Chad Brown knows more about country music than anyone you’ll ever meet and DJs what he calls “the real American soul music”—music that comes from places where you can’t park—all over the world as DJ The Lonesome Cowboy. He makes music of his own as CB Brand and served as music supervisor for Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me. He will DJ tonight at Big Freak. He recently starred in The Oregonian with Jed Maheu of the Small Town Talk DJ collective, which will premiere at Sundance. Chad does not listen to music made after 1986 and details his favorite country records below. He DJs tonight at Big Freak at the Black Boar in Eagle Rock. This Interpreter curated by Lainna Fader.

HANK THOMPSON AND HIS BRAZOS VALLEY BOYS CHEYENNE FRONTIER DAYS (Capitol, 1962)

“The thing about this is if you’ve never been to a rodeo, and Cheyenne Frontiers is the big daddy of them all, you can listen to this and go to a rodeo. Hank Thompson is one of my favorites. The smoothest vocalist ever to grace the country music field. World War II veteran, went to Princeton, super-brainiac. This sounds like a rodeo. This guy Chuck Parkinson is on it as the radio announcer. Picture them in front of this whole arena on a grandstand, Chuck Parkinson’s talking, and they mix it really great. Tex Ritter, who’s John Ritter’s father, recites ‘Cowboy’s Prayer’ on the beginning of side two. Out of the gate—no pun intended—this thing gets you into the country world. This is west coast we’re talking about.”

WYNN STEWART AND THE TOURISTS SOMETHING PRETTY (Capitol, 1968)

“This will get the tumbleweeds rolling. The dust is in the air. Wynn was one of these guys who was an architect of the Bakersfield sound. Merle Haggard, Wynn Stewart, Buck Owens, working together up north of Bakersfield across the river in Oildale. This is a Telecaster guitar. Drums. Electric bass. Really pared down. Wynn’s just the best. He’s probably 5’7”. Most pictures have him in these crazy polo shirts, this cute guy. This is from 1968, so it’s very topical. Like ‘Good Old Fashioned Love.’ It has some nudge nudge, wink-of-the-eye references to guys that look like girls perhaps. It’s great for cocktails, hunting trips, that kind of thing. His entire catalog is just the best. It goes from really hard-boiled, badass, almost rockabilly in his early career, and in the ’70s he liked to clink the drink. This has always been one of my favorite records, and I bought it in Nashville.”

JONATHAN EDWARDS HAVE A GOOD TIME FOR ME (ATCO, 1973)

“You may have heard of him from his big hit, ‘Sunshine.’ He’s right up there with my favorite unknown guys. This guy has been very quiet. Like the Alan Alda of country music. This is the sound of western Massachusetts. Jonathan Edwards went to a farm there in the early ’70s and got signed to Atco. This album, the title track, will blow your socks off. Every single track all down the line. Side two, track one—‘My Home Ain’t in the Hall of Fame’—is the great lost country anthem. Instead of drinking whiskey, this is more like drinking homemade apple juice in the Berkshires in a hot air balloon. His entire catalog is incredible, but this album, by far, will clean your barn, even if you don’t have one.”

GARY STEWART OUT OF HAND (RCA, 1975)

“Now going from western Massachusetts, we’re heading down the Gulf Coast. This is an album that was on RCA. After years of kicking around these hardcore honky-tonks, this is a breakout album for him. He had three top ten hits on it. He’s got this vibrato vocal. The way I could describe it best is his vibrato will blow away any hangover or ill feeling one might have. His comet burned really bright and then faded out. He was almost bowled over by his success to the point where he retreated to his trailer park in Florida and became very hard to find. In 2003 his son-in-law and best friend went to find him and found he shot himself in the neck with a gun. Gary Stewart was always in my life, growing up on the road. He was always on my mind; his music’s always stayed with me. An angel who flew too close to the sun.”

CRYSTAL GAYLE CRYSTAL (UNITED ARTISTS, 1976)

“The only female in my top ten tonight. Though of course all the ladies are in my top ten. This is her breakout album. She looks absolutely fetching on the cover, holding a rose, probably in Tucson or Sedona and the wind’s going through her hair. Crystal Gayle is Loretta Lynn’s sister—the youngest sister in the family. The way this album sort of melded itself into my heart … any kid when I grew up would’ve been into this lovely creature. She’s still lovely. The cover photo looks like if American Apparel made costumes for ‘Little House on the Prairie.’ This is in my top records because I was in New York City DJing this party two years ago and it’s 5 AM—this guy gave me a bunch of cash, booze, cigarettes. I was walking back over the Brooklyn Bridge listening to this album with my headphones on. If you can’t listen to this walking over the Brooklyn Bridge towards Manhattan ready for the world to get better in your ears and not fall in love with this city … This is cosmopolitan country at its best.”

ACE IN THE HOLE BAND “(THAT DON’T CHANGE) THE WAY I FEEL ABOUT YOU” 45 (D, 1977)

“This is pretty rare. It goes back to this guy George Strait. He’s had the world record for number one hits—like 57 number ones, more than Elvis, any European artist, the Beatles. Before George Strait broke out he was in a band called Ace in the Hole Band, put together for D Records’ summer picnics or something. The A-side is ‘Lonesome Rodeo Cowboy’ and the flip side is ‘(That Don’t Change) The Way I Feel’—an unknown lost gem of a country song. This should be on the radar of any living cowboy—anyone who’s ever gotten the wind blown across them at a truck stop at a freeway. This song will make you want to fly away. As a one-two punch, this 45—I’ll match it up against any 45 in the world in terms of the motion. It just makes you feel so darn good.”

BOBBY BARE ME AND MCDILL (RCA, 1977)

“Speaking of lost loves and living on the road, our man Bobby Bare. It’s called Me and McDill because it’s Bobby and Bob McDill, who’s a very awesome songwriter. Bob McDill wrote every song on this record and co-wrote one song. It’s like poetry. Kind of almost coming back from George Strait thing. Very wholistic viewpoint of the country lifestyle in a very laidback way. Recorded in Music Mill. This album sounds like clamshells in a Southern parking lot popping under the tires of a car. He even looks relaxed. Maybe some brain basil with a side of french fries. This album’s been with me for a long time. It’s one of the forgotten Bobby Bare albums. Sad blue eyes.”

TERRY ALLEN & THE PANHANDLE MYSTERY BAND SMOKIN’ THE DUMMY (FATE, 1980)

“Similar guys—cohorts—interesting fellas. Terry Allen in Lubbock, Texas. Terry went to Chouinard, which is now CalArts, in the ’60s, so he spans the visual arts and country music field. He’s been making country music since the early ’70s with the Panhandle Mystery Band, whose music director is Lloyd Maines, whose daughter is Natalie Maines, who’s in the Dixie Chicks. Incredible, right? The Maines brothers band backs Terry on most of his records. It’s one of these road albums. Through Terry’s music is this constant pumping piano, this boogie—Leon Russell style. The songs are all very topical. ‘Heart of California.’ ‘Cocaine Cowboy.’ Cover of Chuck Berry. My favorite is ‘Feelin’ Easy’ on side two. I’ve listened to this many times driving from Los Angeles out to the high desert and that’s how I felt and ended up after listening to this record out there. High.”

BUDDY RED BOW BUDDY RED BOW (FIRST AMERICAN, 1980)

“Buddy Red Bow was the first guy to get inducted into the Native American Music Hall of Fame. The second was Jimi Hendrix, shortly thereafter. I discovered this about ten years ago and it’s always been a staple in my DJ set. Just traveling around—that’s the thing about country music, it’s always about travel. It doesn’t matter where you go in the world. People have this affectation and fascination and affection for American country. … It’s a tragedy what happened to these native peoples. This starts out at an Indian reservation and starts to break it down, goes all the way through love and loss, songs of the reservation, songs of country living. I can only imagine these guys playing back when there wasn’t Indian casino reservation restitution. It was a very hard life. I remember as a kid, growing up in northern Arizona, the Navajo reservation had some really kickass country bands. Growing up with Waylon Jennings on the TV, ‘The Dukes of Hazzard,’ the urban cowboy movement. These guys are the real deal, but they couldn’t play anywhere other than the reds because it just wasn’t happening. The penultimate track, one of my favorite tracks, is on here called ‘Indian Love Song.’ It’s a really beautiful honky-tonk song and the refrain and chorus is sung in Lakota—probably the only country song sung in a native tongue that’s up there with Merle Haggard.”

WAYLON JENNINGS SWEET MOTHER TEXAS (RCA, 1986)

“He’s gotta be in every top ten I ever do. He’s just the best. It’s hard to grab one album by this dude. He started out in the Texas, Buddy Holly, Terry Allen, Lubbock—the whole nine yards that brings these guys together. They all started out from these hard scrabble places, these country guys. Most music from the heart comes from a place that has no parking. I pulled this album because pound for pound, song for song, it’s excellent. It’s got this groove that just doesn’t stop. It has this constellation on the back because it’s a very cosmic album. It’s a passport to good times.”

Dimitri Simakis, a.k.a. “Ghoul School” is an excavator of lost and terrible VHS gold and co-founder of Everything is Terrible!, the blog that edits down video for found footage freaks worldwide. With a monstrous library of clips of awful movies, unintentionally hilarious infomercials and bizarre instructional tapes, EIT! trolls all—sometimes in person in cloaks or monster suits. Here are some of his best VHS finds. Curated by Lainna Fader.

DEADLY PREY (DAVID A. PRIOR, 1987)

“A delicious Rambo sundae with The Most Dangerous Game sprinkles, Battle Royale fudge and a homo-erotic cherry on top. Every line … Every goofy face … You have no idea what’s going to happen next, and it constantly reminds you of the fact that this movie is completely genuine. We did a screening of it at Cinefamily, and I can honestly say it was one of the greatest nights of my life. We were so lucky to have had the film’s star—and director’s brother—Ted Prior do a Q&A and he could not have been a nicer dude. Watching him cry with laughter as he sat by his eight-year-old son turned it into a religious experience. Watch this movie and tell me you wish Ted Prior wasn’t your dad.”

TODD WEEKS’ Enjoying Karate Volumes 1-5 (VARIOUS WORKS)

“The great Pinky of TV Carnage fame first hipped me to this dude. All we knew was that Todd Weeks is a forty-something, balding man who jumps around in his basement while questionably-aged girls hit him with foam tubes for hours on end. One day I get a call from my buddy Scott saying his grandmother’s plumber makes these ‘weird martial arts tapes.’ I knew right then it was fate and Mr. Weeks and I became the best of pals. And by that I mean we talked on the phone once. He even scores every tape by putting himself in the bottom of the screen, violently hitting bongo drums and guitar stings. ‘Hypnotic’ is a good way to describe it and you cannot deny the originality.”

15 MINUTE IT (MATT CARTER, 1999)

“Not a week goes by that I don’t think about the one that got away. Her name was 15 Minute IT, and I may never see her beautiful face again. Before You could Tube, we were handed a tape from a friend of a friend who made a remix of Stephen King’s ‘IT’ focusing primarily on the 50s greaser/bully/best character ever, Henry Bower. The editor’s name is Matt Carter, and I owe this guy a fancy night on the town for opening my brain. As odd as it sounds to me now, back in 2000 the idea of someone taking a silly movie and remixing all its most awkward moments was unheard of. For reasons unknown, god mysteriously took the only working copy—that we’re aware of!—away from us years ago, and trying to recreate it all based on memory in Final Cut lacked soul. All the fancy computers in the world can’t beat the magical timing of someone editing VCR to VCR.”

MARK & SHERRY’S WEDDING VIDEO (MARK & SHERRY?, 1991)

“If every DJ or film dweeb has their one and true Holy Grail, then this is my Holy Grail’s Ark Of The Covenant’s Crystal Skull. The day was July 28th, 1991, and it was the happiest day of Sherry’s life. Mark on the other hand, appears to have either he has a rock in his shoe or a switchblade in his mullet. Hey-oh! Nonetheless, Mark wants to go on a murder spree and could not be more uncomfortable. It gets way too real during the reception’s climax as Sherry performs quite the bridal striptease in front of a bunch of children and elderly. Mark is a rock through all of it and I admire him for not giving a fuck. I was so moved that I turned it into a spec video for TV On The Radio, hoping that any day Dave Sitek would be begging to shoot some hoops. Instead we got a cease-and-desist from the groom himself and YouTube pulled it, the cowards. I just hope Mark and Sherry are happy, wherever they are.”

SOMEWHERE IN TIME (JEANNOT SZWARC, 1980)

“This very well might be the single greatest thing in the world, and it’s still such a mystery as to how or why it exists. From what we can piece together, it’s a short film played at a wedding reception for a young LARP couple, and it tells a tale as old as time: heroine can’t stop looking at a painting of a nerd in an African art gallery, nerd pulls heroine into painting, heroine and nerd look at each other and smile a lot. Enter evil gay painter who tries to paint—paint-rape?—heroine to death. Nerd saves the day by killing gay evil painter, and then nerd and heroine live happily ever after. As insane as it is, they say in under 15 minutes what most people what most couples can’t express in a lifetime.”

THE PELICAN BRIEF PROJECT (Ted Dorsey, Andy Featherston, and John Elliott, unknown)

“All my life, I thought I was real funny whenever I would drop a good joke by referencing 1993’s The Pelican Brief. That is until I found out that an amazing semi-obscure L.A.-based band known as Candybox Violence took it to the millionth step and re-scored the entire thing, turning it into an artistic masterpiece. We live in a world where a group of guys who actually spent a lot of their time to score scenes of Julia Roberts looking at a computer monitor in a library. How wonderful is that? This is one of those rare instances where the execution surpasses the concept, and turns complete shit into shinola. Be prepared for a live scoring at Cinefamily with Candybox Violence in person! If that doesn’t wet your wiener, then I don’t know what will.”

SHOOTING STAR (1992)

“For years my friend used to say she was once an extra in a movie, and I suppose she was right. Shooting Star is certainly is a movie in the sense that it has transitions, edits, lighting, and people acting in front of a camera when someone pushed the record button. On any other level however, it most certainly is not. It was made by a D.A.R.E. officer from Mentor, Ohio, to warn kids about the dangers of booze and drugs, but by the end of it you can’t wait to score some toot. It’s basically an after-school-special rock opera, where every line of dialogue is sung through the tunes that defined rock ‘n’ roll. What makes this one truly mind-melting is the fact that this tape literally slows down the conception of time. Just don’t watch it alone or you might wake up after it ends to find yourself dead.”

SHERLOCK: UNDERCOVER DOG (RICHARD HARDING GARDNER, 1994)

“This one puts a delightful spin on the—let’s face it—bore-a-thon that is Sherlock Holmes by replacing the lead role with Sherlock … wait for it… ‘Bones!’ He’s a foul-mouthed one-eyed Scottish mutt who appears to have a severe drinking problem! This is the kind of movie you sit around watching with your best buds, wondering if you’ve ever been this high. And then you remember you have a drug test coming up and haven’t smoked in weeks. This film played a big role for our next big project which I am happy to announce for the first time in public: ‘Everything Is Terrible! Presents: Doggie Woggiez Poochie Woochies!’ Commodore Gilgamesh and I are getting in the shit with it all right now, and we plan on having a rough—RUFF!—cut by the summer to show all you puppies, if we don’t die in a sea of poochies first. It’s going to be redogulous. Woof.”

DINOSAUR ISLAND (FRED OLEN RAY, JIM WYNORSKI, 1994)

“A classic in the ‘Hootiere Cinema’ (or ‘Hooter Cinema’ for the classless) genre of the early ‘90s. Not really sure why they made so many movies where breasts played such an important role during this period of time. Think about it for a second—there’s actual sex, then hardcore porn, then Spice Channel porn, then softcore porn, then cable TV edits of softcore porn. That’s weird and gross, right? Anyway, a group of Army fuck-ups crash-land on an island filled with ancient horny stripper bimbos who’ve never seen a man before, and there is a disturbing amount dick and boob puns. I was pretty obsessed with this movie as a pre-teen, and you might even say this was the movie that made me a man.”

HOLLYWOOD COP (AMIR SHERVAN, 1987)

“I think of this as an experimental film more than a movie. Thanks to a closing video store in Athens, Ohio—pretty much everything we got that day turned out to be a classic, and it was the first time my friends and I all said to each other, ‘Dudes, let’s spend the next decade of our lives alone in our rooms watching insane shit like this while missing out on sunlight, human interaction, and fun.’ Now here I am: an adult who sometimes posts for a blog, and who occasionally tours the country with his friends dressing up like some merry band of pranksters who try and blow people’s minds with our ‘culture jam.’ Wait—we were talking about a movie? Oh yeah—it’s about a cop from Hollywood and a bunch of crazy stuff ensues. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some crying to do.”

Guitarist Andy Coronado (Wrangler Brutes, Monorchid, Skull Kontrol) presents here his list of “Beltway Outsiders”—DC-area bands that were never a part of the famous Dischord-and-friends hardcore punk world. He will be DJ-ing tonight at Big Freak.

Pentagram Relentless LP (Pentagram, 1984)

“Probably the 3rd or 4th lineup of this (now) highly revered Virginia band, this record was their first official album more than 13 years after the band had begun. Victor Griffin lays it down thick here. The songs are simple and superb. Pentagram always claimed to be disciples of Blue Cheer, but revisionist history has placed them alongside the likes of Saint Vitus, Trouble, Witchfinder General, etc., as part of some budding doom metal movement that doesn’t seem like it was really happening at all. Each band was an anomaly in its own area. Modern day metal archaeologists have connected the dots and cherry-picked certain aspects and bits of imagery to create a picture of an imaginary seminal scene that seems far fetched and less ridiculous than it actually was. Remember Wino’s leather top-hat on the back of Mournful Cries? Ouch! What about all those titties on the Witchfinder General records? Titfinder General is more like it. The one thing that I can see these bands all had in common is they were making amazing music and no one gave a shit. Until 25 years later. But you get the feeling that, unlike their hardcore peers at the time, they WANTED to be loved. Pentagram woulda sold their souls to be Priest. Today you feel smug satisfaction when you put on a Pentagram record knowing that they were underdogs and that if you’d been there then, you would surely have had the good taste you have today and you’d be on the inside to partake in the “Doom Genesis.” In reality you’d have just been some pesky fan at the show who was getting in the way of Bobby Liebling’s hand on its journey to rummage around your girlfriend’s ass crack as you’re all waiting in line to piss in the one working toilet at the Bailey’s Crossroads version of the Boar’s Nest.”

Nuclear Crayons Bad Pieces … LP (Outside, 1984)

“This is the band from your high school where the only freaks in the entire school formed a band because there was no one else to play with. It’s like, “OK, the “Duckie” guy from Pretty in Pink will play guitar, piano tie guy will play drums, hippie “Neil from The Young Ones” guy will play bass, and goth girl from drama class, you sing.” Nuclear Crayons are that band that make you feel awkward and embarrassed at first but then you quickly realize that you are the asshole and they are all that is beautiful, honest, and devoid of ego. Remember Nightmare of the Elf? “Overpopulation” is the jam, but every song here grows on you. Looking at the pics of them in Banned in DC when I was a teenager, I really just wanted this band to go away. Laura Lynch “Lavoison” was a total boner killer and the rest of the band just stood there yawning. I wanted the Faith to just jump over from the other page and beat the stuffing out of these charlatans. Anyway, they managed to put out a single, an LP and a comp all on their own Outside Records without help from the eye-rolling rein-holders of the DC scene at the time. Bernie Wandel went on to play bass in the first incarnation of the Henry Rollins Band, only to be unceremoniously dumped when Henry poached Andrew Weiss from Gone. A few years later Bernie made an appearance in Henry’s dream journal “Black Coffee Blues,” where he was unceremoniously punched in the fucking face when he came knocking at Henry’s front door.”

United Mutation Rainbow Person EP (DSI, 1985)

“Name: A+….. Art: A++….. Music: ehhh……. When I first heard about UM as a teen, I expected them to fully live up to their name and blow my balls apart. United Mutation? The most bad ass name ever. How could it not be good? I picked up a copy of the Fugitive Family EP and was expecting Void’s little brother. I mean, the record scraped in to becoming a part of history with it’s catalog number: Dischord 10 7/8. The “7/8” is kinda telling … it’s like, “We really don’t wanna besmirch the family name, but you guys are our friends and all—how ‘bout this?” I’ve listened to Fugitive Family 70 times and I couldn’t hum one song to you. Mike Brown’s vocals are distinctly original for the time, somewhere between Pushead’s Septic Death screech and Cannibal Corpse’s cookie monster ridiculousness, but predating both. The art on the record is top notch—I made a shirt I still wear to this day that is graced with the cover image. They made great strides by 1985’s Rainbow Person EP. The music is way better … more complicated and memorable, and Mike Brown’s singing bears a strange resemblance to HR’s at this point. They petered around for a couple more years and then faded away …”

White Boy “Sagittarius Bumpersticker” 7” (Doodley Squat, 1977)

“One of the area’s first “punk” acts, White Boy were the father/son team of James and Glen Kowalski taking the stage names Mr. Ott and Jake Whipp. A notoriously aggressive live act, the band released this record themselves and were cited by many of the DC laureates as an early life-changing experience. The record came out when punk was less defined by a certain sound—it sounds like a bar boogie blues band with a dude singing about how wants to puke all over things. Shock value was trading at an all time high, it seems. The behind the scenes exploits of White Boy proved to be more scandalous than anything Mr. Ott ever sang about when he ended up being thrown in prison for a string of child molestation and child pornography charges. Baaarrrrffffff …”

The Hated No More We Cry EP (Vermin Scum,1985)

“The title of this record couldn’t be worse suited for this particular bunch of Maryland crybabies. Apparently they actually did CRY while they performed live. Guh. These guys fall perfectly betweenZen Arcade-era Husker Du and Rites of Spring, with the whining notched up a bit and the lyrics a bit more hippie-drippie. If you’re a sixteen year old boy, everything they ever did will sound amazing to you, even when they kinda started sounding like Rush at the very end. I’ve never met a woman that could stand this band. What does that say?”

Death Piggy War EP (DSI, 1984)

“Hailing from Richmond Virginia, Dave Brockie’s pre-Gwar outfit Death Piggy surely suffered from the fact that they were trying to be funny guys in a climate that was distinctly humor-unfriendly. Songs with titles like “Ceramic Butt” and “Bathtub in Space” make me chuckle as I type. Brockie’s vocals here are a dead ringer for Gibby Haynes, and the music is less psychedelic than the Buttholes but comes from the same “making fun of punks” school which is always a good thing.”

No Trend When Death Won’t Solve Your Problem LP (Widowspeak, 1985)

“The ultimate DC outsiders, No Trend were notoriously hostile towards the entrenched DC hardcore/Revolution Summer establishment and took their anger nationwide. Lydia Lunch“>Lydia Lunch saw they weren’t just another band and put together this collection of tracks from several records. Singer Jeff Mentges belts out the most believable, thoroughly disgusted first line you’ve ever heard on a record; “QUICK!! TWO SECONDS TIL NONEXISTENCE! SO WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WAAAAAANT!!!!” It still gives me chills every time I hear it. I love No Trend as much as they hated all of us. Their ultimate “Fuck You” was their terrible final album they shit out for Touch and Go, which was intended to fuck with their audience’s expectations and managed to do so quite effectively.”

9353 To Whom It May Consume LP (R&B, 1984)

“Where do you begin with these guys? They shoulda been bigger than Jesus Jones but have completely been excluded from the history books. Total weirdo goth pop with lyrics that are so dark and funny and are delivered between Bruce Merkle’s bizarre alternating falsettos and baritones. Former Double-0 axeman Jason Carmer’s brilliant guitar playing is stripped away of it’s hardcore roots and delivers wonderful delay pedal psychedelia. Like No Trend, these guys were antagonizers and you got the impression that something just wasn’t quite right with the singer. I found that out firsthand when I met him at my friend Chris’s place in DC. He had been living in a wooded area by the freeway in Arlington with four dogs. He told us he had just been evicted from his camp by the cops and he’d had to shoot two of his dogs in the head because he couldn’t care for them. He had the other two dogs with him and after he told the story he split and left the dogs with us. Right after he left both dogs started violently vomiting and they collapsed. He’d poisoned them. Sick motherfucker. Great band though!”

Wicked Witch “Fancy Dancer” 7” (Infinity, 1985)

“When I lived in DC you could find this record anywhere for 50 cents. They even had it at Safeway. Everyone I knew had it. You had to buy it because it looked awesome. And everyone displayed it, too. If you went to a party it was always deliberately placed in the front of the host’s pile of 7”s. But did we listen to it? Hell no! Richard Simms was a one-man band who apparently pressed a shitload of these things. The A-side’s “Fancy Dancer” is a freaky funk number that is almost uncategorizeable. The B-side’s “Y Wood U Call It Rock?” is a heavy metal rock jam from another planet that sounds like it was recorded at the wrong speed. Awesome!”

Fury Resurrection EP (THD, 1989)

“These guys were in Swiz and Ignition, who weren’t beltway outsiders in the least, but this side project deserves special attention. It was 1989 and Fugazi were king—skillfully played post hardcore was the sound du jour. This record came out of nowhere—pure shambolic hardcore bombast that barely stays in time and then completely falls apart at the end. They never played a show and never practiced. Chris Thomson’s first attempt at singing in a band and his finest moment, he sounds like he’s ad-libbing the whole thing. Shawn Brown’s bass playing sounds like someone handed him the instrument and a giant question mark appeared above his head like if you had handed a caveman a cell phone. I was living in San Diego at the time and amongst my friends this record became everyone’s “I’m a fucking lunatic, this is what I listen to!” badge of pride. Everyone wanted their band to sound like this band but they couldn’t cuz they PRACTICED.”

ANDY CORONADO DJs WITH ADAM WADE, ADAM NAUSEUM, SHORT SHORTS AND CHRIS ZIEGLER AT BIG FREAK ON MON., APR. 4, AT THE BLACK BOAR, 1630 COLORADO BLVD., EAGLE ROCK. 10 PM / FREE / 21+. TWITTER.COM/HEWASABIGFREAK.

Tom Fitzgerald is a film programmer and a video artist who has spent twenty years digging for the next big thrill. He deals in found footage, creating feature-length video mashups like Bollyweird: The Movie for Cinefamily while mixing psychedelic visual freakouts for Edan, Cut Chemist and B-Music. He swears all these films exist, even though he couldn’t find cover art for all of them and even though some of them are in genres he’s just coined himself. This interview by Lainna Fader.

ANIMATION: KANASHIMI NO BERADONA / BELLADONNA OF SADNESS (EIICHI YAMAMOTO, 1973)
“I picked this up in 2001. I don’t like anime, but this is an exception. Actually, I could see someone who likes anime not liking this film. I love the way the film integrates with music, and the visual pastiches and templates that constantly change to adhere to the emotional tone of each scene. It gets soft and pastoral, then psych and surreal. And the music is amazing. It’s the film you could only dream exists. Very ’70s, but not tacky disco ’70s. It’s warm and vibrant. There’s a fluidity to the animation that’s almost as if the animators were listening to the music as they animated the film; amazing synergy with the audio and visual.”

PATCHWORK FILMS: THE PASSING (MOROZ, 1990)
“I found this 16mm oddity one night on the B-Movie channel, which only plays weird public domain films. This is a patchwork film that combines different films from various stages of the director’s career, and it’s really obvious. It’s the kind of film that takes years to make and never truly comes together, and that’s part of the charm. He started with an eerie ’70s sci-fi geek film and moved on to a semi-documentary short about two adorable old men, real platonic male love, and then threw them together with creepy soul-transferals and reincarnation experiments. It shows that old people are just like us, except they’re old. John Huckert really should have been a documentarian.”

HOMEMADE HORROR: TALES FROM THE QUADEAD ZONE (CHESTER TURNER, 1987)
“This is an ambitious $100-budget film from the director of Black Devil Doll From Hell. It looks like a film made by someone who’s never seen a film, though he obviously has. He creates his own rules because he doesn’t know any film rules. It’s a film about families, with three creepy stories told by a woman to her dead son Bobby. No one knows anything about Chester Turner so this film is a big mystery. In my mind, he’s a bus driver who got a camcorder for Christmas. I give myself to the romantic notions and mysteries of these films.”

STUDENT FILMS: DIDN’T YOU HEAR? (SKIP SHERWOOD, 1970)“This is an example of how a student film can rise to be almost a theatrical feature. It’s a moody, naïve art film that could’ve only been made in the ’70s about the inside of the mind of a college freshman trying to figure out how the adult world works. This kid is having a terrible day, so he rests his head back and suddenly he’s in an alternate universe where he and all his friends are pirates who travel to different islands that represent different aspects of modern adult society. The musical equivalent would be Joni Mitchell, so it borders on cheesy, and it’s totally dated. On those terms, it’s very nice and well-done. It’s got its own unique surreal mythology—based on nothing but people smoking pot and taking acid in 1970.”

TV MOVIES: BAD RONALD ((BUZZ KULIK, 1974)
“I found this when I was a kid in the ’70s. Ronald pushes a little girl who was making fun of him and she hits her head and dies. His mother hides him in the downstairs bathroom in their house, but soon she dies, and another family moves in to the house. He becomes an internal voyeur, and makes peep holes all over the place to watch them. He’s filthy and starving and he’s losing his mind. Ronald’s got this fantasy world called Atranta, where he’s a prince, and the princess looks exactly like the girl he killed. Eventually he’s discovered, and he bursts through the wall, and it’s like the id or the mind of the house is being unleashed. I bet someone’s going to remake this some day.”

ITALIAN GENRE FILMS: ARCANA (GIULIO QUESTI, 1972)
“Arcana is definitely an odd duck from the same director as Death Laid an Egg. It’s about a young guy whose mother is a possibly real, possibly fake fortune-teller. He creates his own personal witchcraft and takes Polaroids of all his mother’s visitors and does strange things with them. The film disintegrates into highly symbolic, purely visual set pieces that at reflect ancient voodoo-like witchcraft. Explicitly and implicitly, Questi understands southern Italy’s weird, backward superstitions and he’s playing with them in modern Rome in an amazing chafing of modernity and the old ways.”

DOCUMENTARY: MISS NUDE AMERICA (JAMES P. BLAKE, 1976)
“It’s a boob movie that isn’t a boob movie. A nudist colony in Middle America put on a Miss Nude America Contest in the ‘50s and ‘60s. Someone hired a couple documentary filmmakers and said, ‘Go film some naked babes,’ but they were much more into making a human interest film. They decided to focus on the director of the pageant, and suddenly the film became fascinating. He’s a megalomaniacal quadriplegic guy whose parents ran the nude resort, a sex-obsessed douchebag who wants to be the next Hugh Hefner. He’s fighting the reality of his life and compensating like crazy. This is the best of vérité documentary filmmaking.”

BLAXPLOITATION: SWEET SWEETBACK’S BAADASSSSS SONG (MELVIN VAN PEEBLES, 1971)
“There’s Blaxploitation, and then there’s Sweetback. Most films are based on the novel or play model, but this a film based on a soul/funk record. This badass guy beats up some cops and is on the run. Incredible music from Earth Wind & Fire is playing compulsively. Melvin was obviously losing his mind when he made this. It’s a manifesto against bourgeois, white art. It’s very pissed off, an affront to all film structure. It’s truly an outlaw film, and the beauty is it was a huge hit and made millions and started Blaxploitation.” ]]> http://larecord.com/interviews/2011/01/04/the-interpreter-tom-fitzgerald/feed 1 http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/06/17/david-serby-interview-over-there-in-the-back-of-the-bar http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/06/17/david-serby-interview-over-there-in-the-back-of-the-bar#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:40:40 +0000 lar_import http://larecord.com/?p=31898 Honky Tonk And Vine. This interview by Chris Ziegler.]]>
dan monick

Download: David Serby “Don’t Even Try”

(from Honky Tonk and Vine out now on Harbor Grove)

David Serby was a punk kid in Orange County and then an insurance adjuster in L.A. and took a long time and a lot of lumps to become the country singer he is now. He performs monthly at dark bars with old photos on the walls and he has just released his third album Honky Tonk And Vine. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

If you wrote a song called ‘Blues For An Insurance Adjuster,’ what would it be like?
Oh good Lord. That would pretty much be if I wrote a musical for the movie Office Space. When I was doing insurance I had the back of my cubicle backed up to a big window and I went to my boss and said, ‘Can I take this back thing off because its got this big beautiful window here?’ He said no, so a friend of mine who was next to me brought his little Leatherman tool kit in and hung around ‘til everybody was gone and we took it off and put the back of the cubicle in the storage facility bin back behind a big crate and nobody ever said anything. I don’t think they ever noticed.
What was the most productive creative work you ever got out of those experiences?
I think that you figure out who you are by figuring out who you’re not. You put these clothes on and go, ‘This doesn’t feel right on me.’ When I started working there, my life was completely upside down and that job was really the only thing I had to hold on to. I was probably about six months into that job and my friend who I met there was quitting to go to graduate school back in New York—he said, ‘You hate this job—why don’t you just quit right now and we’ll take three months off and we’ll drive around the country? You can bring a guitar.’ I said, ‘I can’t do it—my life has been a mess for so long. I can’t.’ I was still hanging on to that cliff—I hung on to that cliff for another six years before I actually let go.
Are you more of a risk taker now?
Definitely. It’s a completely different world. I let go of that cliff and I just said, ‘You know what? The game is rigged.’ I don’t want to turn into an anarchist or anything but this whole capitalist system is not really set up to encourage freedom of thought and art. And if that’s what you want to do, as soon as you realize that the system is not set up to really help you or encourage you and that you’re going to have to figure out your own path and make your own rules—as soon as you accept those things, life becomes a hell of a lot easier.
Are these the same sentiments you were talking about in your old punk band?
Kind of. The things I was railing against then—being a cog in a machine and all those teenage things you’re pissed about, like having a number on a social security card and all that bullshit. But you do come full circle. You rail against it and then you graduate from high school—I remember feeling instantly ancient. Just old. And thinking, ‘How did this happen?’ And then it was another 10 or 15 years of realizing that just because I was older doesn’t mean I had to be older. I went to high school in Orange County so that was like in ‘78 and in ‘82 I graduated—there was a lot of great punk rock going on in Orange County at that time. I used to see Mike Ness hanging around. I saw Agent Orange more times than I can count! And the Adolescents and TSOL and all those bands—I saw them in high school gyms, I saw them in Elks Clubs, I saw them at the Lodge in Fullerton—I saw them everywhere. There was a lot of great art happening down there and all of that stuff was cool. But my family had country records and I remember I would play the Johnny Cash Live From San Quentin record all the time and I would listen to a band like X—I remember getting that first X record. I got the first X record and the first Blasters record on the same day and I went to my friend’s house and I put it on her record player and listened to it and just stared at the artwork and was completely blown away by that stuff. That stuff is completely folk music. It’s folk music like it’s people talking about what’s going on in their life and on the street. They’re talking about people who are making it day to day. They’re kind of like historians—especially a band like X, they were just brilliant historians. I love that band.
Guy Clark says you have to leave a space in the song for the guy who’s listening to be like, ‘Hey that’s me…’ Is that something you try to do?
One of the things that I love most about country music is that people identify with it. It’s very common language—a very conversational art form and I think people connect with it because they do see themselves in those songs. If you’ve done that and somebody can listen to a song and recognize themselves in it, then I think you’ve really managed to do something special. That is kind of what I try to do. The thing with country music is that people make fun of it because country music talks about ‘my girlfriend left me, my wife left me, my dog died, my pick-up truck’s broken down…’ But you know what? That shit happens to people! It sounds simple, but it’s not simple—it’s not easy to do that. I remember reading an interview with either Jakob Dylan or Tom Petty—a reviewer wrote about how the songs were all three chords and they were all conversational and how the songs were too simple and he said, ‘Look, if being simple were easy everyone would do it.’ Except for the ones about being in prison—although I’ve been in plenty of metaphorical prisons—I don’t think I’ve ever heard a country song that I haven’t identified with. That’s the brilliance about it.
What’s hard about writing a simple song for you?
You have to pick out the little things. My friend said, ‘My husband is always on the street—he’s always working on his car and he should be in the house working on other stuff, if you know what I mean.’ And I thought, ‘That’s like a universal man-woman experience.’ And I came home and wrote this song ‘Better With My Hands’ about a couple that is falling apart—which I know something about—and a guy who doesn’t know how to talk about what he’s feeling—which I know something about. The fact that I was talking to this woman and she was saying the same thing was happening to her—well, you know, there’s something that I haven’t written about and if it’s happening to me and it’s happening to her then it’s happening to millions of people all over the world. The key is to try and tell it in a fresh original way—it’s tough to be simple when you’re trying to be different.
Harlan Howard would do the same thing—just listen to people talking in a bar.
There’s a song on the record called ‘I Only Smoke When I’m Drinking’ and twice in a week somebody tried to bum a cigarette off of me and both times I said I only smoke when I’m drinking. And the song ‘Permanent Position’—I was talking to my friend at the Cinema Bar about how great it would be if Rod—the guy who owns the Cinema Bar—would pay us to drink beer because that’s pretty much one of our favorite things to do. I’m not the only one who wants to sit in a bar and get paid to drink beer, I’m sure.
What’s the big story you want to tell? What’s on your mind that you want in a song?
That’s a good question. I’m in a good place in my own personal life so I’m kind of looking outward more. The first record had its own story, but for the last two records I kind of moved away from that—what I really want to do is look at other people and their lives. The world needs good art right now—it needs good stories.
What makes you say that?
Well, I don’t know—this place is a wreck. The middle class is disappearing and people are so hypnotized by pop culture that they don’t see it. I look at my sister and her husband who have gone through tough times. I watch people struggle and it seems that it’s people who shouldn’t be struggling. It’s people whose families that for generations, their lot in life has improved—and now this generation, everything has gone backwards for them. There’s a movie called The Interpreter with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman and there’s a line in that movie—‘There are no more countries, only corporations.’ And it’s that. The corporations don’t give a rat’s ass about the people in this country. It’s the death of the middle class, the Wal-Mart economic model—it’s all that stuff and it’s the effect that stuff is having in people’s lives. That’s what’s interesting to me.
What do you think about that strange kind of split in country? That part of it is so stand-up-for-the-little-guy and yet it’s used to market Wal-Mart and expensive trucks?
I know—I agree with that and I don’t think that it even registers with people. I really don’t and I think it’s the hypnotic effect of pop culture. I went off to Stagecoach a couple weeks ago and there was the Palomino stage and it had some big acts that drew some people over from the main area—the bands had a more independent aesthetic and were more country-based like Dale Watson and Jim Lauderdale. And there were sadly not big crowds for them. I spent almost the whole weekend in front of that stage. Late on Sunday night, the wind kicked up and it was kind of cool and I walked back through the main stage area in the middle of Kid Rock’s set and he was playing a Queen song—I think it was either ‘We Are the Champions’ or ‘We Will Rock You’ and there was supposed to have been 50,000 people in attendance but there wasn’t more than 250 people over at the Palomino stage. At that time I think it was Jim Lauderdale and Dale Watson headlining, who I think are just brilliant contemporary country song writers and the other 49,999 people were over in front of that main stage and it was like a drunken spring break over there. I’m not making a value judgement but it’s completely different from old school country and how that art form was historically approached. It’s more like arena rock and pop music and those two fan bases don’t really cross-pollinate.
Is ‘Get It In Gear’ really about helping a girl get naked photos of herself back from a drug dealer? What happened?
I have no idea what happened to that girl. I knew her many years ago and kinda had a thing for her—kind of like the moth to the flame thing. I met her in junior college. You see those things happening and the signs are not good, but there’s a fascination there and you get to a certain point where you either jump off the cliff or walk back to your car right away.
What’s something you walked away from that you’re glad you left behind?
There was a whole bunch like ten years ago. I chose to go a different way professionally—I chose to go a different way in my relationships and I chose not to wallow in self-pity and depression and to try and use that. There is a tendency to kind of wallow in your bad luck—I think as an artist you probably should do a little of that because that’s how you connect with things, but the key is not getting so destroyed that you can’t do anything. I read an interview with Oliver Stone and he talks about going through a period in his life when he was having substance abuse problems—he said even when he was his drunkest or his most drugged-out or whatever, he got up every day and he wrote. There is a real saving grace in creating art. If you can force yourself to do it when you’re down, it will lead you to the light at the end of the tunnel.
Whenever Harlan Howard went into a bar, he’d always take the barstool closest to the front door—what is your preferred barstool and why?
I would take the farthest barstool from the door—but the one that had the view. I like my bars as dark as possible but I also like to be able to see people come and go. I like to watch people when they don’t know they’re being watched—you get an honest read on what people are doing and how they’re reacting to folks. I love to do that. I told somebody recently that I love to sit in airports when the flight is delayed. I just like to watch people. I might sit by the door but then you gotta turn around—if you’re over there in the back of the bar where you can see the whole deal, that would be my place.

DAVID SERBY ON THUR., JUN. 18, AT THE PIKE, 1836 E. 4TH ST., LONG BEACH. 9 PM / FREE / 21+. PIKELONGBEACH.COM.DAVID SERBY’S HONKY TONK AND VINE IS OUT NOW ON HARBOR GROVE. VISIT DAVID SERBY AT DAVIDSERBY.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/DAVIDSERBY.