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

Pentagram Relentless LP (Pentagram, 1984)

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

Nuclear Crayons Bad Pieces … LP (Outside, 1984)

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

United Mutation Rainbow Person EP (DSI, 1985)

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

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

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

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

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

Death Piggy War EP (DSI, 1984)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fury Resurrection EP (THD, 1989)

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

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

Download: The Jesus Lizard “Mouthbreather”

(from Goat out now on Touch and Go)

Once the Jesus Lizard walked the earth unchallenged and primitive tool-using mammals quivered before it. Then in 1999 it broke up. But a deluxe series of remasters on Touch and Go (and an encouraging Scratch Acid reunion) helped resurrect the Jesus Lizard for a fearsome set of shows. Vocalist David Yow speaks now from Pioneertown the day before Manimal Fest. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

In the remaster liners, you seem to be skeptical of Page Hamilton’s account of you stage-diving naked and audience members cramming their fingers through your sphincter.
David Yow (vocals): Yeah—I think that was a dream he had or something. I’m not gonna say it’s not possible that I crowdsurfed naked but I don’t think I did. That’s dangerous.
How would you feel if that really was a dream he had?
David Yow: Oh, that’s fine. People think up some pretty sick shit all the time. Nothing I can do about that.
Do you agree with Bruce LaBruce that people look at you differently after you’ve been penetrated?
David Yow: I don’t know how to answer that.
Is it true that Seattle is the only city that specifically banned you from playing?
David Yow: I was banned from Hamilton County, Ohio, for a year. I was arrested at Lollapalooza for dropping my pants. The charge was ‘recklessly and knowingly exposing his private parts.’ ‘Private parts’ is a legal term apparently. I don’t know about being banned from the county—if that was a law or just something the judge thought would be appropriate.
What is your advice for somebody who has to appear in court for something like that?
David Yow: Keep your answers brief.
The New York Times said you’re becoming like Jerry Lee Lewis.
David Yow: Wow, that’s a tremendous compliment. Wowee. I’ll certainly never have as good a haircut as he did. I’m not sure how to take it. He was kind of a prick—I saw him one time at a dinner and show in Austin and somebody threw a cowboy hat on his piano and he stopped playing and said, ‘If I want your fucking clothes, I’ll ask for em!’
Do you think Jerry Lee Lewis is a scary guy?
David Yow: I would say so, yeah. Particularly if you’re a 15-year-old girl.
Who’s the scariest musician you’ve ever been around?
David Yow: I don’t know if I recall any musicians that were that scary.
Who’s the cuddliest musician you’ve ever been around?
David Yow: Well, it wasn’t Pig Champion. Probably Björk.
Is it true you’re a pretty sentimental guy at heart?
David Yow: I cry pretty easily, yeah. My girlfriend and I went to visit a botanical garden in Pasadena and some of the plants there were so incredible… It wasn’t a single plant that did it—it was a whole bunch of them. Just really crazy alien-landscape looking plants that looked like a Star Trek episode or something.
Were you moved to several tears or just a single very pure tear?
David Yow: I think there was surface tension. I think my eyes welled up. I don’t think anything actually went down my cheek.
Which are you most likely to cry over—a sad animal movie or a sad movie about a little kid?
David Yow: Oh, I don’t care about a little kid.
So Old Yeller?
David Yow: Well, sure—Old Yeller, that’ll get you every time.
What about a movie where the sad animal kills the sad kid—like a Pet Sematary thing? Does that move you at all?
David Yow: Yeah—that’s comedy.
What happened when you took an improv class and tried to make everyone cry?
David Yow: Maybe I was talking about when I took a couple monologue classes. The deal was for several weeks we would work on writing these monologues and then at the culmination of the class we would perform them. Everybody else did really funny ones and the ones I did were as sad as I could make them. I was hoping to make everybody sad. They made me really sad when I was writing them. My goal was to make people I don’t know cry. The audience was tremendously bummed. When I finished my ten-minute monologue, there were a few tears in the audience and I got off the stool and off the stage and it was completely silent. Then slowly applause trickled in.
Is that a new thing for you—making people cry like that?
David Yow: No, I just think that if through some sort of art form if you can make people cry, that’s a hell of an accomplishment. Making people laugh is pretty easy. Look at my face and just start laughing. Or you might cry.
What’s the saddest story you could tell?
David Yow: Well the one that I did for a monologue was my mother’s fall into Alzheimer’s and her eventual death and it was a pretty sad story. Several years ago, I met Winona Ryder and she had dated one of the guys in Soul Asylum. She told me a story about the bass player from Soul Asylum—and I took this story and embellished it and changed it around, but apparently the guy was newlywed or something and he and his girlfriend were great, and then he got pharyngeal cancer. But they caught it right in time and removed it and it was a full complete resection which means they got it completely and everything was great. But a few days after the operation, he and his girlfriend were happy and everything was wonderful and I think she told him a joke and he laughed so hard that his stitches ruptured and he bled to death.
Is that an actual story?
David Yow: According to Winona. I think it’s verified. I wanted to write a screenplay of it. I think it would be a bit of a roller coaster. Everything’s happy and everything is great, and then there would be the terror of finding out about cancer, and then there would be the worry of operation and that becomes okay and everything is great! And maybe they could stay on the happy and then have the terrible scene of him bleeding to death and meanwhile she is completely freaking out. And then that would be the end.
Then roll credits with the Benny Hill theme song.
David Yow: I did think of the opening credits. It would be fiberoptics inside of a person’s throat and you would hear chewing and swallowing while a dinner is going on and that would be the opening credits.
What’s the most fascinating thing you’ve ever seen happen inside of a human body?
David Yow: God, you’re weird. Hm—I guess that would be when I filled up that little boy’s butt with sperm.
I asked that question because I heard you have an X-ray of a fart cloud inside your body.
David Yow: I don’t have the X-ray but I saw it. The hospital in Albuquerque has it.
Do you think that’s the rarest Jesus Lizard collectible?
David Yow: Well, there’s definitely not more than one of them.
Are you making more?
David Yow: No, that’s a difficult thing to plan.
Did you hear about the guy in China who worked for the iPhone factory in China and he lost a prototype and killed himself?
David Yow: At least he did the right thing. We don’t need those kind of people walking around on the Earth.
Does Jesus Lizard have a rule like that? If you fuck up the organization you’re expected to take care of yourself in an honorable manner?
David Yow: Yeah, a little hari-kiri. Or you could do the Harold and Maude version.
What do you think would be the most artistic way to make a graceful exit from this existence?
David Yow: I don’t know about the most artistic but we’ve all toyed with the idea, right? Usually I think you should do it where you hurt the fewest number of people, but more than likely, if somebody cares about you, you’re going to hurt them anyway. But I’ve often thought when I’m crossing an overpass on the highway, it’d be good to jump off right as a Mack truck was going to smack you. And then hopefully it would be a big pileup.
What sort of horrific tales of death do the Jesus Lizard guys enjoy discussing?
David Yow: Years ago, Albini loaned me a book called Auto-Erotic Fatalities. There was a true story where some girl’s boyfriend went to her house while she was with her parents and while they had gone shopping, he did some weird shit in the backyard including digging a hole and making a bunch of mud. I think he stuck a trowel up his ass.
He was digging a hole for sexual gratification?
David Yow: I suppose—I think he was trying to get off. That kind of stuff, if it doesn’t work—if you live through it but just barely, it’s probably a bummer.
What’s it say about your character that you prefer the overpass splatterjob to the autoerotic suffocation? You’re not a selfish guy?
David Yow: No, I jack off all the time and obviously I’m not a pervert.
Have you ever scared yourself onstage?
David Yow: There have been times that I was scared—that I thought, ‘This is going to hurt.’ And that’s usually a case where there’s nothing I can do about it. Say the audience is throwing me into the barricade headfirst—you can’t grab anything.
How has that sort of crisis-hardened perspective affected your professional life?
David Yow: That is my professional life.
What’s the most pleasant thing somebody threw at you on stage?
David Yow: Money.
Coins or paper?
David Yow: Both.
How much?
David Yow: Oh, I don’t know—five dollars.
That’s enough to get another drink.
David Yow: Right, and usually they give us free drinks when we do rock show concerts. So I’ve got that five bucks that I can put in my bank and save for dinner.
If you cooked a special occasion dinner for the rest of the guys in the band, what would you cook?
David Yow: I’m a fan of making my black-and-white soup. I’d probably have that for starters and then glazed pork chops with a balsamic reduction. Maybe grilled veggies.
Where is your favorite place to eat out in L.A.?
David Yow: Between my girl’s legs.
What’s the grossest thing you ever said in an interview that didn’t get printed?
David Yow: I have no idea. I’ve done thousands of interviews and I have no idea.
If we did a collected works of David Yow, would it be a nice surprise for you?
David Yow: I wouldn’t read it.

REMASTERED VERSIONS OF THE JESUS LIZARD’S DOWN, GOAT, HEAD, LIAR AND PURE ARE AVAILABLE NOW FROM TOUCH AND GO. VISIT THE JESUS LIZARD AT THEJESUSLIZARD.NET OR MYSPACE.COM/THEJESUSLIZARDPAGE.

Download: The Mekons “Dickie, Chalkie And Nobby”

(from Natural out now on Touch And Go)

The Mekons lived Leeds but dreamed Texas and Tennessee and after finding their feet in first-wave punk songs like “Where Were You,” they left the world of Rough Trade for the open range. They are working on a new album tentatively called 100 Years and singer-guitarist-activist Jon Langford speaks as he takes his dog to the vet. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

Is it true that the son of Donald Rumsfeld is a really big Mekons fan?
Jon Langford (guitar/vocals): That’s a good question. It might be true, but he has not revealed himself to us. I never got to the bottom of that but I heard he was wandering around the clubs of Chicago with a Mekons t-shirt on. Donald Rumsfeld sort of wandered around Chicago as well. He was a congressman from here so he was occasionally spotted in sushi restaurants. And I know people who actually know him and I always wonder what I would do if I actually ran into him.
Do you think you could beat him up? Mekon vs. Rumsfeld?
He’s kind of like some sort of crazy cockroach. You’d probably keep treading on him and he’d just get up and run around.
Do you think that might be an effective way for art and music to provoke social change? By specifically targeting the hearts and minds of the children of the rich and powerful?
I’d like to think something of what we’ve been singing about for the last twenty years may have rubbed off on him—he’d probably want to wrestle his dad to the ground as well, you know? But you know what? I think I know about as much about that as you do. I don’t know. Our songs were never particularly aimed at the sons of the rich and famous.
Where were they aimed?
They weren’t really aimed at anyone. They were aimed at ourselves, I think. Most of the songs we made to sort of please ourselves or to exorcise things that are in ourselves. I think a lot of the Mekons songs are quite sad, which is interesting because we’re not necessarily sad people. I think what’s good about the Mekons is that there’s always been a kind of cushion—the fact that there are a lot of people and we all kind of share the duties. There’s never been one person with the whole burden. A lot of the people in the Mekons have been through quite a lot together. I wouldn’t even say our politics are necessarily the same or our life stories are the same but there’s definitely a shared instinctive feeling about the world. Obviously, or we wouldn’t be doing this project together so long.
What is the essential sadness in the Mekons discography?
Well, we don’t come together and act sad. We come together and have a good time. But the music that comes out is often very—I don’t know, maybe gallows humor? We always try to describe the world we live in and anyone with half a brain would find it pretty difficult to write happy songs all the time.
I’ve heard that they did a neurolinguistic study of various genres of music and that country music is overwhelmingly objectively the saddest type of music they found. Do you think there’s anything to that?
Have you ever heard the music from the Bahamas? There’s some traditional vocal and solo vocal stuff that’s mostly unaccompanied that I think is the saddest thing I’ve ever heard. People who are poor and have crap lives will probably make sad music. I guess rich people who have lots of money and an easy life, they might be sad as well—but they probably don’t bother to write songs about their lives. Probably too busy spending their money.
In ‘Big Zombie,’ is the line ‘I’m just not human tonight’ a Chandler reference?
Absolutely. Yeah. It’s an L.A. song and we’ll be playing it. When we kind of started up again in the mid-’80s, we were very interested in Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. We were touring the States a lot and that was our reference for what we thought the States should be like. Dashiell Hammett was our version of San Francisco and Raymond Chandler was our version of L.A. Every time I walked into a room, I’d expect to find a body. Most of the time we didn’t.
What drew you to honky-tonks like Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge when you came to America?
When we first came to the States we got obsessed about music and it was kind of like… most of the cowboy shops we went to seemed to be full of black people, Hispanic people, Asian people and English rock bands. So it was funny—just how you can literally claim a piece of this fantasy mythical America by buying a Stetson or a pair of cowboy boots and then going back home to Leeds and strutting around in your cowboy boots. They’d ask, ‘Where did you get those?’ and I’d say, ‘Aw, I got these in Chicago,’ you know? People would come ’round my house after the pub and I’d be playing Ernest Tubb and Merle Haggard, and these were all people who thought they wanted to go listen to acid-house or something. They thought we’d lost our minds.
There’s a quote from Ernest Tubb I wanted to ask you about. People would say, ‘Aw, Ernest, you’re so flat, anyone could sing the way you can. You just got lucky.’ And he would say, ‘Well, I sing that way on purpose. I want everyone who hears this to think that they could do it. I want them to feel that I’m no different from them.’
Is that from that Peter Guralnick book? Lost Highway? There’s another great quote in there where he says he’s singing for the boys back on the farm but he says by the end of his life the farm wasn’t even there anymore. But he wanted those farm boys to be able to sing his songs. Yeah, that’s a very Mekons-type thing. When I read that, I thought, ‘There is a connection between that and punk.’ It’s been said before that there was a connection between the Mekons and country music and I thought that was ludicrous, but as I listened to that stuff and really began to love it, it became more and more interesting to me. And then to have someone articulate it like that… We always meant the Mekons to be like ‘Anyone can do it.’ Anyone can pick up the guitar. There’s a quote from Mary Harron about the Mekons that kind of sums it up: ‘Rock ‘n’ roll is probably better played by people who can’t play it very well.’ She said the Mekons were the only people to base a band solely on that fact. It was kind of a jab as well as a compliment, but I think that’s true. That really struck a chord with me—I’ve always being drawn to music that was functional rather than virtuoso. Music that kind of has to be made because there was a need to make it.
Who are you thinking of?
Well, actually I was talking to Peter Hammill of Van der Graaf Generator who came to town the other night. I got to hang out with them and I was talking to them about what they were listening to on the bus and they were telling me about Olivier Messiaen who is an avant-garde composer who wrote something called The Quartet for the End of Time while he was in a P.O.W. camp or a concentration camp. As Hammill said, that was music that had to be made. It was a quartet because that’s what he had at the camp and they thought they were going to die, so they wrote this music. I’ve been listening to it and it’s like—you’ve got something as primitive as the Mekons when we first started and then you’ve got Ernest Tubb and reggae music that was there because it was on the street with a message that people could dance to. And then you’ve got Olivier Messiaen which is like music that couldn’t be kept in. It had to come out. It wasn’t anything to do with any commercial desires or all that. It’s just music that had to exist. There’s a lot of music like that and I find that I’m just drawn to it. It was actually great talking to those guys because they’re much older than me. To be sitting on a tour bus with a bunch of old guys drinking wine and talking about things you’ve never heard of—it was really, really cool. Peter Hammill said, ‘Yeah, that’s the secret, as long as you don’t pander.’ ‘No pandering allowed!’ he was shouting. ‘That’s the trouble with all this bloody music nowadays. It’s all just fucking pandering!’ And I thought that was pretty good. That’s what the Mekons do.
Steve Wynn said that it’s better to make a record that is just one person’s favorite in the entire world than to make a record that everyone thinks is just pretty good.
I totally, totally agree with that. I think that something happened to music when the idea was that everyone would like it. I think that’s completely unnatural. When we were on A&M, they told us that 25,000 records sales wasn’t very good and we were like, ‘That’s good enough for us!’ We’d feel very uncomfortable if more than 25,000 people bought our record. That’s more people than ever go to see any of the football teams I supported! But that was a failure. There’s a hierarchy in the music industry where you have all these people floundering around not making a living who are—to me— doing what they should do and doing a good job of it. And then you have these people who managed to hit on the magic formula—finding what it is that everybody wants and it’s all backwards. They should be punished for learning that secret. Paul McCartney should be taken out and punished.
What particular punishment would be appropriate for that?
A good lashing. No, I’m only joking, I’m only joking. Again, the structure of the industry is the problem. That’s what it’s geared to—it’s just not geared to having lots of different types of music for lots of different types of people to enjoy. It doesn’t recognize the fact that people are different—that not everybody wants to listen to the sort of crap that’s on the radio everyday. It’s very hard anywhere in this country when you listen to the radio to find stuff that’s worth listening to. I don’t think that makes me weird.
You said once that ‘society dehumanizes from the top down.’ I’m wondering if that reproduces within pop culture.
Yeah—most of the stuff that I’ve written and the paintings that I’ve made about country and western music, it was kind of about using that as a microcosm for the whole society. The trend is there and you can see it so obviously in what happened to country music. I think that goes through everything. And actually that quote, that’s not me—I didn’t say that. John Peel said that. I might have been quoting him because he said that about ‘God Save the Queen’ when that record came out and everyone was up in arms and he made that quote defending the record. He said it was a pretty simple record and that the message was society dehumanizes from the top down.
I have to commend your memory for quotes.
I know where I pinch all my best stuff from. You know, Peel was a Radio One DJ and to come out with something that profound was pretty powerful. To have somebody in the BBC defending the Sex Pistols when it looked like—when that record came out, you know… they could have been hung from lampposts and the majority of people in the country would have been really pleased. It was a very scary time for a little while.
Have you seen that kind of response to anything else in music?
Ice-T’s ‘Cop Killer’ was kind of interesting as well. It brought up an interesting debate about whether he really wanted to kill a cop or talk about someone else. It brought up the debate about what you can write about. Why is a song always in the first person? People always think when you write a song that it’s you talking. I had that problem singing ‘Cocaine Blues’ which, you know, is a Johnny Cash song. Obviously I’m not someone who takes cocaine and kills people, but it’s still a great song. The history of those songs is old and ancient.
Someone once asked you if there was a light at the end of the tunnel and you said that now that you have kids, you’re going to hijack the train, turn it around and drive it back.
I just felt like a lot of people tell me to shut my mouth because I’m not from here. I’ve got that a number of times. Mostly in hate mail, especially when we were doing the anti-death penalty stuff. I really got some quite extraordinarily vicious and unpleasant stuff. But I just felt like having kids was definitely a galvanizing moment for me. It made me feel like this is when you have to get involved. I can’t just be like non-American anymore and just shrug my shoulders and go, ‘Oh yeah, they’re just all fucking crazy.’ Because I’m one of you now.
What kind of world do you want to build for your children?
We need to dismantle what was created over the last fifty years, really. The food industry for a start. It’s a fucking hideous Frankenstein that’s killing us all, you know? I really believe that. I don’t think I’m some kind of freak. I’m not some kind of hippie vegetarian. Not that there’s anything wrong with hippie vegetarians, to be honest. I was always prejudiced against people who had, like, strong views about things like that. Now it’s kind of like, ‘Fuck, things are really, seriously wrong.’
How do you avoid becoming discouraged?
I see a lot of people feel the same way. I see the election of Obama, which I thought was impossible, you know? I’m encouraged because it wasn’t just me sitting in my bedroom. Wow, that’s change. That’s real serious change. A lot of sort of naysaying cynics that I know were like, ‘Aw, it’s never going to happen in America. The only reason this happened is because he’s just the same as the other people.’ I don’t think he is, you know? I don’t think he can be. It’s got to change, you know?

THE MEKONS ON SUN., JULY 26, AT McCABE’S GUITAR SHOP, 3101 PICO BLVD., SANTA MONICA. 9:30 PM / $16 / ALL AGES. MCCABES.COM. AND ON MON., JULY 27, AT THE ECHO, 1822 SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12-$14 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. VISIT THE MEKONS AT MEKONS.DE OR MYSPACE.COM/THEMEKONS.

Shellac of North America record when they want and tour when they want and defuse all hecklers with the confidence and acumen of thirty-year bomb squad vets. Guitarist/vocalist (and engineer) Steve Albini speaks now 36 hours after returning to America. This interview by Chris Ziegler.

In an interview you had with the Boston Phoenix, you explained how Shellac gets caught in these conversational ‘loops,’ like fake Italian or ventriloquism—what’s the current loop?
Steve Albini (guitar/vocals): Just recently I discovered that a Canadian hockey fan used the word ‘pylon’ as an insult. It’s a derogatory term for a bad defenseman—‘He’s a pylon,’ meaning you just have to skate around him. I’ve taken to calling just about any idiot a pylon. I think that might develop into other traffic control devices that show up in the lexicon before long.
What was your former go-to term for ‘idiot’?
Wow, there have been so many. In Chicago there’s a particular kind of asshole wearing cargo shorts and generally a white baseball cap and those guys are just called ‘white caps.’ But the thing is that when you run into one of those you really can’t call them anything else.
The trick those guys have is that when they buy the white hats, they run it over a few times with their raised pick-up truck so it looks respectably old and legitimate.
I did not know that. I believe you.
You also said in that interview that you hoped Shellac would be able to insert an insult into the American language—do you think you’ve come close?
Probably not. Those things take so much popular momentum that we don’t really have. We don’t really have that kind of juice in the culture.
But the Internet is designed to propagate this exact kind of thing.
Right, but you need an adorable kitten video to go along with it and we don’t really have that.
What baby animal do you find the most cute?
Oh, there’s just so many—basically any baby animal is adorable.
How about baby humans?
Ah, not so much, but whatever. Whenever one of your friends has a baby, they are always so in awe of this thing that they made that they think it’s adorable and you have to go along because it’s kind of a big deal to make another person. But objectively, all babies look the same.
Is there such thing as an ugly baby?
The ‘baby’ aspect sort of overwhelms anything else.
What’s something that instantly turns you off about a band?
It’s hard to say—there’s so many little intricacies to it. There’s some YouTube clips of a band called Brokencyde and they’re kind of a compendium of all the things that instantly make me hate someone or a band. So basically if you share any trait—apart from something like cell mitosis—if you share any similarity with a band like Brokencyde you’re almost guaranteed to have me not like your band.
What has disappeared from the world in your lifetime that you’re glad to see gone?
There’s currently a kind of nostalgia for a kind of corporate disco music which I thought we were finally done with, but I guess the kitsch engine has to run on something. So a few year ago you might have been able to say that. That kind of bouncy European music they called house—that music disappeared finally. It lasted for a while in a kind of bastardized version in things like NBA trailers and perfume commercials, but it kind of disappeared. That was the only music that was capable of annoying me in the last twenty years. You know how a guy that works in a kitchen develops really leathery hands from handling hot pans and sharp knives? Or carpenters have really calloused hands?
Are you saying you have really leathery taste?
Yeah—my attention span and my hearing. I have developed callouses on my hearing and my sensibilities. A lot of stuff that would have driven me absolutely crazy when I was a teenager, I don’t even hear it. It doesn’t even register. The scar tissue that forms is infinitely tougher than the original mind.
How would you rate your ability to judge a stranger’s character on first meeting?
I’ve gotten a lot better at it since I started doing it every day. Meeting someone in person—it’s a little bit easier than speaking to them over the phone or corresponding with them but there are always some clues in any kind of interaction about whether or not somebody is reliable, honorable or on the level.
What are some of the universal indicators of trouble in the human character?
When you ask someone a direct question and they look upward and to the left or upward and to the right before they formulate their answer, that indicates that they are inventing part of the answer. That means that the answer is not something they know but rather something that they are having to create.
Is this something that you apply at poker games?
Only in the conversational parts—what’s called ‘the meta game.’ The great majority of poker is not the daring psychological battle it’s sometimes presented to be. Most of poker is just counting, simple math, and knowing probabilities of certain situations. But there is a psychological aspect to it. That’s a pretty good example. Another one is when someone is overly specific about trivial details and then unnecessarily general about fundamental elements of a deal. When a promoter tells you that you will be given a certain hotel room and certain kind of catering and that you’ll have this many towels backstage, but then can’t tell you the capacity of the venue or can’t tell you the size of the PA or how many stage hands he’s hired, then you can tell that someone is not speaking from a base of knowledge but is inventing a story that he wants you to go along with.
Has there ever been a show when Shellac was caught at a loss for words by a heckle?
I’m sure there has been. But I’m not super good at everything. That might be one thing that I’m not that good at sometimes. Don’t get me wrong—I’m super good at most things. I tend to not to embark on things where I’m an underdog to be competent. A friend of mine put it much more simply—he said, ‘He’s only interested in doing things that he’s instantly great at.’ I don’t know if this qualifies as great but I’ve hit golf balls three times in my life and the guy that I was walking along with on the golf course—I can’t really say that I was playing golf, but the three times that I’ve hit golf balls, the person that I was with said that I had a good natural swing. So there’s that. And snorkeling.
How does one become super good at snorkeling?
You enjoy it. My girlfriend was born in Honolulu and we go back to Hawaii pretty regularly—I want to say at least once a year. Well, that’s not true. We go there often—I don’t know how many times. A lot of places in Hawaii, you can rent snorkeling gear and the first couple times we went I didn’t rent snorkeling gear because I assumed that you had to learn how to do it and you could drown and die and that sort of stuff. It turns out that no, you don’t. You just stick the thing in your mouth and you’re fine. And also swim around for a while and you’ll realize that fish in their natural environment are fucking amazing.
How so?
They’re just super great. They look like they’re having the best fucking time. I’m really captivated by the notion that I’m looking at the fish and he’s hanging out by his house—this is his normal fish environment. And if he wanted to he could just fuck off to China. Start that way and if he didn’t wear out, he would end up in China—how cool would that be?
Does this ruin the experience of going to the aquarium for you—fish prison?
Yeah—I don’t really enjoy aquariums or zoos.
You’ve got kind of a soft spot for animals.
Who doesn’t? Come on. Don’t get me wrong—I don’t have any problem eating them or having them enslaved for farm labor. None of that stuff bothers me in the slightest.
What’s the cutest animal you ever ate?
Squirrels.
Did you shoot them yourself?
Yeah.
Are you a good shot? Deadeye Albini?
Not so great. My dad is a fantastic shot.
And he’s a rocket scientist?
Well, he worked in the aerospace industry for years and in that regard you could call him a rocket scientist, but his major contribution in the last third of his life—he worked in the science of forest fires. He and a very small number of people developed the science out of nothing and he’s the most published scientist in the field. He died a few years ago and there was an award named after him. He was the first recipient of this award called the Ember Award which was for contributions to the science of forest fires, and that award was then named after him. That’s probably what he’s most known for in the scientific community—his work on the incredibly and almost impossibly complex paradigm of forest fires.
What is the crucial conundrum of forest fire behavior?
Well, it was described to me once as a house fire on a freight train in a hurricane. There are so many things going on. There are things happening in forest fires that occur literally nowhere else on Earth. Imagine a fire so big that it creates its own weather and that’s what we’re talking about. And as a result of creating its own weather it can prolong itself or it can germinate by hurling pieces of itself into the rest of the world. It’s incredible. And when you take into consideration all the complexities of just the fuel matter—all the different things, what different things is it burning, how wet are they, what’s the ambient temperature—the forest fire changes all of that as well. It’s almost like a living thing, a forest fire.
Have you ever planned to incorporate or maybe already incorporated the science of forest fires into Shellac’s music?
Well, there’s a book by Norman Maclean called Young Men and Fire which is about the Mann Gulch fire in Montana, which he witnessed when he was a teenager. There was an incident that happened in the Mann Gulch fire where some expert smoke jumpers—outdoor fire fighters who parachute into the middle of a fire to put it out—some smoke jumpers burned to death on a ridge and one of the party survived. The way he survived was that they were part way up a hill in the middle of a draw—a shallow one-ended valley—and they saw the fire break around the base of the hill and they could see the fire coming up the hill at them. All but one of the firefighters tore ass up the hill and tried to outrun the fire and crest the hill. One of the guys stopped, opened his pack, pulled out some matches and set fire to the grass in front of him, creating a large fire which he then jumped into so he was in the middle of this grass fire as the grass fire was burning around him. He just curled up into a ball in the middle of this fire that he just started. His intuition was that if he burned out the fuel in the immediate area, then the big fire would go around that area because it would already be burned. He survived the fire and the guys who tried to outrun the fire didn’t—they all got burned to death. And when somebody burns to death it isn’t like, ‘Boom! You’re dead.’ What happens is your flesh cooks and your blood curdles and the fat in your body renders and your skin breaks and all these things happen and it takes a very long time to die.
Do you think that’s one of the worst ways to go?
Oh hell yeah. That would be number one of how not to die.
What do you think is number two?
I don’t know—maybe being thrown into a very slow woodchipper. Anyway, the long and the short of it was—this fire and this single event made a very deep impression on Norman Maclean and he wrote a book about it called Young Men and Fire and there’s a line in a Shellac song called ‘The Guy Who Invented Fire’ that says, ‘I’m going to invent a fire / I’m going to lay down in it’ and that’s directly stolen from Norman Maclean’s book. The reason that I mention that book and Norman Maclean is that he was a friend of my father and he was a scientific consultant on that book and he actually is mentioned in the book because the book is about Norman Maclean as an old man, revisiting this fire and his memory. He goes back to the location of the Mann Gulch fire and he retraces his steps of these guys that went up the hill and burned to death and he actually finds little artifacts. There’s kind of a touching scene where one of the guys is really badly roasted. One of the things that happens when you’re roasted is you get an insatiable thirst. They had packed their provisions with them and one of the things that they packed in their provisions were cans of potatoes that were packed in brine. At one point this guy is doomed and dying and cooked but he’s beseeching the other guys that he is with to give him something to drink because he just can’t take it anymore. So this guy opens a can of potatoes and lets him drink the brine out of the can of potatoes. And Norman Maclean finds this fucking rusted can in precisely the spot where that must have happened and it’s a really chilling moment in the book. So anyway—I don’t know what we were just talking about to bring me to the potatoes but it’s an incredible book and Norman Maclean was an old man trying to make some sense of this thing that’s been haunting him his whole life. My dad kind of helped out with his understanding the general behavior of forest fires. I came to Chicago at the same time that came out—to go to school at Northwestern and at the time Norman Maclean was the head of the English Department a the University of Chicago.
What’s the most affecting historical site you’ve ever visited?
Maybe Wounded Knee. I’m trying to remember if I’ve actually been to Wounded Knee. I want to say Wounded Knee.
Nothing in Eastern Europe?
I have to say, it’s weird driving through some place like Zagreb and seeing buildings with the corners blown off. Or like you realize that you’re at this nightclub in Serbia and that big burly motherfucker at the door probably did some shit during the war. Shit like that. I think that has more of an effect on me than the location. Yeah, like you see somebody and you’re like… you know? Or for example—being somewhere inland in Germany—and this was more true in the ‘80s when the Wall was still up—and you’d see a guy old enough that he must have been of fighting age during World War II. So then you have to wonder, ‘All right—were you a Nazi? Were you a soldier? Were you some kind of apparatchik? During the most important period in history, what was your role? What did you do? What did you see?’ That kind of shit.
If you ever got time to write a book, what would be worth exploring at length?
I don’t think I have a novel in me. I have written short fiction for my whole life, as a diversion. I have a feeling I would probably just carry on doing that. I have written some technical articles about the recording scene and I write pretty regularly on the forum for the studio and I think that satisfies my writing impulse. I’m a terrible correspondent otherwise so I guess that must satisfy me. At any rate, I don’t subscribe to the David Bowie school of creativity where because I’ve made records I am therefore also an actor and a poet and a painter. I think that’s hubristic, if I may use a word that I may have invented. But I really don’t feel like that’s necessary. I have a perfectly satisfying outlet for my creative impulse—the band is perfectly satisfying to me. So I don’t feel like I need to do anything else. And also—I don’t like admitting this because I think all musicians are generally intelligent people and well-spoken and in coversation are even articulate—but I think almost all of the books that I’ve read by musicians and all of those that I’ve even flipped through at the book store, whether it be one of Jimmy Buffett’s novels or one of Nick Cave’s or Lydia Lunch’s or Henry Rollins’—virtually all of them have been atrocious. Just embarrassing writing. I think the one exception is the stuff I’ve read that Eugene Robinson has written. He’s writing about fighting—I’m not a fighter. I don’t have any interest in fighting. I don’t think that it’s a noble or worthwhile or rewarding pursuit. I’m not entertained by it. I think it’s in every sense barbaric and I’m not interested in it, whether it’s dogs fighting or people fighting—I’m not interested in it. But his writing about fighting is so matter-of-fact and so self-aware that you can’t help but be completely charmed by it and I think he’s great. I also think his sensibilities and sense of humor are akin to mine and I enjoy reading stuff like that. He’s written a bunch of articles, some of which have been collected and expanded in a book called Fight. The hardcover of it is kind of hard to read because it was made as sort of a coffee-table item rather than a piece of literature, but it’s a great book—a great read. And also his band blog for Oxbow is great reading because he gets into some stuff on tour. It’s kind of weird that he does inspire this kind of challenge-match mentality with the bigger lunkheads in his audience.
What do you think is your great topic—something you’re endlessly fascinated by?
There’s like a half a dozen things. Generally my areas of interest outside of being in a band are probably cooking, billiards, poker, general superficial scientific interest—nothing academic but at the speed of the Discovery Channel.
Have you ever been to El Bulli?
No, although I have to say—intuitively I’m kind of grossed out by molecular gastronomy. There’s something about the industrial-process element of it that I have a hard time embracing. A lot of the sensations and a lot of the things that happen in molecular gastronomy are inevitably unique because it’s never occurred to anybody to put sea urchin pureé inside of a caramel shell. So of course they’re going to be unique experiences and as an eater, I enjoy unique experiences—I have a very expansive palate. But something about the amount of effort and convolution of the processes that need to occur in order to get to the finished product makes it seem unsatisfying. It makes it seem like that one bite of frozen carrot foam can’t possibly have been worth the three days of preparation and the team of assistants. There is something about that fundamental inefficiency that galls me. It makes it seem grotesque and indulgent and like a gilded toilet or something. I’m in this weird quandary. I would very much like to have that experience—I would very much like to respect it, but it is so indulgent and so reserved for the truly decadent that it’s like boutique heroin. It makes me hate the people who are into it. If there was like a DIY version where people could do it without wasting 90% of the ingredient to get the two drops of salmon essence—if there was a way that it could be made more like normal eating, but still have these unique sensational experiences… If there was a way that it could be made more normal so that it wouldn’t seem so indulgent and pampered and fucking Monopoly money, then I would be into it.
How much of that is what exactly people are paying for?
I don’t know. There are a couple of restaurants like that in Chicago that have these things like laser-grilled packing peanuts, but I’ve never eaten at any of them. I have friends who have and they truly enjoy the experience and say that they were breathtaking, memorable, life-changing meals. I believe them, but there’s something grotesque about it that makes me—in the weakest part of my personality, the reactionary part of my personality—makes me hate my friends a little bit for that. It makes me think that they’re creepy and I don’t like feeling that way about my friends. Because these are the same friends that can go to the ballpark with me and have some churros and a hot dog and enjoy that. They’re the same friends that appreciate the things that I do, like a fresh peach. What the hell is wrong with a fresh peach? It’s thirty cents and it’s awesome. So I don’t like feeling that way about them, but I can’t help myself.
Is this because you’re worried that there’s some tiny chance that you could become some totally decadent hedonist?
You know what? I thank Christ—assuming that He existed and was not a historical metaphor—that I have never had money. Because if I ever had money I would do stupid shit like that. I would come to think of private jet travel as normal. I’m that lazy and that weak. I’m pretty sure that it’s a normal human failing that I would fall victim to.
So you’ve been forced into principle by financial circumstance?
Exactly. When you’re dead broke, you can’t help but be honorable.

SHELLAC WITH ARCWELDER ON SAT., JUNE 20, AND SUN., JUNE 21, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 4 PM SAT. / 8 PM SUN. / $13-$15 / ALL AGES. ATTHEECHO.COM. SHELLAC’S EXCELLENT ITALIAN GREYHOUND IS OUT NOW ON TOUCH AND GO. VISIT SHELLAC AT TOUCHANDGORECORDS.COM.

Download: Crystal Antlers “Dust”

(from Tentacles out now on Touch and Go)

Crystal Antlers claim a creation myth so perfect it seems almost pre-ordained: a dedicated band of psychedelic chimney sweeps soon to be on their way to SXSW when their van and all the select vintage equipment within were swiped from the streets of Long Beach. But in what had to be one of the most clearly deserved acts of karmic compensation, the LBPD recovered their magic Econoline just in time for Crystal Antlers to mess with Texas. Then, the band only had two 45s to its name, including a first 7” that started strong with the Guru Guru guitars of “Parting Song for the Torn Sky” and finished stronger with a nearly Blue Cheer-besting cover of Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm.” Now Tentacles, the Antlers’ debut full-length as well as the gum-studded end of Touch and Go, falls into familiar grooves—songs that fly by on Comets on Fire-like orbits between heavy breaths from the band’s bottom-end. When a song occasionally drops back to solid ground, it’s fired back up again by a burst of propulsive drums or some well-timed keyboards, bumped up on the likes of synth-stuttering opener “Painless Sleep,” “Glacier” and others. But it’s the burners—”Dust,” “Andrew” and “Tentacles”—that provide the real power, sending the album off onto a crucial course.

—Miles Clements

Download: Crystal Antlers “Dust”

(from Tentacles out now on Touch and Go)

L.A. RECORD interviewed Crystal Antlers back before they’d even made their first EP and popularized the legend of Long Beach’s psychedelic chimneysweeps. Now Crystal Antlers’ Tentacles will be the final new release on Touch and Go, and the band is working on a surreal film about bassist Jonny Bell going insane and killing everyone. Founders Bell and guitarist Errol Davis—who has recently rejoined the band—meet for chicken and waffles.

What happened to the bank robber who put out your first 45?
Errol Davis (guitar): He became a chimney sweep—has his own company. He does pretty well.
Jonny Bell (bass/vocals): He’s still our guru. He robbed three banks in fifteen minutes. They were right across the street from each other.
What did Crystal Antlers learn from that?
E: We’re fast.
Errol, how does it feel to step back into a band you helped start?
E: It’s crazy to see people into the band, rather than playing to people who weren’t as responsive. It feels pretty natural.
J: We always wanted a bunch of people in the band. Now that we’re there, it’s a little chaotic. But all these people are Crystal Antlers—they define Crystal Antlers. But there can be all different versions. Kevin [Stuart] and Errol and I, or Andrew [King] and me and Damian [Edwards.]. We’ve done stuff in Europe—acoustic-type things where we didn’t do the entire band. Just pieces of it. There’s much more space.
Do you still feel like you’re a soul band at heart?
J: I feel like we’re trying to be something honest and trying to put our whole selves into it, which to me feels a lot like soul. And I like the feeling of old soul music. I feel we have a lot in common.
E: It’s not trying to recreate that sound as much as try to do it how they did it—a lot of passion.
How do you feel your first album came out? Did you get to do everything you wanted?
J: I’m ready to start the next thing! I wish we had more time on that. There was a lot of pressure from Touch and Go—now I understand why! I wish we would have been able to spend more time recording and mixing. In the end, all we set out to do was make an honest record, and sort of through sleep deprivation and other things we were able to do that. And basically it was all recorded and mixed in a week.
When you signed to Touch and Go, you said one of the things they liked was that you were from a different place than the rest of the L.A. bands who were getting signed then—what was important about that?
J: They didn’t really look at a lot of bands that were super-hyped up. They’re in the business of helping bring bands up. And at that time when we signed, we didn’t feel like a big hyped-up band. We’re a hard-working band playing for a while and they’d been talking to us for a long time. They bought the 7”s and the EP through mailorder, so I mailed it. It didn’t say Touch and Go—it was just their names. They were really excited I’d sent it personally—it had my home address as the return address. I’d always try and throw things in. A set list or something interesting. I included a piece of pizza with every order of the EP!
Do you know what their idea or vision for you was?
J: The cool thing is they didn’t have a vision. All they wanted to do was help us do what we were doing already. Almost to like a fault. I always expected when you sign, they warp you into something to make you big. But they totally trusted everything about us. Even to a point—the original art for the EP was a Max Ernst painting I cropped and put on, and I didn’t get the rights, and they started printing it and then were like, ‘Wait, you guys don’t own the rights?’ And they had to have another guy make the cover. They really turned out to be the best label we could have imagined. They helped us so much. They’re really like a family.
How did it feel to be the last band they’d have?
J: Actually, we found out when we were in Berlin. And a week later, we were in Amsterdam, filming a thing for FAB TV—a huge television and net webcast in the Netherlands. And they came in and told us—‘We just found out this is gonna be the last episode—they’re cutting our funding!’ We’re like the grim reaper. But with Touch and Go, we talked to Corey—it has to do with the record industry. They’re the only big indie that was left—no major involvement. Totally independent. And people aren’t buying records. It’s been that way for a long time. It really predated us signing them. We didn’t have anything to do with it. Or that’s what we tell ourselves.
The last time we talked to you, the EP wasn’t even recorded—now it’s 18 months later and the album is out. How are you able to move so fast?
J: This is the only thing we do. The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is just start working on songs, work on email, work on art, silkscreen, start making phone calls—and that’s all I do every day. I put everything I possibly could into this. We’re learning how to be a real functioning band, instead of kids playing in a garage—because that’s what we really are.
What was the point of no return?
J: For me it was a long time ago. For everyone else, fairly recently. Maybe the F Yeah tour. I think after that, Andrew sold his car to buy a new guitar. And we all started basically putting in everything we had.
Henry Rollins says ‘art leaves marks.’ What has it done to you?
J: I was going to college before. I gave that up. I wanted to be a history professor. And relationships. It takes a lot for me to be able to keep my friends I grew up with—I lost a lot of friends. Just because I’m gone and I can’t communicate all the time. Some people don’t like that. I try to take a lot of time to focus on the people who have supported me and make sure they understand I still care about them. It’s really stressful on relationships to be gone all the time. It takes a while to learn to navigate that. When you’re with somebody, you have to really focus on them. And don’t think about anything you’re doing—nobody wants to hear about anything your band is doing. They don’t care.
How does Damien feel about his cult following?
J: He’s always had that. I don’t think he can tell the difference between the people now and when he was playing Koo’s Café. He’s always been that way.
Why are you making a movie where you go crazy and kill the rest of your band? Are you actualizing something there?
J: Maybe when we kill each other. It’s sort of a postmodern documentary. Kind of loosely scripted. We wrote scenes along the way with people. Sort of in the style of Easy Rider. Michael from Videothing wrote the script, and we’re going to be doing a score for the film, which we’ve already started working on. We’re working on that and a new record and a new 7”.
Who’s going to put them out?
J: I don’t know what we’re going to do. It doesn’t matter. We’re gonna keep making stuff. We’ve been on the same trajectory all this time—before Touch and Go. So it doesn’t matter. It’s like some aspects of Black Flag—how they were all militant about their band. Although I wouldn’t want all the member changes and things. I hope we can have longevity—be productive. I like No Age—they’re really productive, even though they’re obviously pretty different stylistically. Maybe like Beefheart, too.
Maybe you should tell people how you scooped out that fish head.
J: I went to seventy different stores looking for all the pieces of the outfit for the cover, and I went to Chinatown and I was pointing to a picture I had of the cover. And the guy grabbed a salmon out of the tank—a live one—and clubbed it with a baseball bat. An Easton aluminum bat. I remember—‘I used to have that bat when I was in Little League.’ And he cut the head off and threw it in a plastic bag and handed it to me. Four dollars and fifty-six cents. I kept the receipt!
Where do you get your work ethic?
J: Partially the way we were raised, although everybody’s different.
E: Everybody was in a punk band—all different punk bands. We played together—helped each other out.
J: Andrew and I were in Boy Scouts. I was a Sea Scout. I worked on a ship—delivering cargo to the Channel Islands.
What’s your favorite knot?
J: Definitely the bowline or sheepshank. The bowline is the strongest. It can save your life—that’s what they tell you. You can tie it real quick. If you fall off a cliff with a rope in your hand for some reason, you have time to tie a bowline.
Have you ever saved someone’s life?
J: I saved my cousin from falling into a blowhole in Hawaii—a spot near the ocean with volcanic rocks where water comes underneath and shoots in the air like two hundred feet. When it comes down, it washes everything in. My cousin was younger and he fell and was getting washed into the hole, which would have dropped him like a thousand feet into the rocks. I dove in and grabbed him. And Victor [Rodriguez] saved some guy at a party in San Francisco. Errol and I were in the studio recording and everyone else was at a party on a roof, and some drunk guy fell through a skylight and caught himself with his elbows and was holding himself there with a beer—he wouldn’t drop his beer! And Victor grabbed him and saved him.
So at least one life was saved during the recording of Tentacles?
J: At least one.

L.A. RECORD PRESENTS CRYSTAL ANTLERS WITH HAR MAR SUPERSTAR, THE SLANG CHICKENS AND MORE ON THUR., APR. 16, AT THE RELEASE PARTY FOR TENTACLES AT THE EAGLE ROCK CENTER FOR THE ARTS, 2225 COLORADO BLVD., EAGLE ROCK. 8 PM / $6 / ALL AGES. MYSPACE.COM/CRYSTAL ANTLERS. AND ON SAT., APR. 18, AT FINGERPRINTS, 4612-B E. 2ND ST., LONG BEACH. CONTACT VENUE FOR TIME / FREE / ALL AGES. INDIERECORDSHOP.COM. CRYSTAL ANTLERS’ TENTACLES IS OUT NOW ON TOUCH AND GO. VISIT CRYSTAL ANTLERS AT MYSPACE.COM/CRYSTALANTLERS.

Download: Crystal Antlers “Andrew”

(off Tentacles out now on Touch and Go)

04/16/09 – Cntr For Arts-Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA
04/18/09 – Cellar Door, Visalia, CA
04/21/09 – Commodore, Vancouver, Canada – with Cold War Kids
04/22/09 – Showbox, Seattle, WA – with Cold War Kids
04/23/09 – Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR – with Cold War Kids
04/26/09 – Crystal Bay Club Crown Rm, Crystal Bay, NV
04/27/09 – Crepe Place, Santa Cruz, CA
04/28/09 – The Fillmore, San Francisco, CA – with Cold War Kids
04/30/09 – Kilby Court, Salt Lake City, UT
05/01/09 – Larimer Lounge, Denver, CO
05/02/09 – Slowdown Jr, Omaha, NE
05/03/09 – Aquarium, Fargo, ND
05/04/09 – Triple Rock Social Club, Minneapolis, MN
05/05/09 – High Noon Saloon, Madison, WI
05/06/09 – Empty Bottle, Chicago, IL – with Vivian Girls
05/07/09 – The Crofoot, Pontiac, MI – with Vivian Girls
05/08/09 – Horseshoe, Toronto, Canada – with Vivian Girls
05/10/09 – Now That’s Class, Cleveland, OH
05/11/09 – Bell House, Brooklyn, NY
05/12/09 – Mercury Lounge, New York, NY
05/15/09 – The Great Escape, Brighton, United Kingdom
05/16/09 – Futuresonic Festival, Manchester, United Kingdom
05/17/09 – Tommy’s Bar, Cardiff, United Kingdom
05/18/09 – Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
05/19/09 – Stereo, Glasgow, United Kingdom
05/20/09 – Arts Centre, Norwich, United Kingdom
05/21/09 – Sound City Festival, Liverpool, United Kingdom
05/22/09 – Stag and Dagger, Leeds, United Kingdom
05/23/09 – Dot 2 Dot Festival, Bristol, United Kingdom
05/24/09 – Dot 2 Dot Festival, Nottingham, United Kingdom
05/25/09 – Hoxton Bar & Grill, London, United Kingdom
05/26/09 – Point Ephemere, Paris, France
05/27/09 – Son’Art, Bordeaux, France
05/28/09 – Moby Dick, Madrid, Spain
05/29/09 – Primavera Sound Festival, Barcelona, Spain
08/13/09 – Oya Festival, Oslo, Norway

Download: Mi Ami “New Guitar”

(from Watersports on Touch and Go)

Members of Black Eyes regrouped into Mi Ami, a Bay Area-based band whose music might make one person think of Rage Against the Machine being eaten by George Clinton, but someone else thinks of Richard Hell running through a tropical jungle. Mi Ami’s album Watersports is out now on Touch and Go. Guitarist/singer Daniel Martin-McCormick speaks from the back of the band van as they traverse the West Coast. This interview by Daiana Feuer.

How does your van fare in terms of bad band smell?
Daniel Martin-McCormick (guitar/vocals): It’s alright. It was bad for a while. I had a bunch of fresh apples. For some reason apples smell awful when they’re in cars, to me. I find it kinda repulsive. I felt really bad but we had to give it to a friend of ours. Now it kinda smells like a combo of us and the wood of the loft we built for our gear. It’s not too bad. I’ve been in worse vans.
How do you feel about Touch and Go closing down?
It’s pretty intense. It’s more upsetting for us from a fan’s perspective. We were excited to work with this label that we have a lot of respect for. We just—on this tour—got the chance to meet everybody. And meeting them under these really intense circumstances was pretty heartbreaking. It’s like, ‘Wow, I can’t even believe this label is shutting down.’ It’s a shock. It’s more of a cognitive dissonance than anything else because I’ve been buying Touch and Go records since I was 15. I bought The Jesus Lizard, Liar, first. Or Atomizer—I don’t remember which was first. It’s really strange. It’s expected to always be there, and now it’s gone. We were just starting to get our feet wet. Watersports just came out, but it’s still going to be in print. They’re going to keep their catalog in print—they’re just not going to get anything new.
What would signal that civilization was coming to an end? ‘If this ended that means everything is going to end.’
I think civilization is a model of society where profit motives and conquests are the motivational factors—the pillars on which this society’s built. Pre-existing societies get wiped out by civilizer societies because they’re not structured in such a way that they’re trying to go out and conquer somebody else or constantly develop economically. I would say that profit motives would mean the end of civilization. It would change the way that you view your place in the world. I don’t know if that would necessarily be a bad thing.
What’s your favorite corporate pleasure?
If there was no Coke Zero, I would flip out. No, that’s not true! There are things I like, records and record labels…things are cool but everything comes and goes. The only thing about Touch and Go ending or any of this stuff is that it’s happening while we’re around to witness it. The only reason that something feels limitless is because it’s been lodged into your memory long enough without having any end in sight. Your perception of them is of something that’s alive. Everything is going to come to a halt at some point. To say that this corporation or this brand or even this idea is the one thing is putting your eggs in one basket. I think the only basket you can put all your eggs in is life. Life will continue in some respect or another. It’s strange to talk about things in such dramatic terms because in one sense it is dramatic—but in another, it’s upsetting. But it’s part of the cycle of the world.
Are you ready to live in a tree if we go there?
Well, no, I’m not literally prepared to live in a tree. But I don’t think it’s at that point yet.
The anti-civilizationists think that civilization has to collapse because it’s built on unsustainable structures. So we’ll return to nature and live in trees.
That’s sort of a statement of fact. The only downside is what do we do with all these people? It’s cool if you want to go live in the forest but the reality is there’s too many people on the planet. So something is going to have to be sorted out so people can still live. It’s a profound idea and there are certain aspects to it that are undeniable. Our society is built on an unsustainable model. But us living in trees isn’t going to be a quick fix.
What’s your favorite sounding instrument?
That’s a tough call. Deeply resonating bells. Human voice. Round, harmonious human vocal sounds. Sub-bass frequencies. Overtones. Cymbal. Cello. Negative space violin. Old electric piano. Bird calls—
If you could go study music in any country of the world, where would you go?
Indonesia’s a top contender. It’d be great to go hang out with gamelan masters. I’d be curious to see what’s happening on the street level. It’s pretty locked tight against tourism. There’s a couple areas of the world with pretty amazing percussion traditions: Southeast Asia, all over Africa, but especially West African percussion. And North African guitar playing. Indian music is pretty amazing, although it’s such a classic tradition that you kind of have to devote your whole life studying it. That’s the same with a lot of traditional music from around the world. If I had to pick one tradition, it would have to be North African or maybe Ethiopian guitar playing. Those are the two most beautiful string sounds I’ve ever heard. It’s pretty much beyond compare when it comes to making music on your own with an instrument. It’s emanating the most excruciatingly wonderful sounds. I’d be into doing classical vocal training. I’ve done a little bit but not much. It’d be nice to be able to sing opera.
What’s the most interesting response you’ve gotten to your music?
One of my favorite things someone said after seeing us play is that it made them sad and I liked that a lot. On the record I tried—not to be mopey or melodramatic, but I embrace an emotional aesthetic in the music. A lot of people talk about it as something post-punk or world beat, which is kind of so shitty. The lyrics are personal but the playing is more about us playing together. The three of us having a personal dynamic. If you view the whole package, the lyrics are my sadness put alongside all of the energy and vibe we build. That was really nice. One person said they hear Rage Against The Machine in our music. I was surprised to hear that. I was curious to know what they were hearing. People’s comparisons speak more to their own taste and what they’re listening to in music and understanding. If they say, ‘that sounds funky,’ they’re following the bass line. If you want to hear the guitar, then it’s not funky. It takes a lot of contextual knowledge to be able to unpack music in an analytical way. To actually understand the intention—the essence of the music as it’s understood by the performer. Somebody hears an overlap of Rage Against the Machine in our music, it’s there—even if we didn’t put it there. In a sense, they’re not wrong. If someone was like, ‘Oh, I hear so much Joni Mitchell in your music,’ that’s a little stretch. But it’s interesting to see how people perceive it because most of the time we don’t talk about it—it’s mostly just us playing it and having our own internal dialogue about what it’s about.
What’s a sound you passed by recently and said, ‘Oh, if only I could get that into a song?’
The other day we were listening to Robert Ashley in the car. He’s this weird composer of TV operas and has weird speaking parts all over his songs. And I couldn’t really hear most of it and had to turn it off after ten minutes because it wasn’t very good driving music, but there’s this weird piano chord with him just talking. I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and the piano—I couldn’t tell if it was in cycles, or a continuous ebb and flow of spacious chords. But I really liked the frozen aspect to it. It felt frozen in time and I kind of sat with it and unpacked it, wading through the sonic space. A lot of the music I’m into has an aspect of that: being a sound in a space—as opposed to a big rollercoaster ride through all these different emotional experiences. More just holding a natural phenomenon. Another being that you have to interact with it in a more peer-to-peer level. Music that doesn’t try to lead you too much, and it just lives on its own terms. I was touched in a weird way. I wouldn’t expect to hear a lot of piano on our next record but a certain feeling… I don’t know. You’re always translating from something. Trying to translate a record you like or a feeling you got from something else. Reaching out into the ether and trying to pull something back from there and making it our own. It’s a little bit more mysterious.
Is music a language?
It is and it isn’t. Language is such a strange idea in a way. It’s an abstract language. In a sense it’s so clear but it’s communicating in the most abstract terms. It’s communicating on a direct emotional level. It’s communicating something that can’t be—yeah, it’s such a cliché—but something that can’t be put into words. You can point to it but it’s a much more complex emotional experience, listening to music. You can’t just say, ‘This is a sad song and this is a happy song.’ You can have a sad song with happy elements and you can just keep going on forever, dealing with all the associations and subliminal messages and stuff the performer, the composer, the songwriter doesn’t even know. It becomes its own life form and you have to honor it and play it on its own terms, with your whole being, and make it come alive. And it comes from you but it’s not from you in the way something more tangible is from you. You can’t say, ‘This is my intention and this is how you should understand it.’ And with language, ostensibly, what I’m saying right now is much more direct and concrete and every word I’m saying I’m choosing for a specific reason to communicate a certain idea. But with music, you play it and you’re communicating something similar to a sentence, but it’s very different, it’s on its own terms. That’s the only reason people keep playing it. Because you can’t ever say it’s one thing that’s going to be complete. It’s always an incomplete interaction with the greatness… or whatever.

MI AMI’S WATERSPORTS IS OUT NOW ON TOUCH AND GO. VISIT MI AMI AT MYSPACE.COM/MIAMIAMIAMI.

(from Carried To Dust out now on Quarterstick)

This interview by Kevin Ferguson.

You went to UCI?
Joey Burns (guitar/vocals): I did! And survived! I wound up studying German, but I can speak a little Spanish. I need to learn—I gotta speak Spanish! My friend Jacob Valenzuela—who sings the song ‘Inspiración’ on the new record—he comes up with these kind of colloquialisms when he speaks. I love that aspect.
Why did you go to UCI?
I applied for UCLA—I applied undeclared—and oddly enough had I applied to the music school with the honors that I had in music, I probably would’ve got in! It’s ironic that I wound up doing what I’m doing now, which is kind of somewhat ethno-musically minded. But I followed my heart. Now I’m here in Tucson recording a track for a Hollywood movie called Love Ranch. It stars Helen Mirren and Joe Pesci. It’s about a couple that ran a healthy and legal bordello just outside of the Reno city limits. I’ve been watching Helen make out with this—
Are you sure you want us to publish spoilers?
Good point! I don’t want to ruin the movie.
How would Calexico have scored No Country For Old Men?
We’d take our cue from the director and the theme of the movie. I wouldn’t want to play it necessarily so Southwestern. I like the soundtrack to There Will Be Blood because has that sense of organic instrumentation. The harmonies and everything tap more into this deeper theme, rather than like a superficial surface connection. That’s what I think I would’ve wanted to do with that. There’s really some dark dialogue and themes. I wouldn’t necessarily come out blazing with this huge Morricone style. That’s not really what we’re into doing anyways. But for a movie, it becomes more about what the director wants. This movie that we’re being asked to do, we’re being asked for all the right reasons—which makes it the more enjoyable to want to do. I would really want to take it to some dark places—more treated sounds, prepared guitar, mix things like that in. More effects and more textures. Something that you would expect to hear from an earlier Calexico album: producing sounds and tones through combinations of instruments to give it more depth.
Why did you decide to cover ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ for the Dylan movie soundtrack?
It was in the script. We read the script and loved it and noticed that they had that song mentioned. I heard that they were thinking about trying to get Roger McGuinn to do that song. We have a connection to Roger through his family here in Tucson. We said to ourselves, ‘Let’s make a version and see if they like it.’ Again—a great script and a great read!
Did you ever get to meet Nancy Sinatra? What was she like?
She was really cool! Very down to earth. We met her after we recorded our part of the project. She was very, very approachable. No attitude—very funny. Her daughter was there, so we saw the mother-daughter connection—we think Nancy is still very much the daughter! It was a very monumental meeting, like when I met Willie Nelson and Mickey Raphael, his harmonica player. He told us his ambition is to come and record and write a record with us. We were like, ‘You know a lot of people…’ and he said, ‘Yeah! Tell me who you need!’
Why does your heart forever belong to Arizona?
I was born in Montreal, Canada. My parents moved to L.A. in ‘67. I moved in 1993. Why have I stayed here since ‘93? I think it’s very easy for a musician to stay here. Low overhead! It’s relatively cheap to live here. Rent is pretty low and the downtown scene is pretty exciting. It’s close enough to the coast where I can still see friends. Lots of artists live here or move here temporarily—it’s got this strange transient vibe here. There are a lot of stories—a lot of strange stories. You can see people on the street and you can imagine some of the strange stories too. I like the fact that here are a lot of different cultures living here, it’s not just about this Western mentality. There’s a mass of immigrants from Mexico, the native and indigenous cultures…
Is it suffering like Phoenix is? Californian retirees polluting it with McMansions?
That definitely happened for a while. I think now—of course—things are slowing down. We had a lot of people coming into town buying up houses, just like everywhere else. Maybe Phoenix is just philosophically aligned more with the idea of McMansions. With Tucson there is still a really great sense of character and history of architecture.
How are you handling the city tearing down Magic Carpet Golf?
It’s not an easy situation to deal with. I’ve gone and photographed it. A lot of the main attractions and larger than life figures and sculptures that make up the beauty and mystery are gonna be moved to this other location—I think it’s gonna be the Valley of the Moon? It’s up near the Fort Lowell and Campbell area. So there is hope. They’re not gonna throw those statues away. That’s how I’m handling it. I’m handling it today. I actually went there today to take photos of it.
What was the first album you bought at Toxic Ranch Records?
Oh God! The first record I ever bought there? That’s a good question! I probably bought one of the Bloat Records releases. Probably Doo Rag. It was probably in some kind of strange cardboard package.
What is the most spiritual experience you had at the Desert Museum?
The most spiritual experience was actually walking away from all the crowds of people and walking up to the wash that’s across the street. It was a while ago. A friend and I were checking out all of the wildflowers—we were kind of away from the main trail—and we saw a group of tourists talking about what might have happened thousands and thousands of years ago. I think there was water there at one point. That’s when I kind of felt connected to this time and place—like to what life might have been like years ago, and that was right across from the Desert Museum. [A train goes by, whistle blaring.] There goes the train!
Is that the same train on ‘Throws Daggers’?
Yeah!
Did you plan on having it in the song?
It was totally accidental! We were just recording it a block away from where I’m standing in Solar Culture Gallery. It’s right on the train tracks—that’s what makes this place so exciting. It’s on a lot of the old songs on Calexico albums. They were all unintentional. We tried lots of times to record in between train crossings.
What is the most potentially psychedelic site in Tucson?
I think the most psychedelic site for me is if you keep going past Old Tucson studios—past the Arizona Desert Museum—if you keep going to this place called Signal Hill. I mention it on the old record. It’s this Indian hill with some beautiful petroglyphs on the top of the hill. It kind of overlooks the valley. I think that just being there—sober or not—and looking at these petroglyphs as the sun is going down—it’s conducive for many a psychedelic trip.

CALEXICO WITH THE CAVE SINGERS ON MON., SEPT. 29, AT THE HENRY FONDA THEATRE, 6126 HOLLYWOOD BLVD., HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $18 / ALL AGES. GOLDENVOICE.COM. CALEXICO’S CARRIED TO DUST IS OUT NOW ON QUARTERSTICK. VISIT CALEXICO AT CASADECALEXICO.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/CASADECALEXICO.

We are please to announce that our friends the Crystal Antlers have signed with Touch and Go Records.  To celebrate they are hitting the road with Fucked Up and The Strange Boys.  Here are some tour dates for ya’ll.

8/12 Los Angeles, California – 6th St. Warehouse – Fuck Yeah Fest Benefit        

8/20 Los Angeles, California – Low End Theory @ The Airliner  

8/30 Echo Park, California – Fuck Yeah Fest 5 w/ No Age, Negative Approach, High Places, Glass Candy, Two Gallants + More

8/31 Berkeley, California – 924 Gilman St. w/ Fucked Up, The Strange Boys        

9/1 San Francisco, California – Hemlock Tavern w/ Fucked Up, The Strange Boys           

9/4 Olympia, Washington – Eagle’s Hall w/ Fucked Up, The Strange Boys           

9/5 Seattle, Washington – Vera Project w/ Fucked Up, The Strange Boys            

9/6 Portland, Oregon – Satyricon w/ Fucked Up, The Strange Boys, Sex/Vid, Past Lives

9/7 Vancouver, British Columbia  - Richard on Richards w/ Fucked Up   

9/9 San Francisco, California – The Knockout Bar w/ The Strange Boys  

9/11 San Diego, California – TBD w/ The Strange Boys

10/4 Eagle Rock, California – Eagle Rock Music Festival            

10/5 Long Beach, California – University by the Sea Festival       

10/11 San Francisco, California – Frisco Freakout at Thee Parkside w/ Wooden Shjips + more