘n’ roll is abandon of any kind! Sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll! It goes back to Billy Lee Riley and Jerry Lee Lewis—people have orgasms right in front of your ears! It speaks to your primal self. It’s getting to the meat of the matter. And rock ‘n’ roll is meant for dancing, and dancing is definitely a mating ritual.
What’s the next best mating ritual to dancing?
Kid Congo Powers: Fucking?
What if you’re on a transatlantic flight?
Kid Congo Powers: The next best thing to dancing to connect sexually would be screaming. Singing. Anything musical!
What’s your favorite thing about your primal self?
Kid Congo Powers: A desire to keep doing what I’m doing. A desire to keep excavating what is going on with me and what I know—I guess that’s called ‘transgressions’—so I guess being transgressive. And that I still like sex!
What’s the nightlife like in Harveyville?
Kid Congo Powers: Dark? A lot of stars. Not on the street but in the sky. There’s a big giant sky here. It’s unbelievable.
What was your most chillingly accurate experience with a fortune teller?
Kid Congo Powers: Besides shaking up the magic 8 ball? The scariest thing that happens with fortune telling is actually writing songs. Because they come from your subconscious and they actually come true. I made a record where I thought I was being romantic about a relationship, and it ends up I had a three-year-long break-up! Which was great fodder for songs but terrible, and everything I’d written about came true.
When does that become scary?
Kid Congo Powers: When I couldn’t get out of my situation. So I write about things now that are more absurd.
If the instrumental ‘Buck Angel’ had a chorus, what would it be?
Kid Congo Powers: ‘Buck Angel, will you be miiiine?’ Something like ‘Earth Angel’! I’m from L.A.—I grew up with the oldies!
Have you ever seen thee Midniters at the Santa Fe Springs swap meet?
Kid Congo Powers: I never have! I know there’s a version of them playing around. I do wanna look ‘em up. We did ‘I Found A Peanut.’ They were a giant source of inspiraton lately. For the last few records, they were very very inspirational in terms of sound, attitude and how to do things. They mixed up such things at R&B and soul and doo-wop and then psychedelic music and harder rock and they’d use horns—it’s such an amazing reflection of cult L.A. culture and Latino culture in America.
Have you seen that documentary on Chicano rock ‘n’ roll in L.A.?
Kid Congo Powers: I haven’t had a chance—I’ve been on the east coast. I’m interested in that. It’s very beautiful, very emotional. My grandparents came to L.A. from Mexico and it was really a dream for them. And my parents grew up in the depression.
What’s changed the most about L.A. for you?
Kid Congo Powers: The way it looks! L.A. has been very very terrible about knocking down buildings and things. I remember a nicer older L.A.! What’s there that would make me wanna stay? How nice the weather is and the architecture that is beautiful is really beautiful. And of course my family and I have the whole first half of my lifetime of friends still there. They’re very much a part of my family. Thanks to Facebook!
What American criminal would have been a great American musician?
Kid Congo Powers: What’s his name? Carl Panzram. He was a complete misanthrope and he traveled around the world and I think he was one of the all-time most deadly serial killers. He lived his whole life in prison and really had no remorse. He was very happy with the way he was!
So it’s self-confidence?
Kid Congo Powers: He was truly something! But he had a poetic streak to him. And some strange strange philosophy. I guess most killers do something to justify themselves, but he was kind of Manson-esque—kind of giving back what he got from society and the whole system. And I think Charles Starkweather would be a pretty dreamy Ricky Nelson type! Maybe that’s more realistic.
What’s the overlap between crime and creativity?
Kid Congo Powers: Stealing! Thievery is the thing.
You asked Dave Lombardo from Slayer if he’d eat human flesh, given the opportunity. Would you eat human flesh?
Kid Congo Powers: In an upside-down fruitcake, maybe.
What if it was someone you knew?
Kid Congo Powers: I don’t want no sloppy seconds!
What’s the first line of the first chapter of your memoir?
Kid Congo Powers: ‘I was born in a town called “The Feminine Bridge.””
La Puente?
Kid Congo Powers: It’s grammatically wrong! It’s ‘el puente’—‘el puente’ is the bridge. It’s a masculine term. So ‘la puente’ would be ‘the feminine bridge,’ wouldn’t it?
How did growing up in La Puente most shape your future life?
Kid Congo Powers: It turned me into a homosexual!
Have you told the city council?
Kid Congo Powers: Yes, exactly—‘You’ll pay for this!’ I’m owed some money! Because the name was skewed, I think my whole life I was gonna see things in a skewed way.
You’ve said your last record is smart and dumb and modern and primitive all at the same time—why?
Kid Congo Powers: I don’t know! Because I was born in the feminine bridge! It’s fittingly between two genders. There’s no one way of looking at things, I think.
What was your last crucial instinctual directive?
Kid Congo Powers: My last alarm? Don’t vote for Sarah Palin! The last big alarm was, ‘Don’t stop what you’re doing!’ I often think, ‘Oh, I’m too old to rock! What am I gonna do when I’m old? I don’t have any pensions!’
How will you get your guitar-shaped pool?
Kid Congo Powers: How AM I gonna get my guitar-shaped pool? But the alarm said just keep moving on. Always travel! I’ve lived everywhere and I learned the world is a big place. You can be anything everywhere, and moving gives you a fresh start. I move a lot. I’m in D.C. now and that has afforded me the time to actually write the book.
I read once that one of the values of a big city is that it’s so forgiving—you can fail and move a neighborhood over and start again with no one knowing who you were.
Kid Congo Powers: Reinvention is a great thing! And failure doesn’t have to remain failure. You don’t have to move to get over failure. I guess it’s wanderlust again, like at the start of our conversation. ‘Lust’ is in it—something you want, something you’re driven by. My sister just went this week to Europe to the first time in her life. I was like, ‘Wow, you’re gonna discover the world out there and you’re never gonna stop traveling!’
What is your favorite failure?
Kid Congo Powers: Something that’s now the best thing that ever happened to me? My best failure was probably leaving one of the first bands I was in. Maybe I thought getting thrown out of the Cramps was a big failure, but it was actually something that made me say, ‘OK, I have to keep moving—keep working.’ And that’s been a gift that keeps on giving. So I thank them for that! That could have been seen as a failure. Actually, to this day probably thirty years later, people are like, ‘Aren’t you sad you didn’t stay in the Cramps?’ No! I was in the Cramps when I was 20 or 21 years old and it was amazing and beautiful and wonderful and I did all this crazy stuff—why would I be sad? I learned so much!

KID CONGO POWERS WITH SECTION 25, MEDIUM MEDIUM, THE RAINCOATS, 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. KID CONGO POWERS AND THE PINK MONKEY BIRDS’ DRACULA BOOTS IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT KID CONGO POWERS AT KIDCONGOPOWERS.BLOGSPOT.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/KIDCONGOPOWERSANDTHEPINKMONKEYBIRDS.

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

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

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

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

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