My Dry Wet Mess makes beats in Barcelona that sound like they come from L.A. and it all started with an Atari and MPC given to him by his father, a bass player in Ennio Morricone’s orchestra. He seamlessly blends art and sound with Daedelus for his live shows, and on his new imprint, Magical Properties. He speaks now from his parents’ house after Christmas about why everything is difficult for him, his inability to get a visa, and his affinity for twisting pop songs and mashing them with noises from unidentifiable sources. This interview by Lainna Fader.

You said My Dry Wet Mess came out of a creative crisis in 2009. What was the crisis?
I got stuck. For a couple of years I wasn’t really making music. I kind of lost track of what I wanted to do. At some point I just realized a lot of stuff was happening and I hadn’t been aware. I decided I had to start from scratch and try to do something completely different. I gotta say—seeing all these artists working the line around hip-hop and playing with the elements I wanted to play with, I learned that sometimes it’s good to have a fresh start. It can really help. For a year I was doing stuff that was really bad. Now some of my stuff is actually good.
What’s the most encouraging thing anyone’s ever said to you?
I can tell you about the first time anyone ever really listened to me. It really, really changed things a lot—the fact that Alfred—Daedelus— when he listened to my music, he really liked it and was interested. He was the first person to show me … the first person to judge it. He said straight out, ‘I want to release this.’ From that moment I gained a lot more confidence in my work. That’s meant more to me than any advice I’ve ever gotten.
You sound like you’d be at home at Low End Theory. Why don’t you live in L.A.?
I would just love to live in L.A.! I just can’t. I don’t know how to get a visa. It’s really expensive but it’s something I really want to do. I was in L.A. for two months—I actually moved there for two months. If it was just like moving to another country in Europe, I’d be living in L.A. right now. I think I have more friends in L.A. than Barcelona. It’s really frustrating if you make so much music and don’t get to get feedback from other people involved in the same thing. That just doesn’t happen where I live. I feel isolated. Frustrated. You’re not going to shows—not connecting with other people.
What do you do when you get frustrated?
Nothing—what can I do? That’s the main thing I’m suffering from. Most of the time I’m working at home and I’m by myself all day making music, which in a way is really fucking awesome and I’m so lucky to be able to do that, but at the same time it’s really frustrating. I don’t really have a solution for that—yet. This is the time in my life that I’m really trying to do this seriously. I’m only making music. I’m interested in a bunch of things and before this I was studying, I was working as a programmer, whatever. Always a bunch of things at the same time I was working on music. Now this is a full-time thing, the first time where I decided, ‘OK, I want to make music, this is what I’m doing now.’ I do it all day.
What’s something that scares you and excites you at the same time?
Right now—freedom. Freedom in the sense of being able to do what you want in your life. Pursuing your dream. It’s awesome but it’s scary because you never know if you’re good enough. You always think maybe you’re not, but since you’re able to do it you don’t have excuses. A lot of people do exactly what they want to do in a way. They want a job, they need a family, so they do that. That’s their priorities. They know what they want, or think they do, and they do it. You kind of have an excuse if that thing that you want to do doesn’t happen to you. But if you actually are able to try, it’s really exciting but scary—because what if you find out you’re not good enough? You don’t have any more excuses.
What was the first beat you ever made like?
I had this kind of rap band. Me and two friends of mine. I wanted to rap and I wanted to find out how to make beats. My father, he used to make some studio work at home, music for commercials and stuff, so he always had a computer at home and basic studio gear. He bought me this really old … How you say? Atari? The computer brand. I had this really small sampler to put samples in. I had this general MIDI thing that had all these different sounds. That was my set-up. The first one I made had a beat stolen from some other beat instrumental, and it had sampled voices. It was really average. Most basic hip-hop thing you could ever do. Drum loops stolen from somewhere. Sampled rap voices in there for the chorus. That was it. It’s funny cuz that’s pretty much what I’m doing now. It’s really similar, but I had to go through so many things to go back to that.
Any interest in classical training?
I would like to know more about music theory. I really have no fucking idea. I never studied and I have no idea why I never did. Most of my life, I had this ‘I don’t give a shit’ attitude. ‘I don’t need theory.’ I guess that was fine for a while. It let me focus on different things. I never really liked to learn an instrument. I never liked to spend time trying to do something that was that kind of skill. I’d rather sit in front of a sequencer and move things around. Completely different skill. Because of that, I never got classical training. Right now I feel so stupid because these things that I am writing, sometimes … I’d like to write more complex music, in a way. So I am always thinking that at some point I’d like to learn.
Why do you feel closer to writers than most musicians?
I feel closer to writers because I can sit there and create my own whole world and I don’t need anyone else. There’s no translation between what I do and the final work. What comes out of my computer is what people experience. That’s so similar to writing a novel.
I read an interview where you cited Squarepusher saying his music is ‘between a monkey and a cliché’ and you said you feel very close to that definition. Why?
I love that definition because I feel like he was saying that he was trying to mix elements that are played by humans, in a way, and elements that are artificial—electronic, whatever. When you mix them, you never know what you’re listening to. You don’t know if those drums are sampled or programmed or someone’s playing. What he was saying is that you have to use … doing really weird shit, but always have elements in your music that people can hold on to. I’ve been making so many different kinds of music in my life and there’s one thing I’ve always been sure of: trying to do new things, but in a context that people can relate to. This is something I always find in things that I like the most. Let’s say, when I watch a movie, what I like is for a good part of it, you follow an ordinary plot but at some point things get twisted and you find yourself in a totally different place. You don’t know who is who, and things get messy. It takes you to a totally different context. For music, I don’t want to do really crazy music that people won’t understand. I want to do things with pop elements— things that everyone can relate to—and then twist it. Take the listener to a place he knows and can relate to, and at that point try something new. When he said that, I thought the definition was perfect. Between something that is so ordinary that everyone knows, and something that is really fucking weird. And mix them together.

MY DRY WET MESS’ IRRATIONAL ALPHABET OUT NOW ON MAGICAL PROPERTIES. VISIT MY DRY WET MESS AT MYSPACE.COM/MYDRYWETMESS.

Download: Hunx and His Punx “Lovers Lane”

(from Too Young To Be In Love out now on Hardly Art)

Hunx blew out of the desert right into the hearts of millions of teenagers everywhere, hyphenating years of admirably trashy Rip Off-style rock ‘n’ roll with his world-famous stint as one of the four heads of Gravy Train!!!! His new record on Hardly Art is all Kim Fowley-cum-Phil Spector teenage tragedy rock and it sounds like Kenneth Anger’s Kustom Kar Kommandos looks. He speaks now while naked on Valentine’s Day. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Where did you get the world’s tiniest leather-daddy jacket?
There’s this store down the street from my store called the Antique Center—it’s owned by this crazy man whose father owned the junk store and he died, and he grew up there and it’s his life. I go there sometimes on break or when I’m bored, and I just saw it like, ‘Oh my God, I need that.’ His mom just gave it to me! I priced it at $50 because I feel anyone who wants to spend $50 on that is a really cool person and deserves it more than I do. But it wouldn’t even fit on a dick. Maybe a baby dick. Like a small … man’s penis.
Like midget size?
Midgets could have a big one. You never know.
What animal print best shows off your manhood?
Leopard print! I’m over zebra. I’ve done all the animal prints. I think I’m one of the only men who wears animal print. It’s a girl thing. I like getting it at thrift stores. I wore my Frederick’s of Hollywood one-piece underwear set all the time until someone stole it in Paris, and I just bought this silky men’s underwear at a thrift store the other day and I was wondering—is it gross to buy underwear from a thrift store? But I always do it. I usually wash ’em. I don’t wanna have scabies again. If you wash stuff, it’s OK. I had scabies for six months but I don’t know where it came from. I had to do this toxic treatment like nine times. It can cause brain damage.
What’s the most pleasurable way you ever damaged your brain?
Probably huffing Lysol. I think I wanted something else, but that’s all I had. That was just like … being a crazy teen. I’ve just done spray paint, Lysol, whippits and that spray cleaner stuff—that’s the best! The lens cleaner’s what got me started. I don’t do it anymore, but every time I see a duster I kinda wanna huff it. It’s probably how an alcoholic feels when they see a bottle of whiskey.
What’s your best broken addiction?
Shopping? That’s up there. Doing pills and shopping at the same time. I’d take a bunch of painkillers and go to the drug store and walk around for hours and spend like $100 on stuff I didn’t need.
What’s the best present your high self ever got your sober self?
A tiger statue. I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ If you have money to spend, it’s better to go shopping when you’re high, but if you’re poor it’s not a good idea.
Are you at your sexual peak now?
I’m on my third sexual peak.
What’s a sexual valley like?
That’s me being a weird celibate person for months on end. Then I think sex is disgusting. I had it in December and was like, ‘I’m never gonna have sex again!’ and I was totally grossed out by it. Then in January I had sex with like eight people.
Who broke the sex ban?
This footslave guy. He rubbed my feet for like an hour. He’s my only footslave but I think they usually go for a long time. It was a dream situation. The first time was in my bedroom but then I started going to his house because he had a flat screen TV. I’d make him do my laundry and stuff and watch something really stupid like ‘Desperate Housewives’ or ‘American Idol.’
Mozart had a song called ‘Lick My Ass.’ Are you as dirty as Mozart?
No, he didn’t! It’s called ‘Lick My Ass’? He wanted his ass to get licked?
He also was into people shitting in his bed.
Wow—that’s cool. I’m not into shitting. I wrote this song called ‘I Vant to Suck Your Cock’ and the other side is gonna be called ‘Monster Mouth.’ So take that, Mozart!
What is the fastest way to your heart?
Candy. A lot.
How much would it take to purchase you?
They gotta look cute, too. But I like sour candy.
If you had to die at the climax of a party you had organized, how and when would you want to go?
I always thought it’d be cool if my best friend kinda … killed me out of nowhere. Like I didn’t even know there was drama and they reached over and stabbed me. To death. It just seems like a surprise.
You’re so cheerful—you like candy and surprises!
I just think it sounds cool. I don’t wanna think about dying a slow painful death or killing myself, so it’d be cool if my friend just reached over and killed me.
Where if anywhere would you be uncomfortable showing your dick?
Anywhere my mom is, even though she’s already seen it—internet lurker! She was like, ‘Are you a porn star?’ I just told her it was for art. And that I couldn’t control it being on the internet and she got over it. I didn’t think she’d actually really care, but she kind of did. I had to like really keep my Facebook on lockdown cuz I have 2,000 friends and most of ’em are people I don’t know, so once in a while someone would tag a naked photo of me and I’d have to rush to a computer to untag it in hopes that my mom wouldn’t see it. But I just saw her and she told me she’s over Facebook, so I’m relieved.
Can we expect an explosion of naked photos now?
Now it’s on—tag away, people. I actually used to have this strange obsession of taking naked pictures of myself. This is before cell phones. I had this camera with this really shitty remote and I would set up scenes of me with like giant stuffed animals, and I’d get a boner and take a million photos and I made this little binder of them.
You and Shannon wrote the new album, but do you miss just having songs delivered to you by people who are all begging to write for you?
I really do like it in a way. It’s a cool thing people don’t do anymore unless they’re huge stars. Like teen stars or pop stars. I’m really into it, actually. I’m still kind of doing that here and there—with Fred Schneider. I didn’t even get a lot of grief for it. I just recorded another album alone and played all the instruments, and I feel like people are like, ‘Whoa—you can play guitar? And drums?’ I feel like they don’t realize that about me. I think it’s slightly like a gay guy thing. As in how guys kind of back in the day … I don’t know if it’s like that anymore, but you know how people were like, ‘Oh, girls can’t do things.’ Like, ‘He can’t play! He just dresses crazy and acts nuts.’ But I can do it!
What else are you great at?
Being funny. I like comedy but I feel like everyone I know who’s a stand-up comedian can’t carry a normal conversation. They’re just always practicing. Like trying out their routine while I’m trying to tell them something important, and they’re like on stage. I don’t wanna be like that. Sometimes on stage I can’t stop talking.
I heard you were rolling on the ground begging people to piss on you.
That is most likely a true story. The worst is if I get really high before a show, cuz then I was like lying on the ground begging my band to slow down. My friend was like, ‘I went to your show and I couldn’t see you the whole time cuz you were lying on the ground.’
Why don’t you travel with like a nice lawn chair to lounge on?
Good idea alert!
Or a piano you could roll around on?
Oh my god—that’d be like when I’m older.
How will you re-invent yourself after rock ‘n’ roll?
I don’t really think about when I’m older. I’m just gonna stay young.
Can we take a moment to acknowledge Michelle Santamaria who is now playing in your band? Michelle, who L.A. loved in the Pinkz and Bitchschool and Loli & the Chones?
Isn’t Michelle so great? Her guitar playing kills me. It made me cry. When we were recording, some of the songs were really sad. I don’t know what happened. I just got really into singing about sad stuff. I’m not trying to make people cry, but I don’t know. After so long, you wanna sing about something kind of serious.
‘Blow Me Away’ is about your father’s suicide, isn’t it?
Yeah, that’s about my dad. I feel like if you love someone and they die, the nicest thing you can do is write a song for them. Just to help me get over something—or I don’t know. It just feels really respectful.
Is it true you wake up in the middle of the night and do demos of sad songs you don’t remember in the morning?
Yes—that’s what I recorded an album of. One’s called ‘Say Goodbye Before You Leave.’ It’s about Jay Reatard. I was so bummed. Another is ‘When You’re Gone.’ They’re just stuff like that. Well, just a couple are really sad. A lot are just really pop. This solo thing might be all sad songs.
Did you ever think of doing like the plaster-caster thing and selling collectible Hunx dildos?
I really wanted to sell whips! When we were on tour with Jay and Nobunny, Nobunny had this little whip and I stole it and I’d whip everybody. I woke up one day with a whip in my handbag like, ‘What happened last night?’ Actually, I’m really tame in my life now unless I’m on tour.
What’s the scariest state?
I almost got murdered for being gay at a Dairy Queen in the middle of Texas. Somewhere between Denton and Austin. We just got in the van and sped away and then Brontes got a blow-job at the next truck stop. But me and Heather wouldn’t even get out of the van! That definitely put everyone’s spirits back in check. We were on tour with our friends V.I.P.—an all-gay rap group, and our roadie would wear like onesies, and everywhere we went V.I.P. would put on a show and start singing and dancing. … It was actually two fathers and two sons, the people who wanted to beat us up.
A father-son attack team?
A double father-son attack team!
Two generations of assholes!
It was crazy! And Brontes and Bear from V.I.P. are all Southern and they want to fight back, so they start talking all this shit to them. I high-tailed it out of there! I’m not into violence at all. It freaks me out. You don’t know if they have guns.
What’s the opposite of this? The most romantic experience in Texas?
What happened at the next truck stop. I don’t know if it’s really that romantic. Walking through the soda aisle and some trucker grabs your butt—it’s kind of sexy.
Have you ever picked someone up that quickly and confidently?
It probably didn’t work out for me. I kind of wait to be preyed on. I like to lure ’em in.
Do you have Hunx groupies? Now that you were in Italian Vogue?
I don’t know if I’d call them groupies. Sometimes there’s a couple gay guys like lingering around. But not always. I’ve seen two give each other the eye—like, ‘Back off!’ I love it. ‘Guys, please! There’s only one of me!’ Actually I like to leave and give them nothing. Believe it or not, I’m kind of picky.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS HUNX AND HIS PUNX WITH BLEACHED PLUS LIVE MEXICAN WRESTLING ON SAT., JUNE 18, AT NOMAD GALLERY, 1993 BLAKE AVE., FROGTOWN. 7 PM / $10 / 18+. GET TICKETS HERE! (NOTE: SHOW HAS BEEN MOVED FROM SHOW CAVE!) HUNX AND HIS PUNX’ TOO YOUNG TO BE IN LOVE IS OUT NOW ON HARDLY ART. VISIT HUNX AND HIS PUNX AT MYSPACE.COM/HUNXSOLO.

Download: King Cannibal “So… Embrace The Minimum”

(from Let The Night Roar out now on Ninjatune)

King Cannibal likes his basslines nasty. The producer finds pleasure in dark, gritty beats that barely support a booty shake. Instead, take the lyrics to “Colder Still” off his latest, Let the Night Roar: “I believe in death. I believe in disease. In justice, torture and anger. I believe in murder.” Knives slash. “I believe in pain. I believe in cruelty and infidelity. I believe in slime, stink, and in every crawling putrid thing, every possible ugliness and corruption you son of a bitch!” Some shimmers. “I believe in you.” Doesn’t that just make you feel warm and fuzzy? This interview by Daiana Feuer.

Where did Zilla end and King Cannibal begin?
King Cannibal: I didn’t do many productions under the Zilla name. I did some remixes and mixes. I made some tracks but it was me just sort of finding my feet. I ended up having to stop using the name because it turned out there was a band in the States already called Zilla, after I had already started releasing material. I was going to put a record out with Kid 606 but it got too difficult to try and battle for this, which was ultimately just a name, so I became King Cannibal. At that point I started making music that was darker and different from what I had been doing before. It was a happy coincidence.
So you are now flesh-eating royalty.
King Cannibal: You could say that! But at least these two words together don’t draw up a whole lot in Google. As long as you have Google safe on.
Have you ever seen a dead body?
King Cannibal: Not up close and personal. In film. Wait, what am I talking about? After they die, in the hospital, some family. I’ve not stepped over bodies to get to my front door, no.
Blood and violence can be really cool as fiction, but when you see a dead body in the street, you have to wonder—is it OK to mess around with these ideas?
King Cannibal: I understand what you mean. Life and death become very real in that sense. It’s quite easy to think of it in abstract terms. You see so many films, people getting killed, and you don’t really think about it. Up close in that situation, but it was not something I had thought about. As long as I don’t kill and eat anybody I should be OK.
Cannibalism is interesting. I mean, it makes sense for the music you make—cutting, sampling, mixing.
King Cannibal: That was the whole idea. I do taste a lot of other tracks and if you think about music eating itself in terms of sampling … It was born of that. Rather than trying to sound scary. My music has gone down a dark route but I had not set out to sound so heavy and gruesome. The music came out of me that way.
Where does the darkness reveal itself in a dance song?
King Cannibal: For me there’s so much lightness in pop music—there’s an abundance of that in dubstep right now. It’s all quite melodic. The wonky side of things. I’ve always been a fan of aggressive, energetic music. Growing up I was in punk bands. That stuff excites me. The darker stuff allows me to do stuff that is slower in tempo but still sounding quite energetic. It can swirl around. I like to have a lot of sonic things constantly occurring. I find it hard to do that in a polite, melodic way. Coming out of punk music I got into drum and bass in the late ’90s. The darker side of any genre that’s around has always attracted me. I don’t know why it speaks to me more than anything else, but it does. That’s what I have. I couldn’t really say what effect it has on other people. Everyone reacts differently. Some reviews have said, ‘Oh, he should lighten up. Hasn’t he heard everyone’s making more melodic music?’ But what’s the point of doing what everyone else is doing?
Some of it could easily translate to the dance floor, despite the slower tempo. It’s electronic and uses dance structures. But I want to listen to it rather than shake my bum.
King Cannibal: A lot of music gets made for the dance floor but I didn’t make the album with that approach, so you’re right. It’s not meant to fill the dance floor in terms of structure. Most of the music I listen to is on headphones when I’m out and about. I wanted to listen to this in the same way. That’s why there are so many sounds going on. If it were meant for the dance floor, the tracks would be a lot simpler and more conventionally composed really. Dance floor records are good. They’re useful for DJing and can be good pop things, but I want to make something you can listen to over and over again, and pick up details. People say it’s a barrage of sound. I love that.
You love that bass sound. It’s an album dedicated to that beat.
King Cannibal: I’ve always been into different types of bass music—not so much dancehall. I know what I like. Drum and bass and dubstep now. I like a lot of techno as well. There’s not a whole lot of bass in that though. The Baltimore stuff doesn’t grab me so much. It’s just kick drums. I can’t be having that. I really enjoy making basslines. That’s the main reason the album is so bass-y. That’s the thing I enjoy the most in music-making—making nasty basslines.
What silent film would you like to make a score for?
King Cannibal: This is something I’ve been looking into actually! I’m torn between Electric Dragon: 80.000 V, which is a Japanese cult film. There’s a film called Begotten. It’s sort of like Eraserhead but more messed up. It’s about the Earth being born again. It starts off with God ripping his internal organs out and Mother Nature being born from that. You watch it and the only score on it is this drone—it’s quite messed up. It’s like 90 minutes of saturated black and white film that looks like Rorschach tests. And just people cutting their insides out. It’s quite a grim film. The director, Merhige, also did Shadow of the Vampire, but that’s totally different. It’s like what the hell happened here? How did this guy make both these films?
Would you rather be a vampire or a werewolf?
King Cannibal: Ah, a very current question considering the fashion status vampires have in the world these days. I’d probably be a vampire because a werewolf has no say of when he turns into a werewolf, but a vampire is always a vampire so you can learn to be a vampire on your own terms rather than be like, ‘Christ, a full moon is coming.’
What’s the most important evolution you’ve seen in dance music?
King Cannibal: It’s probably been the emergence of dubstep. In a few years it’s gone from being a small thing to playing at festivals—it’s around everywhere. It’s really dominating. It’s going into house music. Even Pharrell and those sort of guys are doing tracks with English dubstep producers, which is crazy seeing it from where I’m watching. The decline of modern production techniques also. Everything’s changed to software now. Every modern pop record. I detest the sound of it these days. It’s so overly layered, these plastic synths—uch, it just sounds so brittle and nothing’s real in that. You can’t reach out and touch anything in the track. That’s the biggest thing I don’t like that I’ve seen over the past five years—or the aughties, as they’re calling this last nameless decade. It’s the change-over from people using hardware. It’s not a road I want to go down but it’s easier for people. Everything’s there in front of them. It’s good to have something real in a track. Which is what I like about the old drum and bass music. It’s very simply produced in modern terms, but I find it amazing that a track that’s fifteen years old can still sound futuristic. That’s what I’m interested in, rather than something sounding of the moment that will sound old in three years. It’s going to date so quickly. Look at anything on the Prototype compilation. That’s been a big influence on me. It still sounds fresh. That came out in the late ’90s. I need to add dirt to something for it to sound solid. I need noise. I run things through quiet guitar distortion so it sounds realer. When you have drums, they should have a lot of punch to them. It should sound like a heavy drum kit rather than ‘the perfect snare must be 200 hertz’ … a flat sound that things have now. Hardware is expensive, and yes, I use some software, but I try to make good with what I got.
Why do you think people are interested in torture and pain? What’s the fascination?
King Cannibal: I make music which is easily transposed onto that sort of thing. But I think it’s exploring the human potential, what people are capable of. Even taking my album title, Let the Night Roar, which is from a Jim Jones speech—the last one before 990 people were killed in a mass slaying suicide. I just enjoy reading up on these things. I don’t know why. I certainly hope I’m never caught up in something like that. But it is interesting to know what this human being is able to do and what leads to these things. Jim Jones, when he started doing his preaching, he was one of the first people in the South with mixed congregations. He was one of the first to adopt a black child. It started with good intent and then somewhere along the line he got massively screwed up and killed a bunch of people. It’s just interesting. Maybe it’s a voyeuristic thing. People are capable of a lot of good and a lot of bad as well.

KING CANNIBAL WITH DNTEL AND NOCANDO ON WED., FEB. 10, FOR THE RELEASE PARTY OF NOCANDO’S JIMMY THE LOCK AT LOW END THEORY AT THE AIRLINER, 2419 N. BROADWAY, LOS ANGELES. 10 PM / $5-$10 / 18+. LOWENDTHEORYCLUB.COM. KING CANNIBAL’S LET THE NIGHT ROAR IS OUT NOW ON NINJATUNE. VISIT KING CANNIBAL AT GODSOFWAR.WORDPRESS.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/KINGCANNIBAL.

Coffin Joe—a.k.a. Zé do Caixão—is one of those villains that you’ve gotta know. Created in 1963 by the Brazilian filmmaker José Mojica Marins, an independent artist who has made more than 38 films, the character is best known for the trilogy At Midnight I will Take Your Soul (1963), This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse (1967) and Awakening of the Beast (1970). Beyond the black suit, the cape and the top hat, Coffin Joe has a unique trademark: long and disgusting finger nails. Add to this a mix of sense of humor and style described by Mojica (the name he is referred to in Brazil) as 100% Brazilian or—in his own words—tupiniquim. Raised in a movie theater, his knowledge of filmaking was raw and innocent, testing and failing with no money and a lot of confidence and weird ideas. Welcome to the strange world of Coffin Joe and Mojica, the damned Brazilian filmaker that scared the dictactorial government on the ‘70s who is being honoured this month with a program at the Cinefamily. This interview by Carol Ramos.

First of all—I have to admit that I had a crush on you when I first saw your movies. I always thought: ‘Look at those eyebrows!’
José Mojica Marins: Yeah, the girls really liked me. It’s probably because I had a lot of hair, a pompadour and those huge dark eyebrows.
What kind of kid were you?
José Mojica Marins: I was one of the most outgoing kids on the planet. My dad was a bullfighter, my mom was a tango dancer and I was their only child. We used to travel a lot until I was three years old, which is when my mom decided to quit and my dad started managing his cousin’s movie theater. I got to know the greatest names of terror like Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. I had a blast because only a few people had a TV and I spent all day watching great movies. I took advantage of it. Everybody wanted to be my friend and the girls wanted to hang out with me just to get free tickets.
When did you decide to become a filmmaker?
José Mojica Marins: When I was nine, we had a play at school. I was a hunter and I had to make this girl—who played Snow White—scream on scene, which she didn’t. I found out she was scared of lizards and I dropped one in the middle of her breasts. She freaked out, took all of her clothes off and the audience went wild. The priest punished me and I decided to make a movie to impress him. I was a huge fan of flying saucers and comics like Flash Gordon, and when I turned 10, instead of a bike I asked my dad for a Ciclope 16 mm manual camera. With it I made ‘Final Judgement,’ my first weird movie.
You called all of your friends to help you out with that, right?
José Mojica Marins: Yeah—I offered a movie ticket for each kilo of guava worm they brought to me. Then I glued the worms on their body with the same glue used to hang the movie posters. I learned how to make double exposures rolling the film backwards and shooting again over it so I made them look buried with worms all over. During the screening, I thought I would have my 15 minutes of fame. The theater was packed with choir boys and all of the church members. When the film ended, the priest stood up and I put my head down. He laid his hand on my little head, and while I was thinking ‘Fame time!’ he stared at my dad and said: ‘Mr Antonio, your son is a retarded.’ Thus, I started my weird career. I knew that things like that would call people’s attention.
I read an interview where you said you were so scared of flying on airplanes that you drank 52 bottles of wine on a single flight. What happened?
José Mojica Marins: When I was 10, I flew in a very small airplane—a teco-teco—and when it landed one of the wings broke. I was traumatized and during the ‘70s I had to travel a lot to countries that held tributes for me. This one time I went to France, and I was really scared, so during the flight I drank 52 small bottles of wine. I was still sober and I had to drink some whiskey and vodka to control my fear.
Are you still afraid of airplanes?
José Mojica Marins: Yes. We just got back from a trip and even my wife—who is young and doesn’t mind about airplanes—got scared because we had 30 minutes of violent turbulence. Everybody was praying and the flight attendants were curled up in their seats. It was the first time I saw my wife screaming. The pilot said it was the worst flight of his life.
What else scares you?
José Mojica Marins: My biggest fear is to live the present and the next day. The world is a violent place to be. Brasil in particular. You never know what is gonna happen next. I’ve been married several times and I have a big family with seven kids. It scares me to have so much to lose.
How do you face the violence in Brasil?
José Mojica Marins: On my last movie, Embodiment of Evil (2008), I show downtown São Paulo for the first time. It’s violent and it’s been increased. A lot of drug dealers. Kids sniffing glue. It’s terrible. I try to bring a message in my movie towards fighting against this violence.
There’s a scene in Embodiment of Evil where you use 3,000 cockroaches. Was it hard for your crew shoot a scene like this?
José Mojica Marins: It’s my wife on that scene, OK? She had the courage to do it. I had different types of cockroaches from several providers that sell them to laboratories. My crew put so much clothing on, it seemed they were going to Mars! Everybody was freaking out. On the scene, it was only me and my wife and one cockroach crawled on my legs. It disturbed me a lot! It’s inoffensive, but so gross. My wife had some protection on her ears but at one point it fell and a cockroach was inside of her ear! I had to take her to the hospital and she was so disturbed. We took a cab during rush hour and she didn’t stop saying: ‘It’s inside my brain!’ When we arrived at the hospital I was carrying her and she had the make-up on. Everybody thought I had beaten her and I had a hard time explaining we were making a movie. They took it out of her ear, but I always think that with an animal like that inside of it you, you hear terrible things—like a volcano about to explode inside your head.
Awakening of the Beast (1970) was forbidden by the government and was never shown in a regular commercial movie theater. How do you feel about it?
José Mojica Marins: It was released on DVD but it was screened only in film festivals and it’s an award-winning film. It showed how I felt during that time and it made the politicians upset. When I say, ‘My world is strange. This world, my friend, is made of strange people, but there are none as strange as you!’ [during the first scene] I was talking about them! It was worth it though. My insolence encouraged younger filmmakers and I had huge support, later, from Luiz Sergio Person, Glauber Rocha and Rogerio Sganzerla. [Three of the most innovative and brillant Brazilian filmmakers. Their main productions were released during the ‘60s and ‘70s.]
Were you ever threatened or arrested by the Brazilian government? What kind of risks did you take to make your films? How did you escape imprisonment or danger?
José Mojica Marins: I was arrested several times and they always said that they would burn my negatives. But I was more victim of psychological torture than physical. One time they said they arrested my mom and I could hear a woman screaming next door. They asked me to confess, otherwise they would kill her. I still don’t know what they were talking about but they believed my films had a political message and wanted me to tell them what it was. Also I became very famous at that time so I guess they were afraid that I was supporting some terrorist group. People saw me on the street and blessed themselves because they were scared. I was on the cover of a lot of magazines. When the dictator government came, they put a lot of pressure on me. So everytime I had a new film I went to military parties and recruited generals and politicians’ sons and daughters for my cast. It was an indirect way to gain their support. That’s how I survived on those times. Like some critics used to say, I was 40 years ahead of my time. A lot of people began to understand my films later. Like Finis Hominis, a film about this crazy guy who escapes from a mental hospital and dresses weird. Glauber Rocha wanted to make a film with me where Finis joined Coffin Joe, but he died and it never happened.
What ideas did you have that you never even filmed because you knew they would be censored? What ideas did you have to wait longest to actually film and why?
José Mojica Marins: I took it easy in Embodiment of Evil after an actress lost her mind on the pig scene. She was crying and got really scared, which made the crew apprehensive. The rat scene was supposed to be more scary, same with the cockroach scene. A lot of people were curious to shoot with me because they knew that I don’t fake. My business is reality. Still, some of them got scared and I had to take it easy.
What’s next? Any particular projects?
José Mojica Marins: I’m looking for new producers. In 2010 I want to make a movie called Devorador de Olhos (Devourer of Eyes) and I want to have total freedom to do something stronger, more scary. Eyes are the most sensitive thing and I want to work with them, especially women’s eyes. There’s this scene where I take off an eye with a corkscrew. Then I can consider my work complete. I also wanna put some unfinished films together in one movie, from the ‘40s until now.
Have you ever considered a final chapter in the Coffin Joe story?
José Mojica Marins: Yes—I wanna make the fourth film. It’s the final episode, when his son is born and continues in Coffin’s footsteps. I already have the screenplay—Sete Ventres para um Demônio. (Seven Bellies for a Devil.)
What is your own personal concept of hell? The Chinese have very specific hells – for instance, rich people who don’t help others are ground into fine powder. What do you think comes after death? What would Coffin Joe think?
José Mojica Marins: Hell does not exist in the way they say, with flames and so on. Man created hell. I made a hell with ice in This Night I’ll Possess Your Corpse because ice burns as well. I don’t think you are punished going to hell. I think you die and your energy stays or goes to a parallel universe—another planet or dimension. Coffin Joe is an atheist. The only thing he believes is immortality through your own blood. That’s why he searches for the superior woman, able to give him the perfect son. He will protect the kids and not be afraid of death, just like his father. In Embodiment of Evil he made a son in seven different ladies. Let’s wait for next episode to find out who is gonna give him the perfect son.
You declared once that Rosemary’s Baby is the biggest horror movie of all time. What’s your opinion about Roman Polanski’s arrest?
José Mojica Marins: Yeah. I think it’s a great movie because it’s about real life. It’s not a fiction, like I make, which makes it even more scary. I send him my congratulations. Too bad he didn’t make something like that again. I heard he was arrested and I think he shouldn’t have molested that child, especially because he was famous and could have any woman he wanted. I support his arrest. Anyone who does that deserves jail time or even the death penalty.
Has anything ever happened to shake your confidence in your own ideas for Coffin Joe? And has anything happened to re-inspire you when you needed it?
José Mojica Marins: Never. Coffin Joe was created after a nightmare I had in October 11th, 1963. Someone dressed in black wanted to show me my birthdate and my death date, but I refused to see. Then I created the title At Midnight I Will Take Your Soul. I knew it would take some time for Coffin Joe be recognized as a great character. Last year I won 7 awards at Festival Paulinia de Cinema [a Brazilian film festival located in Paulinia, São Paulo]. This year I’m going to Colombia and next year they will be having a tribute to me in the U.S.
What advantages has being so independent given you? And what have you had to give up?
José Mojica Marins: The biggest advantage is no need to follow any rule. I have no rules on the set and if what I’m doing scares my crew and my technicians, it will scare the audience. I don’t like to tell lies. I’m writing my memoir to be released next year and it’s going to give you the chills. There are things the likes of which you’ve never heard, with witnesses to prove it. I never had to give up anything, but it bothers me, particularly being Catholic, that people think I am the devil. I can play Jesus in a movie—why not? I’m an actor.
Where do you feel Coffin Joe fits among the world’s great villains—Dr. Hyde, Dr. Frankenstein, and so on? Has he become a global figure yet?
José Mojica Marins: I think so. I don’t copy anybody. I created something authentic—tupiniquim. [Brazilian indigenous tribe, also means to be Brazilian]. Brazil is the biggest superstitious country, with the highest levels of folk culture. If I die tomorrow, I know everybody will be talking about Coffin Joe. In Bahia [Brazilian northeast state with a huge population of African descendants] there are religious places where Coffin Joe shows up, like a umbanda entity [Brazilian religion similar to santeria]. He’s a real entity.
At umbanda houses?
José Mojica Marins: Yes, but I’m against it. I have nothing to do with Pomba Gira [in umbanda religion, it’s the female version of the devil]. I have two girls that perform with me on stage and I call them guardians. Journalists called them Pomba Giras, but they are not. I explore the religious subject because the audience likes it, but I don’t belive in that.
Why is Brazilian culture so fascinating worldwide?
José Mojica Marins: It’s not only the folk culture but we also have the most beautiful beaches, the biggest forests in the world, fantastic stories of people from favelas [ghettos] who married politicians, rich ladies having affairs with bandits. We also have the most beautiful women in the world. Everywhere I go and find a beautiful woman, she’s a Brazilian student in Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal. It’s fascinating. We have the good stuff.
Is there any Brazilian filmmaker that could succeed you?
José Mojica Marins: I think that too much technology brings complacency to people. Dennison Ramalho, who made Love From Mother Only (2003) just finished a short. He has followed me for more than 15 years and can succeed me, but it can happen to be a female filmmaker, too. I have a daughter who makes terror, too—vampire stuff. I don’t like vampire movies, though—it’s gringo’s stuff. It’s not Brazilian. We have to do what is our culture. I would like it if she made movie about a macumbeira (someone who makes spells). There’s too many vampire movies already!
Have you ever received any human body part as a gift?
José Mojica Marins: I receive a lot of weird things. Once a doctor sent me a fetus on Christmas. Damn! This other time, someone had the patience to collect someone else’s poop, extract the worms in it and send it to me. Those people are nuts. I can play crazy, but I’m not at all!
If it’s 24 hours of EXPLICIT sex and 48 hours of HALLUCINATORY sex, what can we expect at 72 hours?
José Mojica Marins: If I make 72 hours for sure I will go beyond everything. Nothing about sex that you can imagine will be left. If in 24 hours you have a woman having sex with dogs, on 48 I will have woman with a donkey and on 72 way more horrible things. I’m the kind of person who keeps a lot of stories. It’s going to be scary and hardcore. The audience will not even need to buy energy drinks. They will get completely stoned.

COFFIN JOE DOUBLE AND TRIPLE FEATURES EVERY FRIDAY NIGHT IN OCTOBER AT CINEFAMILY, 611 N. FAIRFAX AVE., LOS ANGELES. 8 PM / $12 / ALL AGES. CINEFAMILY.ORG. TONIGHT’S PROGRAM IS AT MIDNIGHT I’LL TAKE YOUR SOUL AND THIS NIGHT I WILL POSSESS YOUR CORPSE. CINEFAMILY.ORG FOR COMPLETE SCHEDULE. BUY TICKETS HERE.

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: Vivian Girls “When I’m Gone”

(from Everything Goes Wrong out now on In The Red)

Vivian Girls weathered a year of touring and Internet comments and took the photo for their new album cover on the day they almost broke up three times. Cassie Ramone speaks now before tour with New York City’s Beets. This interview by Vanessa Gonzalez.

You’ve been home for the whole summer after touring pretty non-stop. What was it like readjusting to home life?
Cassie Ramone (guitar/vocals): For me it was really good because at that point, touring had gotten to be so stressful and it wasn’t fun anymore after two and a half months. I feel like after the two months point we had kind of hit a second wind, but then right before we got home it was like, ‘Oh my God, we are all so tired.’ We had just spent way too much time with each other in a row. So for me, the beginning of being back home was great. Seeing all my other friends was wonderful and getting some space. But now we’re getting ready to go back out for two months again.
What does it feel like when you’ve hit that wall of it not being fun anymore?
For me it kind of feels like you’re a psychologist. You’re doing character studies on three different people. I kind of felt like I was analyzing Katy and Allie and Mark’s personalities to death, and it wasn’t fun, you know? Because you spend so much time with them, and all you do is talk to them, and then it’s like, ‘Let me figure out what these people are REALLY about.’ Even though that’s not what you WANT to think about, that’s what I end up thinking about—which isn’t fun for me because they’re my friends. I don’t want to spend that much time thinking about their inner workings, you know?
So you didn’t have the typical post-tour depression?
Maybe there was a tiny little element of that. Overall, we were all really happy to be home.
I always felt the same way coming back from tour. Just being able to open the fridge and make myself food or…
EXACTLY! Yeah, definitely. That’s one thing that I missed a lot, actually—being able to cook for myself. That really affected me. I love to cook.
The last album you had drawn the cover, and this one looks like a photograph. What’s the story behind it?
I also designed the cover for this record. It’s a photo that I took on tour. I took it from the car while the car was driving down the highway. It’s on I-10 in west Texas, right outside of Van Horn. I really liked that photo because there’s a V on the mountain. The V stands for Van Horn, but in this case it stands for Vivian, and there are three shrubs in the photo—like the three of us. Three lonely shrubs in a deserted wilderness trying to face a mountain of obstacles. I think that landscape really caught my interest because a lot of that drive is really post-apocalyptic, and a lot of it is really beautiful too. So I was taking a lot of pictures on that specific drive, but I don’t usually take pictures out the car window.
Do you remember what your mental state about tour was at that time?
That was on our first full U.S. tour. Frankie was still in the band. That was the day that we almost broke up three times! Yeah, that was a day that we all got into fights. Me and Frankie got into a fight, Frankie and Katy got into a fight, and then me and Katy got into a fight. That actually a really, really rough day. I remember we did our first full interview that day. We did it in the Subway—the restaurant—and that caused a big fight. It was so brutally hot, and I had just gotten out of the hospital because I had bronchitis or something. I spent the entire morning in the hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, and then we got out and everybody was in a bad mood. It was so hot and we’re driving through the middle of the desert—scorching heat. That was actually a really brutal day.
Did that day inspire the title of the album, ‘Everything Goes Wrong?’
No, the title of the album was actually taken from a song lyric. We were mixing the album in Costa Mesa and when we were mixing the song ‘When I’m Gone,’ one of the lines is ‘When everything goes wrong / will you sit around and miss me when I’m gone?’ We were mixing that song, so we were listening to it over and over and over and Ali just said, ‘Hey, why don’t we name the album “Everything Goes Wrong”?’And then me and Katy thought that that was a really good idea because we thought that that fit the theme of the album really well. Because the album is pretty… pretty dark… pretty apocalyptic… definitely not a happy album by any means, so we thought it made a lot of sense.
So you had the title before you picked the picture?
No, the picture was taken in 2008 and the…
No, I know you HAD the picture, but before you decided on using it had you already come up with the album’s title?
That’s actually a really good question. Working on the album cover was a really slow process. I was looking through all my old photos, and I scanned a bunch of stuff and then I was thinking about what to do for it. So I think the album cover may have been partially completed at that point, but it didn’t look like it does on the finished product.
That’s such a wonderful cosmic accident—the title and the day that the photo was taken… everything came together so perfectly. It all makes sense.
Totally. And I didn’t even think about—until just right now—about how bad that day was and how that photo was taken on like, the worst day ever. That is pretty cosmic.
Can we talk about the Stereogum interview where they say that you hate normal people?
The Stereogum interview wasn’t even for Stereogum—it was for uncensoredinterview.com, which I had never heard of before doing it. It was the kind of a thing where Daniel, our publicist, was like, ‘Hey, you have this thing to do. Get to this apartment by noon.’ And I was kind of in a bad mood because I didn’t really want to be there. But then we actually ended up having a really good time there because the man and the woman doing the interview were really nice. And then when we saw them we ended up thinking a few of the clips were really funny so we posted two of them on our blog. And they were sitting on the blog for like, two months. Nobody said anything about it. And then somebody tipped Stereogum off, and was like, ‘Hey, this is probably going to offend people. Why don’t you put this on your website?’ So they posted that one interview on the website and people just freaked out!
The interview tag says: ‘They Hate You For Not Choosing To Be In A Punk Band.’
I think it was completely out of control. I feel like if you are a part of a subculture—which we are and all of our friends are, and I assumed that pretty much everybody who had even heard about our band at that point was a part of this kind of subculture—it’s completely normal to make fun of quote/unquote, normal people every so often. It’s not like you hate them. It’s not like you think it’s stupid that they’re not in a punk band. It’s like, you know, you lead different lifestyles. And they probably make fun of you. You can make fun of them. It’s not a big deal, you know? It’s true that I think the punk community is a great thing to be a part of, and I would personally feel lost without it. I guess that might not be true for other people, but it’s something that is kind of my lifeline, you know? And at that point I think I kind of assumed that—I think I assumed that everybody who had even heard of our band would feel the same way. But then I guess I was wrong.
How did reading comments like, ‘they’re dead to me now’ make you feel?
It actually made me cry—like, multiple times. And it still frustrates me to this day because people treat that interview like it’s our mission statement when it’s just this stupid interview that we did one time in the context of a million other stupid interviews that were obviously not that serious. We were being completely ridiculous in all of them. So people treat that interview like it’s our mission statement, and like, what we’re all about, when we’re actually about so many other things… like, SO much more than that stupid interview. But that’s all people seem to focus on. I think at some point we were making fun of people that go to TGI Friday’s or something like that and then that got turned into us hating every single person with a job, and that turned into us hating working class joes. But it’s like quote/unquote working class joes aren’t the kind of people that eat at TGI Friday’s. It’s so ridiculous what the reaction to that was like. We weren’t even being serious in half of it.
I don’t want to dwell on emotional stuff necessarily, so we can skip this, but do you mind talking about what it was specifically about this that made you cry?
Yeah, it’s just that—I think I’m a pretty nice person, and I know that Katy and Ali are really good people too, and for people to hate us for something that we don’t even like, that we aren’t even passionate about… I feel like it’s really unfair. Because I’m the kind of person that will give anybody a chance and I think it’s just people wanting to take out feelings of jealousy or resentment on us for no reason and that turning into hatred. I don’t know… it’s a really childish answer but people being mean to me always affects me, even to this day.
Is this type of thing something that you are encountering more as your popularity grows—the side of humanity that tries to tear down what’s on top?
Definitely. I haven’t encountered very much of that in real life. Luckily in real life people are generally nicer to me than they ever were, but whenever I get into the habit of reading bad things on the internet I’m like, ‘Shit! People are brutal.’ So I try to avoid reading the Internet whenever possible.
The beach seems to have a strong influence upon you. Where does that come from? You didn’t grow up by the beach, did you?
Not so close to it. I grew up maybe four hours from the beach in New Jersey. My family was never that much of a beach family. They’re more of like… woods people. They like to hike. But every summer until I was eight, we went to Cape Cod for a week and that’s one of my favorite childhood memories. I don’t know—I think the beach is a really magical place. Whenever I’m there it’s just overwhelmingly… serene, you know what I mean? It fills me with this feeling that I don’t really feel any other time. I just think it’s like a really magical thing to be at the beach. Always. I’m also a Pisces, and it’s a water sign, so I guess that might also have something to do with it because I totally believe in astrology.
How strongly do you follow astrology?
I don’t follow day to day astrology so strongly because I feel like whenever I read daily horoscopes they conflict with one another, but I totally believe in the zodiac. And whenever I find out what sign one of my friends is, I feel like, ‘Oh, that makes a lot of sense.’ So I read a lot about the different signs, and what it means to be that sign.
You had said that the new album has a lot of darker themes in it. Why do you think that’s occurring when it would appear that things are going so positively for you guys?
Because even though the band’s career in 2008 seemed to be doing so well, a lot of things did go really badly for me—and us—in 2008. Like, I had this entire string of failed relationships, one bad one after another. One of my best friends died, and that was really hard for me. and everybody in our group of friends. It was a real tragedy. He was only 25. What else happened? The album also deals with the way gaining more success in your band strains relationships because that definitely happened a little bit last year. So that’s pretty much it. That’s most of what the album revolves around. Bad relationships, strains on relationships… I think the second album is way more universal than the second album. The first one was pretty much all love songs. It pretty much read like a diary. I think the second album reads more like a journey.
How does the band’s success strain relationships?
Before we ever gained any recognition, we were just three punk girls living in Brooklyn and New Jersey, and then when the band started taking off we had all these existing relationships that we thought were set in stone. When the band took off, dynamics changed. With that, relationships changed. That’s not to say that that’s happened a lot. But the few times that it has happened, it’s really affected us.
Is it the lack of time you can invest in the relationship, like you’re just doing more band stuff? Or does success change the interpersonal psychology within the relationship?
It more changes the interpersonal psychology. But the songs that deal with that aren’t that specific. It’s more vague.
How’s it been for you being in an all-girl band? Do you ever get disparaging or condescending comments in regards to your gender?
OH yeah! ALWAYS! And it’s funny because when the band started I never thought that we would get that. Because when it started we were in this community that on the surface is kind of very equal-rights oriented. Pretty much everybody we know supports women in music and so on. And all our friends at first were super-supportive of us. So the fact that people would be discriminating against us because we’re women is something that never even occurred to us. But around the time the band started to take off a little bit, that’s around the time that we realized that the world wasn’t so perfect. There’s actually a song on the second album about that. It’s the second to last song—it’s called, ‘You’re My Guy.’ The song is made to seem like it’s a boyfriend/girlfriend song, but it’s not. The guy in the title that we’re referring to is the listener, the blog reader, the male so-called music fan that judges us just because we’re women. And subsequently makes us feel like shit. Because he either talks about our looks, or makes comments like, ‘If they were a band of unattractive guys, nobody would like them, or give them a second chance.’ So that’s basically who the guy is. We are talking to him in that song.
Is it tongue-in-cheek? What are you saying?
You’ll have to listen to the song to find out. I wrote that song not too long after the interview came out on Stereogum. That’s when I was most upset about this kind of stuff.
I noticed a lot of appearance-oriented comments.
It’s complete bullshit! Like, what do you care how we look like? Sometimes I feel like the way we look has actually hurt us rather than helped us because that’s what people tend to focus on first sometimes. When in reality it doesn’t matter.
Does it make you more image-focused or does it make you want to retreat from it even more?
I feel like we’ve all been dealing with it in different ways. But I think overall we all kind of don’t want to veer too far in either direction. We’re definitely not going to turn into supermodel looking girls because of blog comments because that’s ridiculous. We’re also not going to walk around with paper bags on our heads. We’re just going to be ourselves.
I’m thinking about artists like PJ Harvey and Liz Phair who didn’t start out sexualized but ended up going in that direction. It seems like there’s a glass ceiling for female artists and if they don’t adopt the sex-symbol appearance then they won’t break through it. Is that something that you ever think about having to confront?
I don’t think that that is something that’ll ever happen to us. I think that first of all we’re extremely surprised that we even got to the level that we’re at today, so I don’t feel the need to get to a higher level of popularity. And I definitely don’t want to do that through looks.
If Clairol wanted you guys to do a hair dye commercial, would you do it?
I bet I would do it. But just because I DO use Clairol hair dye.

VIVIAN GIRLS WITH THE BEETS AND THE BLACK AND WHITE YEARS ON FRI., SEPT. 11, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VIVIAN GIRLS’ EVERYTHING GOES WRONG IS OUT NOW ON IN THE RED. VISIT VIVIAN GIRLS AT VIVIANGIRLS.NET OR AT MYSPACE.COM/VIVANGIRLSNYC.

Download: Weedeater “God Luck And Good Speed”

(from God Luck and Good Speed out now on Southern Lord)

North Carolina’s Weedeater are unflagging primal monstermen who convert weed and bourbon into simple energy and don’t stop touring til at least three things burst and deflate. They are working on a new album for Southern Lord and speak now from the road. This interview by Matt Dupree.

No offense but your website’s a little old…
“Dixie” Dave Collins (bass/vocals): Is that weedeatertheband.com? Yeah, that’s not done by us. It’s done by this kid in the Cape Fear area and he’s had all kinds of medical issues. He had some giant brain tumor pulled out of his head. We’ve tried many times to tell him to take the damn site down but he just leaves it up there and I don’t have the heart to break his balls too much on it. So the updated site would be the MySpace site that our management takes care of. I don’t mess with computers too much—they tend to fuck up and freeze every time I touch ‘em. They hate me, for some reason and that’s fine, because I don’t like them either. We’ve done everything the old-fashioned way for thirteen or fourteen years now so we’ll stick to it and let other people handle that.
There’s mention of a High Times article where you get into a naming debate over ‘stoner rock’ and ‘weed metal.’
The term ‘stoner rock’ has been thrown around since day one around us, but it just sounds like a ridiculous term to me. Everybody that’s ever played rock has been stoned on something. I mean even people that didn’t play rock, you know—Louis Armstrong. Chuck Berry is stoner rock to me. I just think it’s weird, and people were always calling us stoner rock. There’s a skateboard company called Speed Metal Bearings and I ripped off their logo and changed it to ‘Weed Metal’ and decided to use the moniker ‘weed metal’ instead of stoner rock just as a joke. Since you have to name your music, you know? People always ask you what genre you are—you must pigeonhole yourself so why not come up with your own term?
I like to make up fake genres when describing bands to friends.
That’s the basic idea. Dwell Records released the first Hail!Hornet record and there was a little sticker on the front—it’s supposed to sell the record, and it was like, ‘Torturous oppressive grime metal!’ ‘Wow, that makes me not want to buy this—let me buy this torturous oppressive music that’ll hurt my feelings… and make me cry. Make me have to take a shit.’ You have to overdo it.
And you have to take it really seriously.
You must take everything really, really seriously. Which is totally of out-of-context in all we’ve done in Weedeater for sure. People always ask me what’s the number one thing you need to be in a touring band and second to the actual vehicle that gets you from show to show, I would say a sense of humor. Without having that, you’ll never stay together. We’ve been the same three guys without a member change for 14 or 15 years and touring for 13 of them, and touring pretty heavily. None of us would survive and we’d have killed each other just today if we didn’t have a good sense of humor and a bag of weed. That’s pretty much where we’re coming from on that one. It works well for us.
You’ve recorded albums with both Steve Albini and Billy Anderson who are both legends of record engineering. Do you have a preference between the two for the new record?
I really don’t. Both of those are great. Their styles are a little bit different, but for the most part they’re very similar in that they’re both incredible producers who work well with analog, which we like to do. And they’re very good at capturing live sound, which we like a lot, too. We don’t even know who we’re doing this new one with—it’ll most likely be one of those two guys though. It’ll be the second of three records that’ll be on Southern Lord.
How many instruments do you play?
Piano or organ, bass, guitar, banjo, ukulele, lap steel, fiddle, a little bit of drums. That’s probably about it. Melodeon. Clarinet.
Is there any chance for some clarinet on a future album?
We’ve discussed that for sure. A distorted-to-hell clarinet.
I would be shocked if it wasn’t distorted.
It just wouldn’t be right.
You’ve used the word ‘uncareful’ to describe how you write lyrics. What exactly did you mean?
That may not do it justice. ‘Haphazard’ might be more appropriate. We’re very fond of wordsmithing—putting weird words and bending sayings around, and we write lyrics out in that same vein. I like wordsmithing without words missing and I like for things to be clever and different. You know, we’re supposed to be stupid hicks, so we kind of play on that. At the same time, if you get it, they’re pretty clever and put together pretty well in my opinion.
I’ve heard your hometown Wilmington is just a city full of bars.
Pretty much correct. Downtown Wilmington sits on the Cape Fear River about two or three miles from the mouth. We’re just surrounded by beaches and the college is there—University of North Carolina Wilmington—so the whole Cape Fear area is just jammed full of bars and drunks and crazy fuckers, pretty much. They filmed Dawson’s Creek there and some other shitty… One Tree Hill… or whatever. I actually lived on that creek. It’s actually called Page’s Creek—that’s the real name of it. It’s where I put my Jon boat in when I go island hopping and drinking and smoking and swimming. But I prefer to think of all the Stephen King movies that were filmed here. And David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. I guess Screen Gems is getting ready to move back to Wilmington—they’ve got the biggest soundstage on the East Coast from what I’m told.
You still run a head shop, right? I’m sure that means increased traffic from the Hollywood transplants.
The shop that I work at is one of a chain of six, and we’re consistently the top-seller. We make about double what the next store does per day. We’ve got the tourists coming to the beach, we’ve got the college students and we’ve got just all the burnout crazy drunks there. We also sell porn and sex toys and all that as well. And with the economy like this, with the recession and all, people aren’t gonna go out to the movies and go eat. They’re gonna go home, and so they’re gonna need a pipe, some porno and a dildo. So actually if anything we may have seen a spike in sales while all the other retail stores were in decline.
On the newest album, God Luck and Good Speed, you borrowed ‘Alone’ from your side project Barstul.
Me and Shep—our guitarist—are Barstul. I wanted to re-record it for God Luck and Good Speed because I thought it fit very well with the flow of the record, and Albini heard it and he said, ‘Man, we can place mics all day and maybe get something close to as good as that sounds. I think we should just put it on there as is.’ That’s actually a four-track recording from my garage when me and Shep were completely wasted one night. I asked Mike Dean when we were on tour with COC and he kinda mobile-ly mastered on their bus, and it came out sounding great.
Is Barstul gonna make a proper record?
Yeah, we have a demo that I haven’t really shopped around to anyone yet. We’d like to re-record all that stuff. We’ve got a full record worth of stuff at least—all original songs. Actually on our record Sixteen Tons, the song ‘Whoa Is Me’ is also a Barstul song. That’s just me playing acoustic bass and the pedals on my organ, and guitar and vocal. It’s probably something we’ll do in the future—incorporating that into Weedeater but also have Barstul be a separate entity.
Do any other bands consume chemicals as capably as Weedeater, or are you guys the gold standard for chemical consumption?
I guess we’re pretty hard at it. We try and take care of ourselves but it’s not so easy to do, especially touring around as much as we like to do. But everybody in the genre is at least partially involved in it. We may push the envelope a little bit, but envelopes are there to be pushed, I imagine. I’m sitting in the van right now, drinking whiskey and Pabst Blue Ribbon and doing an interview with you. It’s definitely easier to speak my mind and just say what I feel if I’ve had a few drinks. It’s actually easier for me to do anything, even get out of bed, if I’ve had a few drinks. I could use to burn one right now but I don’t know where everybody is, I think they’re in the club. They need to come out here and load one up so I can get high, ‘cause that’s the next step.

WEEDEATER WITH DOWN, THE MELVINS AND DANAVA ON SAT., AUG. 15, AT THE WILTERN, 3790 WILSHIRE BLVD., LOS ANGELES. 7PM / $30 / ALL AGES. LIVENATION.COM. WEEDEATER’S GOD LUCK AND GOOD SPEED IS OUT NOW ON SOUTHERN LORD. VISIT WEEDEATER AT WEEDEATERTHEBAND.COM OR ON MYSPACE AT MYSPACE.COM/WEEDEATER.

Download: Screaming Females “Bell”

(from Power Move out now on Don Giovanni)

Screaming Females fire right down the middle between Husker Du, Damaged Black Flag and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks and occupy more psychic space as an irreducibly solid three-piece than bands several times their age and weight combined. There are many gerunds that begin with ‘S in English and they use the ten best in every set. Their newest Power Move is out now on Don Giovanni. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

You’re from New Brunswick—have you seen the grave of Mary Ellis?
Jarrett Dougherty (drums): I have—behind the movie theater. Behind the giant movie theater there’s this huge platform with a grave on top of it. It’s really strange—I have no idea. My dad told me that there was some one hit wonder from New Jersey from the ’50s or ’60s who wrote a song dedicated to that gravestone.
Have you picked out the New Jersey parking lot that you eventually hope to be laid to rest in?
JD: You can just dump me in the Raritan—that’s fine. The river that runs by New Brunswick.
Is it true that the beginning of Screaming Females grew from Marissa needing treatment for ringworm?
JD: So many people have asked us that story—‘So tell me how the band got started.’
I just want to know about the ringworm.
JD: Yeah, I know—I was gonna tell you. So instead of answering that question, I decided to tell a much more important part of our history because Marissa had this awful case of ringworm and was living on a remote campus of Rutgers where she didn’t know anybody. We had just started hanging out so I was like, ‘Marissa, we’re gonna get you to the health facility to get your ringworm cleared up and you’re also gonna move off this campus.’ We got both things taken care of in the same day and I think it was a very important event in Screaming Females history.
So you owe a real debt to that fungal infection.
JD: We do owe a debt to a fungal infection. Maybe more so to the people who cleared it up.
Rolling Stone said Marissa is known for ‘ripping til her fingers bleed,’ but has your music ever caused any of you to bleed in any way?
JD: Music? Yeah. Marissa—there’s pictures of her where the guitar is all splattered in blood, but it’s just because she dropped picks and strummed with her fingers—which started bleeding. I busted a few knuckles on drum rims. I think it happens to anyone who plays music—you end up hitting your hand somewhere. I cracked a knuckle last night on a drum rim and it was instant. People could feel my pain.
You’ve talked before how you like that the Minutemen were so into Creedence—what classic band is somewhere deep in the heart of Screaming Females?
JD: It’s different for each one of us but as a whole it would probably be the Clash. The Clash is a common meeting place for all of us. Mike brought almost every Clash album except for the last one on this tour.
The Clash were country fans, so who’s your favorite country musician?
JD: Favorite country musician? I’ll go with Hank. You gotta go with the lonely songs. He was a pretty blue kinda guy. Didn’t he die from overdosing on pills or something?
In the back of a Cadillac.
JD: That’s how life should be lived.
What’s the most self-reliant moment you’ve shared on tour?
JD: We were at this one house show where this guy started giving these kids a ton of booze and was egging them on and had a video camera and started playing Slayer. He was like, ‘You guys gotta beat the crap out of each other!’ And they started punching each other in the face and all our gear was in the house and there was blood flying everywhere. So we all ran in there and grabbed our gear and took off out of that house and found somewhere else to stay. I would say that is a pretty good moment where we came together to get the hell out of there.
What is the dirtiest house that you’ve ever played in?
Marissa Paternoster (guitar/vocals): The dirtiest house we ever played was in Greenville, North Carolina—I’m not going to say anything else. I don’t want to offend anyone. I mean, I think they knew it was dirty anyway. So it was at this house and we walked in and there were lots of people hanging out and it was an eclectic crowd.
Did they smell eclectic?
MP: Oh yeah, they had all kinds of smells. So there was no bathroom. We had to go to McDonald’s to use the bathroom. Typically when you’re in the little punk houses, they are fairly dirty, or maybe not dirty but there’s just stuff everywhere. I think there was food taped to the floor at this house. I don’t know what it really smelled like—kinda like poop and rotting food. What else happened that night? I don’t know—I really can’t emphasize or describe how dirty and filthy it really was. I don’t think I’ll ever smell anything like that again. I didn’t even want to sit on the couch. And I’m not like a snobby person about that but there was mold, mange—I don’t know. It was a weird place.
What’s the weirdest thing you ever had to choke down on tour that some nice people cooked for you?
MP: Tater tot casserole. It was like two pints of heavy cream and all this cheese and stuff. It was vegetarian because we’re all vegetarian, but it was really intense. There was a layer of tater tots on the top.
Did you guys fake smiles?
MP: We were probably hungry. We probably ate the shit out of it. It’s a rough world.
So someone once called you a ‘musical messiah dinosaur descended from the moon.’
MP: Oh, that’s true.

SCREAMING FEMALES WITH SHELLSHAG, UNDERGROUND RAILROAD TO CANDYLAND AND KILLER DREAMER ON THU., AUG. 13, AT BABE’S WAREHOUSE, LONG BEACH. 9 PM / $5 / ALL AGES. MORE INFORMATION AT MYSPACE.COM/SCREAMINGFEMALES. AND WITH SHELLSHAG, PROTECT ME AND SIGNALS ON FRI., AUG. 14, AT SPACELAND, 1717 SILVERLAKE BLVD., SILVERLAKE. 8:30 PM / $8 / 21+. CLUBSPACELAND.COM. SCREAMING FEMALES’ POWER MOVE IS OUT NOW ON DON GIOVANNI. VISIT SCREAMING FEMALES AT SCREAMINGFEMALES.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/SCREAMINGFEMALES.

Download: The Pine Hill Haints “Not So Lucky And The Invisible Kid“

(from To Win Or To Lose out now on K)

Named after the Alabama cemetery where the band used to practice, the Haints’ uncanny specialty is a punk rock retrofit of the “dead” traditional music of the South and West. Unlike goofball ironists like BR-549 or wiggy transcendentalists the Parson Red Heads, this outfit embraced trad American music for its raw simplicity and Faulknerian sense of a spectral past. Their latest To Win or To Lose has much the same eerie high-lonesome feel as Gram Parsons or the Flatlanders, but with enough added macabre touches for an old-timey Dixie traveling circus, complete with hucksters on buckboards and freaks in formaldehyde. Here, guitarist-vocalist-fiddler Jaime Barrier muses on a vanishing America, punky get-up-and-go and the difficulties involved in mic-ing a musical saw. This interview by Ron Garmon.

What is meant by the term ‘Alabama ghost music?’
Jaime Barrier (guitar/fiddle/vocals): I guess to create a certain mindset—a certain mood and a certain local sound.
It sounds like you’re evoking an all-but-dead America.
Exactly. I’m not real into innovation and keeping up and the newest sound or whatever. That was the original concept—playing dead sounds—but after a while I realized it didn’t sound anything like the Carter family!
Like Mick Jagger’s attempt to sound like a Chicago blues shouter leading to the hybrid that became the Rolling Stones.
That’s a good example.
I once read a review of some 1970s Nitty Gritty Dirt Band album that termed them ‘Pink Floyd for hillbillies.’ This fits Pine Hill Haints perfectly. Is there a conscious psychedelic vibe going on?
It’s psychedelic in the way dub reggae in the 1970s went from regular jazz to ska then got into dub and into psych. I guess that’s kind of a similar path we’re taking—real percussion-based with psychedelic melody on top of it.
Doesn’t all popular music, even the stuff that’s moving product now, live under the threat of erasure, making it all, inevitably, ‘dead’ music? Aren’t you being ahead of your time by being so retro?
Man, I don’t even know if I can fully understand that one! That’s some deep stuff. I’m the new wave of the future in today’s country? That’s awesome!
There’s a tradition of Christian fatalism in country music, but there’s also a populist hell-raising spirit. Do you guys straddle both?
We try to walk that fine line in the middle and embrace ‘em both. We all come from pretty deep religious backgrounds, but there’s a wild streak in us, like everyone else. I don’t run from the Christian thing. There’s a lot more to Johnny Cash than the Folsom Prison record. It’s easier to live out here but harder to get your face on the cover of the Rolling Stone. I been in a million bands and even if we’re playing to a few people with no amps and no P.A., it’s just a fun band to make music with.
Tell us about the connection between Southern culture and the macabre, as witnessed by ‘Bordello Blackwidow’ and ‘Halloween All the Time.’
I can’t speak for other parts of the country, but where we’re at—as a kid you grow up with these incredible stories and whatnot on the back of the school bus. Or some of the absolute freaks and characters that live out there. It’s not like that anymore or all the way, but there’s that Mark Twain quote where he says all Southerners speak poetry—just that charm and that wit you know. But ‘Blackwidow’ was a song that Matt wrote. He writes a lot of plays and sketch comedy and whatnot. The song was meant just to be played punk rock opera style. They had a warehouse and write their own plays and present them. That was the end of that song, but he keeps playing it with the Haints. That’s kinda that ‘dead’ thing. A lot of covers we do are from punk bands that broke up, so we keep ‘em alive. Everybody’s got a lot of influences and that Dixieland style is one of ours. The show changes every night.
What’s your hometown like?
When I’m not on the road, I go play music with old people in my hometown. Every night of the week just about, I have somewhere I go play. That has a lot to do with the sound. I try to learn a lot of the traditional songs—native songs and native styles of holding the bow. That mixed with a lot of the punk rock sound—the punk rock way of doing things. I might have trailed off your question. Does that make any sense?
What’s your hometown?
Florence, Alabama. Better known as Muscle Shoals. Technically, I live in Tennessee, about thirty miles north of there.
Have you ever toured Europe?
We’ve been over there seven times, but mostly to England and Ireland. You know, whatever the top is, I feel like we could get there a hell of a lot quicker, but we’re trying to approach it honestly and artistically. There a lot of nights in England where the people who show up want pitchforks and bales of hay—throw a rebel flag up and ‘Yee-haw!’ They’re disappointed but we’ve found our audience just the same. It’s tempting to take the ‘dumb’ route.
My advice is to ignore any industry suit who uses the word ‘novelty act.’
Exactly. It doesn’t cost much to live out here. Being in Alabama, you’re in kind of a weird off-the-map bubble anyway so I don’t know how much I’m giving up. In a sense, we’re not getting anywhere, but in another sense, we’ve been able to do something and improve on it while getting to do something original. You can live on nothing where we’re at, but if we were in Baltimore, or L.A. or Minneapolis, we might have to worry about such things as jobs.
Are there any special troubles mic-ing a saw or a bucket bass for a performance?
A bucket bass is a little easier, but there are troubles with the saw. Sometimes you can’t get it and one good swipe of the bow, it’s too loud. We used to have a guy in the band who played saw on every song. Now we only use it when it’s needed, but back then we were like, ‘A saw! Cool!’ So every song, there it was. Probably a little over-the-top and too much. His name was Rymodee—he was also in This Bike is a Pipe Bomb, which was a great band.
A man who regularly knows trouble from incautiously placed band stickers, from what I hear tell.
You’re right! I forget how many times they made the national news. The more popular that band got, the less he was able to tour with it. He even wrote a little piece for the saw about all the millions of saws sold back in the 1920s and he’s like, ‘Chances are your grandparents played one.’ A lot of people played one. Now my wife does the saw on any particular song calling for it. We make bows and it’s easy to get a nice fat sound out of an inch-wide bow. Once you figure out where you want it, it’s set for the night, unless the soundman starts manipulating knobs or something.
I like the H.P. Lovecraft reference of your label, Arkam Records. You put out a lot of punkish and quasi-punk stuff, which brings up a question—what’s the connection between traditional music and the punk ethos? One sees much overlap here in L.A.
There’s a million things, but, for me, it was stripping it down to the honest approach. For example, I always thought fiddle playing was supposed to be this flowery happy thing—like ‘I went to the store today/dee-dee-deedly-dee-da-dee-dum-dum.’ A punk way for me would be the opposite of that—a raw, honest, emotional type thing.
You make it sound groaning and mournful.
Either that attitude or straight happy. No junk added to it. No junk.

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Visit the Everything Is Terrible! YouTube channel here!

Stewards of the rare and miraculously bad in movies—as well as TV, how-to, instructional and homemade video—the merry footage fetishists of Everything is Terrible! make live what snootier critics would just as soon let die. The fossickings of Ghoul Skool, Commodore Gilgamesh and Future Schlock through mountains of cassettes in search of flash-frozen schlock of their childhoods have won a following from likeminded connoisseurs of crud. Compiled on one DVD for your delectation is Everything is Terrible: The Movie, highlighting the dubious gems of their search. The weekend after EIT’s ‘Found Footage Freakout’ at the Silent Movie late last month found these sore-eyed custodians of the Temple of Dumb waxing philosophic over their hilarious group obsession. This interview by Ron Garmon.

If, as Theodore Sturgeon said, 90% of everything is crap, then why the curious charm of the rare that is Everything is Terrible? Just how rare is garbage anyway?
Ghoul Skool: First of all, I don’t know much about this Sturgeon dude but I think what he meant to say is that 99.9% of everything is crap. I guess since VHS has been declared ‘dead’ thousands must be thrown out every day. But I don’t think that means anyone but other found footage collectors would consider any of this ‘rare.’ I think that’s the biggest difference between VHS hunting and crate digging for vinyl—no one will ever say to me ‘You’ve got Yo-Yo Man on VHS?! What number do you want me to write on this check?!’
Commodore Gilgamesh: 90% is a very low estimate. There is absolutely nothing rare about the Terrible. It is a constant. The same charm is present in a birthday home video on VHS as in a Hollywood blockbuster on Bluetooth—it is all a mistake.
Future Schlock: It’s not that rare considering we are constantly surprised by new finds. Most people just don’t want to waste the time to find it.
Judging from your blog, the house definition of ‘terrible’ sounds like ‘a dubious idea ludicrously done.’ Any other boundaries or criteria?
GS: At this point, ‘terrible’ to us has turned into ‘amazing’ and we sincerely mean that 100% un-ironically. When going through a stack of VHS, hours can go by before anything looks worthy—then all of a sudden you hit the jackpot and you’ve got a bunch of awkward kids running around with donuts for hats singing about how Jesus died for your sins. Anyone who would rather watch ‘Band of Outsiders’ over something like that is no friend of mine.
CG: That is a far too specific definition of ‘terrible.’ I’d define ‘terrible’ as everything.
FS: Nothing that is intentionally terrible.
How does the EIT approach differ from the 1980s obsession with ‘le bad cinema’? Back in that day, people like Joe Bob Briggs and the Medved Bros. heavily patronized what they thought didn’t measure up to standards of taste prevalent during the Reagan Age.
GS: I haven’t seen that stuff personally, but now that I think of it, how many American movies from the Reagan Age still hold up in a ‘timeless’ sense? Seven? A dozen at the most? That whole decade must have wasted more energy, time and money on worthless junk than any generation combined. That’s also the era we grew up in, and we are so thankful for that.
CG: Not only are we critiquing our culture for not measuring up, but we are also making a comedy out of a tragedy. I think finding and making videos that are funny is the most important thing. Our beliefs hide in our cuts, not our words. But usually the footage makes the point itself.
FS: I think our scope is a little wider in what we search out like instructional tapes, etc., as we are not just limited to B-movies. Also a lot of bad movies are made by people that know they are bad so there’s no point in mocking something that was never taken seriously anyway.
What was it about the year 1986 that made for especially loony vid?
GS: Maybe that was the year that marks the height of our civilization, or perhaps it just reflects our excess in the ‘80s. All I know is if I were given a time machine, I would first go see how the pyramids were built. Then I would go straight to 1986 and apply for a job at a video store in middle America.
CG: ‘84, ‘87, ‘92, ‘97, ‘99, ‘01, and ‘08 were all pretty nice too.
FS: Bad ideas transcend every time period and each video looks like it should’ve been released 5 years before it was. But for 1986 specifically, I would say the blame lays squarely on the shoulders of the Chicago Bears’ ‘Super Bowl Shuffle.’
Tell us about favorite bits of dada you’ve unearthed. Sherry & Mark’s wedding video sounds like a trip to the moon on wings of sludge.
GS: Tapes like that come once, maybe twice in a lifetime. So many people who see that video comment saying ‘Is this fake?’ Which is amazing to me considering if I could have created such beauty myself I would probably give up on life, knowing I could never reach such beauty ever again.
CG: So many wonderful little turds. Lately, I’ve been pretty into watching a mustachioed man silently stroke his conduit bender.
FS: The Dogville Comedy Shorts carry a special place in my heart because I discovered them by chance very early in my crap-collecting career. These shorts about talking dogs suspended by fishing wire like marionettes were very popular in the ‘30s which reflects people’s never-ending love of bad ideas and comedic animal abuse.
You guys are champion hunter-gatherers of eyesore. Describe how this kind of ephemera is tracked down by experts.
GS: Why thank you! I’m not even really sure how we get it all, but over time we just attract it like moths to a flame.
CG: The key for me is to never watch anything that I may like. After a few years, perspective becomes so skewed that it is all great and horrible.
FS: A list of thrift stores and a lot of patience. If the description of the video sounds interesting, there’s about a 25% chance it is. Then you take the stack of tapes and you watch and wait.
Is the charm of working with vintage equipment equal to the buzz to be had in the hunt?
GS: Analog is so fragile and yet so warm that it almost feels like a living thing. There is something so comfortable working with VCRs but that’s really as far as it goes—the rest is all thinking machines and super computers.
CG: They cannot be compared. The high I get from digging through a moldy stack of VHS is like 1,000 orgasms. I’ve been watching videos on a VCR almost all my life. That is nothing.
FS: It’s not the same level of feeling because when searching for a tape, you can imagine all the possibilities that can come from a batshit insane idea. When actually editing, you can only work with what you are given.
L.A.’s own Fred Olen Ray is almost the Orson Welles of 1980s cheese. What do you think of his filmography? Any other unsung local auteurs we should know about?
GS: Fred Olen Ray and Jim Wynorski are masters and I highly recommend checking out their work. They have hundreds of films to their credit, and just last week we gave them EIT Lifetime Achievement Awards at our first live show. L.A. in general is sort of a wasteland for what we do, and it gives me so much comfort knowing that the tapes we watch were filmed less than 20 miles from where I am sitting. If anyone reading this worked on any training tapes, low budget movies, or defunct studios from around 1980-1997, please call me. I have SO many questions to ask.
CG: He has the dream job. God, I’d love to be able to churn it out like that. Cleveland’s own Mark L. Lester is a favorite, too.
FS: It’s hard to think about his filmography when I’ve only seen maybe 1/500th of it. The fact that he’s still working on a consistent basis is probably the best testament to his skill. Peter Manoogian, director of Eliminators and Arena, is someone I recently discovered. He hasn’t made that many movies but I will own them all someday.
Please elaborate on the crucial difference between ‘bad’ and ‘mediocre.’ How differently do we experience both types of presentation?
GS: I’m glad you asked that, because it can be difficult for people to understand the difference. I’ve tried telling people not familiar with what we do and they’ll say something like, ‘Oh, you mean like Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes?’ And I want to punch a wall in frustration—much like a D&D nerd gets mad when you confuse ‘magic’ with ‘magik.’ ‘Bad’ is a movie like Anthony Hopkins’ Slipstream—where it is so fantastically dumb, your jaw is gaped open for however long you can take it and you cannot stop thinking about it for months. ‘Mediocre’ is something like Good Luck Chuck where it is simply sooooo badly written and clearly combed over by hundreds of executive douches that all you get in the end is Dane Cook not being funny and smirking for an hour and a half. Sure, you can sit around with your friends and laugh at how awful it is, but it isn’t fun to watch in any way whatsoever. Even talking about that movie is making my blood boil and I have to stop. What a piece of garbage that movie is.
CG: Mediocre vs. bad—God, we deal with that constantly while hunting. I’d say mediocre is just terrible that is wearing make-up. It is in there and we’ll find it.
FS: Mediocre is when a how to video tells you something actually reasonable. Bad is when a how-to video tells you to put your hand in front of your face and sense the energy.
What’s next for EIT?
GS: Oh, folks, so much more! Aside from a lot of touring coming up, we will be releasing an EIT soundtrack, shirts, a coloring book—not kidding—and—if we’re lucky—an EIT-related show. Considering our DVD was only the tip of the crap-berg, we are hoping that we can churn out at least a couple more DVD’s before the world ends in 2012.
FS: We will continue to bring the EIT live show to other cities and we are working on a redesign for the site.
CG: We’re going to watch everything burn and laugh.

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