The Grammy Museum’s evening with Yoko Ono marked the opening of her newly curated Grammy Museum exhibit, “John Lennon, Songwriter.” Celebrating the 70th anniversary of her late husband’s birth (Oct. 9), the exhibit spans John’s entire career and displays such artifacts as handwritten song lyrics, guitars, a pair of his signature wire-rimmed glasses, a typewriter, and rare historic film footage covering John Lennon’s early influences, his time with the Quarry Men and the Beatles, and his transition to solo artist.

—Linda Rapka

Since I did pretty good on exclusives last year—Dengue Fever/Chicha Libre split, Sonic Youth/Beck split and This LP Crashes Hard Drives, among others—I thought I would post my shortlist of 2010 Record Store Day exclusives that I’ll be looking for early Saturday morning. The full list is here if you wanna look, and if I actually get some of these, maybe I will splat ‘em down at Big Freak and try them out.

—Chris Ziegler

Budos Band/Sharon Jones & The Dapkings “Day Tripper”/”Money” 7” (Daptone, pressing details unknown)
I already have a few soul 45s that do Beatles songs—actually, “Daytripper” but by the Vontastics—and that’s how I know this will at least be good, and since it’s Sharon, the Dap-Kings and the Budos Band, I know it will actually be great.

Daedelus Righteous Fists of Harmony LP (Brainfeeder, pressing details unknown)
If I do nothing else, I will get everything Brainfeeder puts out on vinyl.

dios “we are dios” 7” (Buddyhead, pressing details unknown)
Been waiting so long! The new dios album is one of the best records I’ve heard for a long long time. Until the whole thing hits vinyl, this will heroically hold the line.

Fela Kuti 10” EP (Knitting Factory/MRI)
Four early Fela tracks—“My Lady Frustration” / “Wayo” / “Lover” / “Eko”—recorded in L.A. in 1969. Good from every possible angle and for every possible situation.

Happy Birthday “Shampoo” b/w “Alien” (Sub Pop, 750 made)
Wild Kyle from King Tuff’s new band. Saw ‘em break amps in Texas and wanna hear more! Sparks / Milk ‘n’ Cookies / Only Ones goof-glam with ambitious falsetto.

John Fahey The Yellow Princess LP (Vanguard)
I need some nice new Fahey, even though he translates pretty well on furry bottom-of-the-new-arrivals-box rescue LPs. But this one will never be left to suffer like that. Guitar how a guitar wants to be played, if you haven’t heard this.

John Lennon 3 x 7” box set (individually numbered, w/3 7” singles, 3 postcards, 24 X 36 poster, and custom 45 adaptor hub; Capitol, 5000 made)
“Mother” b/w Yoko Ono “Why” and “Imagine” b/w “It’s So Hard” and “Watching The Wheels” b/w Yoko Ono “Yes, I’m Your Angel.” Only if this is kinda gently priced, but it’s a nice thing to have hanging around the house.

Mississippi John Hurt Today LP (Vanguard)
Another in the fancy Vanguard reissues series. It’ll be hazed by all the thick scratchy Folkways records filed alongside it.

The Rationals Rationalism 7” (Ace Records, 1000 mades)
Cool early Detroit soul ‘n’ roll. You can play Bob Seger System next to Stax stuff and you can probably work that with the Rationals, too.

Rodriguez “Inner City Blues” (recorded live in the streets of Paris) b/w “I’m Gonna Live Til I Die” (live cover of Frank Sinatra song) 7” (Light In the Attic)
Got into Rodriguez long after he’d had his first moment but before Light In The Attic did the good work of reissuing him, which is why my pre-authorized Rodriguez LP is on vinyl that flops around like a tortilla. Tuff folk from a real sweetheart.

V/A Fragments From A Work In Progress (4AD)
Live Ariel Pink and Haunted Graffiti (“Menopause Man”) plus Gang Gang Dance, Blonde Redhead and unreleased Big Pink and tUnE-yArDs who I should check out, I think.

V/A Radio Galaxia (B-Music / Finders Keepers)
My psychic suspicion to be this year’s This LP Crashes Hard Drives, which was last year’s one-stop for revelatory rippers. (Worth it for Monks and Pisces alone.) Also has the words GASLAMP KILLER on the cover, which in English means BUY THIS RECORD.

Download: VOICEsVOICEs “Flulyk Visions” (Radio Edit)

(from the Origins EP out Feb. 2 on Manimal)

VOICEsVOICEs might be like the middle of every great Led Zeppelin song, or maybe like Yoko Ono played backwards while in a warm cave. Their new EP—produced by Prefuse 73—is out now on Manimal Vinyl. Nico Turner and Jenean Farris met with L.A. RECORD‘s Scott Schultz at the Farmers Market to discuss how Prefuse brought out the voices of VOICEsVOICEs, which of them is the better wrestler, and how drummers are more than the musicians at the back of the stage.

I was listening to an advance track of one of the songs on your new EP, and I could actually make out a couple of the lyrics clearly: ‘Human kindness.’
Jenean Farris (drums/vocals/effects): That was from ‘Flulyk Visions,’ from our EP coming out in January. It’s pronounced ‘flu-like,’ like ‘flu-like symptoms.’ When we make soundscapes, it’s all about how it feels. And we’re obsessed with the English language—the way words sound together. We try to be spontaneous about how we name our songs—it’s how we’re feeling. Whatever name pops in our head right away that just fits, we’ll run with it. And for whatever reason, that popped into my head for that song.
You were both new to your instruments when you started VOICEsVOICEs, right?
Nico Turner (guitar/vocals/effects): We were both drummers in other bands. We played around, but we didn’t actually know what we were doing. Pedals, amps, guitars—we didn’t really know how it worked.
Jenean Farris: We could strum a guitar, but until you plug it in and hook it up, you really don’t know what you’re doing.
Nico Turner: We had guitars, but we didn’t want them to sound like guitars because that was boring to us. So we started experimenting and really didn’t know what we were doing.
Jenean Farris: In the beginning, it was more about the sounds we could capture. And then we had the one loop pedal, so we would loop stuff—a lot of it was vocals going through the guitar mix and distorting the vocals to make sounds as well.
How did Nico end up the guitarist? Did you flip a coin?
Nico Turner: When we would jam and play together to come up with stuff, it just happened that I enjoyed a lot of the stuff that I was coming up with—these sounds on guitar—and Jenean is such an amazing drummer and it just happened that she was into that so much. She’s just so good at it, so it happened.
Which one of you is the better singer?
Jenean Farris: We have the same singing individual ability. We have different styles so it works out to be equal. Our name, VOICEsVOICEs, is a lot of masking. We wanted to get more harmonies out there and actually really get our voices out there—it’s like we got the drumming and the sounds were fine, but our own natural voices were frightening—and then to write lyrics and stuff … We’re the hardest critics on ourselves. So when we went to record with Prefuse 73, the first thing he did was stick us in front of a microphone and was like, ‘OK, sing this part!’ Put us on the spot and it forced us to do it. And it was cool because we wouldn’t have been able to do it unless he was the way he was—which was very, ‘DAMN! That’s dope!’ He was really supportive and telling Nico things that she never even knew about her voice before—with me too. That’s really interesting and I wouldn’t have ever thought of it that way until he mentioned it to me. It was really encouraging. That helped us get to that place where we’re not afraid now to really actually sing—even without effects and stuff.
Were you nervous about working with Prefuse?
Nico Turner: Like Jenean said, he actually yanked me in front of the microphone to sing my first day. It literally took me all day to get my voice out of my body. He was so nice and patient and willing to work with us and really defused the whole ‘Oh my god, it’s Prefuse 73!’ thing. It was great and he was one of the best people to work with.
On that first day when Nico was on the mic, were you behind the glass with Prefuse? What was running through your head?
Jenean Farris: I was excited. I know I don’t have the most immaculate voice, but I’m not afraid to go out there and try. I was excited because he was forcing her to do it, but he was able to be more encouraging than I am able to be. His way is way more gentle and supportive in ways I can’t be.
What kind of fingerprints did Prefuse leave on you?
Jenean Farris: He took us in a direction that we wanted to go but we didn’t have the capabilities. We went in there with live technology.
Nico Turner: He was somebody who knew how to mix well and was a great producer who let us draw the line without any big ego about it, and he only worked with us because he wanted to work with us. We were spoiled working with him. He pushed us vocally and with electronics and stuff that we wanted to lean toward—experiments that we weren’t previously capable of.
Jenean Farris: He also has all this really fun equipment that we don’t have. Like he let me put some lap steel in there just to add a little texture! Not a solo, but to make different sounds.
When you first started writing together, did you intentionally avoid making traditional songs?
Jenean Farris: It wasn’t a deliberate counter-approach. We weren’t like, ‘Oh, we’re going to be different!’ We wanted to embrace the sounds. Whatever we did, if it was something we liked, we were going to try to be free and run with it.
Nico Turner: It was an experiment about embracing the creation of sound. Whatever we liked was what we ran with.
Jenean Farris: We have a library of small loops that we’ve come up with. We recycle a lot of things. We’ll go back to a loop that we liked and build off of it. Some rock bands would say that we just use riffs. It’s kind of like that. We find noises that we like and build off of it.
Was the Sounds Outside EP recorded live?
Jenean Farris: It wasn’t recorded live. It was recorded at a gallery, but it was kind of live.
Nico Turner: It wasn’t one take. It was recorded in three takes. We did the whole CD in one day. The track ‘Sounds Outside’ was recorded with one take.
Jenean Farris: We sat on the floor and recorded it live—no retake.
Nico Turner: At the Show Cave in Echo Park.
Jenean Farris: That was where I first heard the Rainbow Arabia CD. I borrowed it and never gave it back.
I always say Manimal bands travel in packs. The first time I saw you at the Echo, it was after being highly recommended by Devon from Exit Music and Eddie from Polyamorous Affair. Eddie said, ‘VOICEsVOICEs sounds like the middle of every great Zeppelin song.’ How do you describe it?
Jenean Farris: People always ask us and I just say, ‘I don’t know, man!’
Nico Turner: I just say ‘experimental,’ even though that is totally vague. But that’s what we are. It’s a big experiment for us.
Jenean Farris: People want you to classify yourself, but the second you do that, there is so many things they can write off about you. We’re really worried because some people say electronic, some people say ambient, psychedelic, rock … We’re really parts of all of them. We just try to stay away from a band sound. We’ll let other people make those statements.
You two have been together less than a year and a half. Are you surprised how much progress you’ve made?
Nico Turner: We never had a plan—we wanted to create something different without being stuck behind a drum kit.
Jenean Farris: We don’t want to be a drum machine for someone else’s band—like a robot. We wanted to get the respect as artists and songwriters.
Nico Turner: We wanted to break that mold of our only being drummers—
Jenean Farris: —and not being credited as songwriters or having any creative input.
Nico Turner: Just because we liked what were doing and it was so special to us—that was the drive for us to go out and play as many shows as we could in the first year. Then we met Chuck P [from Indie 103.1]. We were so proud of our EP—we said, ‘Chuck, you love music, check this out!’ We just gave it to him and he loved it, and he knew Paul from Manimal. It was really just being proud of what we were doing and wanting to share it, and everything just came from there.
Jenean Farris: In terms of things happening to us as a baby band, it’s really serendipitous. Everything is falling into place. I mean, we do have to give ourselves some credit, too—after all, we have been working really hard. Right from the beginning, we were out promoting and putting ourselves out there as much as possible, even when we weren’t even ready. We would play shows before we even had our set down, and it was actually a very vulnerable place to be in. People could see us learning how to play right in front of them—a very, raw vulnerable place to be. But that was part of the excitement. And of course we would do that in places where that was OK. We wouldn’t go play at the Viper Room. People go there expecting performances and they expect them to be tight. The art galleries, the Smell—places like that—we could put ourselves out there and it was fine, and then it just happened that Paul saw one of our notices out there online—it may have even been L.A. RECORD. Serendipity and the total effort of working hard.
Was there a ‘Eureka!’ moment when you realized that you two had something? That it wasn’t just a personal project?
Nico Turner: I remember my ‘Eureka!’ moment. We were practicing at the Smell—it was just us there. It was hot, and we felt like we were wasting time and were ready to give up. Jenean went outside to smoke a cigarette and I stayed inside and to get out my aggression I started playing the second part of ‘Tape Moon’ and yelling that part, and Jenean came running in and said, ‘Keep doing that!’ And we wrote the song. It was June 2008 when we were first practicing. It was one of our first practices. We were trying to write songs for our show we had with Mick Turner.
From Hawkwind?
Jenean Farris: No. From the Dirty Three. If it was Nik Turner from Hawkwind, my mom would have shit bricks. She loves them. One of the first records I ever had was Fripp and Eno where it was one long song. My parents were punk rock musicians, though. Nico’s dad was a jazz player.
And you two met at a Xu Xu Fang show?
Jenean Farris: We did meet at a Xu Xu Fang show. We had talked about meeting up at a show at some point. I had just discovered Xu Xu Fang, and I loved them and I saw that they were playing at Silverlake Lounge. So I called her and said, ‘You have to check out this band.’ So she went and she loved it and it was awesome—so that was cool. And it was really weird that night because there were thunderstorms. It started to leak in and the power went out, but they still managed to do some sort of a drum-off with minimal light in the background and funky pictures. It was all very moody because they had to play without power. From there, we started talking about having a project together.
If you were to ever cover a song with clear vocals, what would it be?
Nico Turner: We want to cover Laurie Anderson really bad. We would do a cover medley and make one big song out of it.
Jenean Farris: We just got this new sampler that will make it awesome. When we get back from our tour we are going to learn that thing. No work—just play music.
Nico Turner: We want to figure out how to imitate Laurie’s vocoder sound but without a vocoder. We’ll borrow howardAmb’s—howardAmb is this band who loves Laurie Anderson also. They’re a two-person band and they use a vocoder.
Jenean Farris: We saw a band the other night—Jogger—at Mr. T’s Bowl, and they did a Laurie Anderson cover, and I was like, ‘YEAH!’ They did ‘O, Superman.’ It was genius because you have to be creative with the electric violin, and he was singing through his violin and it gave a vocoder effect.
Jenean Farris: I think we’ll meet Laurie Anderson soon because I believe in the power of positive thinking. Read The Secret!
Who wins when you two wrestle?
Nico Turner: Jenean is pretty aggressive when she drinks, so she usually starts it, and she’s pretty good so she usually wins. I’m getting better though, unless she catches me off guard.
Jenean Farris: I tried to wrestle Quinn [from Corridor] when he was playing drums with us on the road. We were in Seattle. I think that’s why he decided he didn’t want to join our band.
Nico Turner: Quinn is in great shape. He must have wrestled in high school or something. He took her out in nothing flat. He’s also an amazing drummer.
What are your spirit animals?
Jenean Farris: I am a tiger and Nico is a crow. It’s funny that you asked that, because the cover of our new 7” is a merging of our two spiritual animals. It’s a tiger with a crow flying through it.
Nico Turner: I think I’m actually more of a house cat.
Jenean Farris: No, you are definitely a crow!

VOICEsVOICEs WITH PREFUSE 73 AND GASLAMP KILLER ON WED., FEB. 3, AT THE TROUBADOUR, 9081 SANTA MONICA BLVD., WEST HOLLYWOOD. 8 PM / $15-$17 / ALL AGES.
TROUBADOUR.COM. VOICEsVOICEs’ ORIGINS EP IS OUT NOW ON MANIMAL VINYL AND VOICEsVOICEs “ANIMAL BATTLE VOL. 1″ 7″ IS OUT NOW ON HOW TO FIGHT RECORDS. VISIT VOICEsVOICEs AT WEAREVOICESVOICES.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/WEAREVOICESVOICES.

Listen: Yoko Ono Plastic Ono Band – “Waiting for the D Train”

(from Between My Head and the Sky on Chimera Records)
 
Yoko Ono’s new album, Between My Head and the Sky, is better than any post-Beatles album by McCartney, Harrison or Starr.  Yeah, I said it.  While the former two were baby boomer marshmallows and the latter was a novelty act, Ono has pushed the boundaries of dance music for three decades running.  And now she’s put out one of the best electronic albums of the year, with music sweatier than fucking in a steam room and lyrics loonier than a three-year-old on a sugar high, like walking through Skid Row and hearing a homeless person mutter something absolutely brilliant that you’d never been able to articulate before.

Between My Head and the Sky balances Ono’s out-there poetry and animal cries with solid grooves, provided by a Plastic Ono Band line-up that includes her son Sean, Cibo Matto’s Yuka Honda, and Cornelius, among others.  It’s the perfect soundtrack for a medicinal marijuana cookie party or for pissing off the squares next door. The songs flow from ultra-funky (“Waiting for the D Train”) to soft new age ballad (“Memory of Footsteps”) to full tilt rock-and-roll orgasm (“Calling”), while always sounding uniquely Yoko.  She still has those annoyingly infectious Ono vocal effects, the ones that sound like she’s using a plug-in vibrator in the bathtub.

In fact, Between My Head and the Sky almost sounds like a big-budget Manimal release. It has repetitions like Hecuba, world beats like Rainbow Arabia, and vocals like, well, like Yoko Ono.  It’s almost impossible to compare this album to anything but other Yoko Ono albums, because 99% of the bands out there still don’t have the balls or the chops to put out this sort of music, dance music where literal dolphin, chimpanzee, and elephant conversations are reinvented as funk.  I highly doubt you’ll hear a more captivating and original release this year.

-Scott Schultz

Alejandro Cohen wants to put you to sleep. He came to L.A. from Buenos Aires in ‘96 to spin records and stir up dusty dino bones. On May 28th, Ale and friends from L.A.-based collective dublab will take over the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur to create an night of ambient music event aptly titled “Tonalism”—a term Ale appropriated from late-19th-century painters who tried to capture the mood of nature by representing it with misty atmospheres. This interview by Drew Denny.

When did you come up with the concept for Tonalism?
Alejandro Cohen: The first Tonalism happened in 2007, but the idea probably came to me in 2006. My friend Adam, who runs the label Pehr—pehrlabel.com—released a compilation called Tonalism. The idea of the comp was to have music that was meant to fall asleep to when listening to it. From there I thought it’d be fun to do an event where we play music with the same idea in mind. Also at the time I was reading more and more about events that people like La Monte Young, Terry Riley, John Cage and Yoko Ono were having both in the East Coast and the West Coast that had a similar concept to the one behind Tonalism. And from there the main idea came.
The flyer describes the event as an ‘ambient music happening’ but I saw names like Michael Stock—from Part Time Punks—included as well. How did you curate the event? Will everyone be playing ambient music or are you mixing it up?
The music and performers behind Tonalism all share a same sense and taste in music and styles. The live performers, DJs and visual artists are chosen not really based on genres of music, but mostly by having a common understanding on how things should sound, look and feel. So to answer to your question, yes—it is a mix of styles, eras, genres and instrumentation. But at the end all is connected.
Is it true that Brian Eno coined the term ‘ambient music’?
I’m not sure about that. I do believe there’s an artist that presented that concept a few years before Eno did. His name is Douglas Leedy and the record is Entropical Paradise—from 1972. In the liner notes I remember him pretty much presenting the concept of ambient music. It’s a fantastic release consisting of three records, six songs, one on each side.
What does that term mean to you?
It’s just a term. It helps simplify your everyday conversations when you want to refer to a certain feel, emotion or style in music. But it’s not too far off. What most people consider ambient…that’s another thing. It varies greatly, and all of them are valid. To me ambient music is melodies, songs, sounds, compositions or noises that create an environment—it’s not background music, but it doesn’t require for you to listen to it actively… It is somewhere in between those two. At Tonalism many recordings we play aren’t meant to serve that purpose, but we present it in a way that it does.
Where are you from?
I’m originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina, from the neighborhood of Recoleta. I moved to L.A. in August 1996. When I moved to L.A., I ended up in Altadena—it’s a long story—but fortunately I didn’t find myself in the middle of Hollywood surrounded by European students trying to play guitar like Joe Satriani or Pastorius. I was fortunate to meet by pure coincidence—through a Recycler ad for a Volkswagen car—Damon Aaron. He introduced me to Michael Morgan a.k.a. Transistor Cricket, and from there I connected with other people, eventually meeting the folks at KXLU. Back then everything was more isolated—things happened at random a lot more, and mainly because it was before the Internet and Myspace became popular. Post-rock was in its infancy, with Tortoise only having one release, but people were already paying attention. Up in Altadena we really lived in our own world. Personally I fell in love with Further, Summer Hits and affiliated bands, including many that were part of KXLU and the clubs Jabberjaw, the Smell—in the valley—and the Impala Cafe. But it did feel much much smaller than now. You could sense that there were only a handful of people doing this. Silverlake wasn’t what is now, same with Los Feliz. Spaceland was just starting, and I remember the LA Weekly running an article about it. But that’s about it.
What do you think about the radio stations in L.A.? What is the future of Internet radio organizations like dublab?
I don’t really know commercial radio enough to have an opinion. KPFK, KXLU and KCRW are the ones that I’m mostly familiar with. And I think between the three of them, they offer a wide range of music that most cities only wish they could enjoy. Those stations can be quite adventurous in their choices, and that’s great! Internet radio seems to be getting more and more accessible as technology advances in its favor. The number of listeners will probably increase. Hopefully Internet radio will have the reach that FM/AM radio has in terms of accessibility. In regards to programming, I don’t see it departing radically from what FM and AM radio are nowadays in relation to content and options out there. It will probably offer the same type of options that FM and AM radio offers but in more quantity.
When did you start spinning?
I don’t remember when I started—it wasn’t a decision I made consciously. Little by little I started getting more and more involved in events, sometimes playing music, sometimes organizing. After a while I found myself playing records more and more, and that’s what happened. But if I have to give you a rough estimate, I’d say it was around 1998 or so.
Tell me about Languis. What’s your role in that project?
Languis is a band I started with Marcos Chloca in 1997. We released a bunch of records through the years. We toured a bit, and played with a lot of local bands and artists that came through L.A., like Broadcast, and Mouse On Mars. The band is still around—we released a record last year called Fractured through Plug Research. We have some releases planned for this year, but no live shows. Marcos moved on to play with a band called Lower Heaven, so at the moment I’m the main person behind the group.
Tell me about when Languis recorded at the Natural History Museum.
Oh, that was awesome! The natural reverbs sounded so beautiful. It really makes you realize how awful it is having to rely on reverbs from a computer all the time, since most people don’t have access to a room like that or natural echo chambers to record. It’s like watching a movie all your life on a tiny black and white TV, and all of a sudden someone plays that same movie on the big screen from its original film. In other aspects it was also a great experience. We—Languis—were there late at night to record a piece for the Natural History Museum’s Sonic Scenery exhibit. It was such a contrast to how you see the museum during the day. Everything comes to life!
Which is your favorite dinosaur?
I’m not sure—they are all pretty cool. Never went through the dinosaur phase as a kid. If I have to pick one, I’d say the Argentinasaurus, since I’m originally from there.

TONALISM PRESENTED BY DUBLAB WITH MUSIC BY THE DUBLAB SOUNDSYSTEM, WINDY & CARL, PHARAOHS, WHITE RAINBOW, NUDGE, ANDY CABIC, CARLOS NIÑO, MIA DOI TODD AND MANY MORE PLUS JIMMY TAMBORELLO, MICHAEL STOCK, KATIE BYRON, SMALL TOWN TALK, DJ COOL CHRIS AND OTHERS ON THU., MAY 28, AT THE HENRY MILLER LIBRARY, HIGHWAY ONE, BIG SUR. 4:20PM / $20 / ALL AGES. DUBLAB.COM.

Download: The Polyamorous Affair “Eastern”

(from Bolshevik Disco out this summer on Manimal Vinyl)

The Polyamorous Affair make bolshevik disco-pop in a mossy compound in Los Feliz and emerge only to teach kindergarten, play shows or get snowed on. They have an album due on Manimal and co-founder Eddie Chacon used to be in a band with Cliff Burton. This interview by Dan Collins.

It’s nice to interview people at 8:30 PM and not AM! Are you guys night owls? You’re probably jetlagged from your tour of England.
Eddie Chacon (production/vocals): We’re definitely jetlagged, man!
Sissy Sainte-Marie (vocals): And I think I caught swine flu today, too.
Did you eat some infected swine? Or get it from the air blowing around airports?
Sissy: I think I just got it from the 24-hour news.
There’s a rumor going round that you are married.
Eddie: It’s actually amazing being in a band with your wife because we just work on it 24/7. We don’t really have to go to a rehearsal space. Even though we try to take a break from it, it’s almost impossible. We always somehow wind up coming back to what we’re trying to achieve with the band.
Sissy: And we can always work in the studio. It’s right here at our fingertips, at any moment when we get inspired. We don’t have to wait for other band members show up or not show up.
When you guys play live, though, do you have people backing you?
Sissy: We have a DJ and a live visualist.
Eddie: De Ja Francois is the DJ and Mr. Cocoon is the visual artist.
You guys are very visual! I love the video for ‘Babayaga.’ It’s really witchy and disturbing. Sissy was doing such a creepy dance! Do you have a background in dance?
Sissy: No, not at all. This really great choreographer named Dola Baroni—she choreographed that for me. She was very patient. She was a very good teacher, because I have no rhythm—no coordination. And I had to do that dance in 33 degree weather, and I was wearing close to nothing in the middle of the night, and I had to replicate the dance three times perfectly to get the triplicate shot. And I think I had to do it about a hundred times.
Eddie: And then it started snowing! It was in the Angeles Crest Forest, and then it turned out to be the coldest day of winter. We totally got rained out, and it was a low-budget video, and that was like a really big deal.
Sissy: We had to schedule a second night, but it turned out great! All’s well that ends well.
Who wrote that song?
Eddie: Everything we do is 50/50. We work around the house and toss ideas around. Often things come together by osmosis. I’ll be in the studio, and Sissy will be in another room, and she’ll come in and throw something down. We’ll just get inspired by each other.
Sissy: I was inspired by the Grimm fairytale ‘Hansel and Gretel.’ In Russian, ‘babayaga’ means ‘witch.’ I liked the way that word sounded in that song. Lovers go on vacation, and they were living a life of decadence, and I think they both died. And the ghost of the little girl doesn’t know that she’s dead, and she thinks that she’s still alive and he’s dead.
The same thing happened to me! How did you guys decide to make this kind of music?
Eddie: The initial brainstorming happened when we were staying in Denmark a couple years ago with some friends of mine. At the time, we were really getting into John Lennon and Yoko Ono and reading about David and Angie Bowie, and we were getting into the mixed media idea—of how Yoko Ono brought this whole different artistic direction to John Lennon when they got together because she was already sort of a famous underground artist.
Sissy: We were inspired by this book called Still Lovers about people and their Real Dolls. We originally wanted to make a doll the artist. But they’re really expensive! When we first started performing live, and I was so nervous and stiff, so many people would tell me, ‘Aw, you’re just like a little doll on stage!’ I can be this icy robot puppet vampire love doll. Like a replicant from Blade Runner.
What was your career before you guys met?
Sissy: I was a school teacher, and I still am. I was teaching third grade, and now I just substitute—so it’s a different grade every day. Today I taught kinder.
There was a band in L.A. called Third Grade Teacher, where the singer really was a third grade teacher. So you’re not the only one.
Sissy: No, no! We all have our double lives, I guess.
I feel like in 1975 or something, or even ten years ago, somebody could have a career and be sort of a middle-class musician. Not everybody was rich, but some people could do okay. Now either you’re totally rich or you have a day job. Is this something new?
Eddie: I absolutely think this is something new, but there’s also something great that comes from it—that you don’t really need a big fat record company anymore to reach the public. You can put out your own material and distribute yourself.
Are you saying that Manimal Records isn’t a big fat record company?
Sissy: Ha ha—they’re well on their way!
Eddie, your career has been wildly eclectic. You started off in a metal band with Mike Borden from Faith No More and Cliff Burton, then you worked with 2 Live Crew, then had sort of a soul band in the early nineties with Charles & Eddie, then worked behind the scenes with acts like the Neville Brothers. And now you’re doing this. It kind of boggles the mind!
Sissy: His talents know no end.
Eddie: I just do music. It sounds kind of trivial, but I just have a passion for music and just continue doing it no matter what. I just kind of follow whatever I’m obsessed and into at the time.
What do you think Cliff Burton would say if he could see the Polyamorous Affair?
Eddie: We’re doing a sort of electronic disco thing, so he probably would want to beat me up.
Have you ever considered going back and sampling your own back catalogue since you have the rights to it?
Eddie: You know, I haven’t! Paul, the owner of Manimal, was asking me if I’d be interested in doing a version of ‘Would I Lie to You’ with Alexandra Hope. That was the first that I’d really thought of that. A few years ago, a friend of mine was making an indie film, and he wanted to use seven of my songs, but at that time I was a Universal Music Publishing songwriter. And I couldn’t even let my best friend use seven of my songs for his movie, and I thought that was very frustrating! In the olden days you were kind of a corporate entity, and you didn’t even really own yourself—and now you might be like more of a mom-and-pop business where you’re kind of a smaller entity, but at least you own the rights to yourself and everything you’re doing—which gives you a lot more freedom in the long run.
You have a song called ‘Whoever Controls the Groove Controls the World.’ Is the inverse true? Does the Skull and Bones fraternity at Yale have a lot of groove?
Eddie: Ha ha—no, it’s about Clear Channel!
They have the groove when it comes to billboards.
Eddie: My God—we were just in England, and we were meeting with a PR company, and she was talking about Clear Channel owning everything over there, and I was like ‘My God, I had no idea it was a worldwide thing.’
Speaking of which, Eddie, I wanted to ask you about Scientology! You dabbled in it eight or nine years ago—do you have any deep dark secrets that could get L.A. RECORD in trouble?
Eddie: I didn’t get to the point where I found out about the space ship! I was actually studying with a legendary acting coach—Milton Katselas—who has since passed on. He taught a lot of really big movie stars, and there were a lot of Scientologists in that class—like Giovanni Ribisi and Jenna Elfman—and I just got to be friends with them. And I was like, ‘What the hell, I’ll take a couple of introductory courses and see what it’s about.’ But like with all religion, what you get for free is the essence of what it’s really all about.
Was there a part of you that was like ‘Isaac Hayes is in this religion!’?
Eddie: That was probably the coolest thing about taking my two little introductory courses! I was just coming down from the fourth floor of the little celebrity tower and the elevator door opened, and he was in the elevator, and I walked in and I got to have a little chat with him! He’s been my hero ever since I was a little boy. I went to see him at the Circle Star Theater as a child when he was Black Moses, wearing the full-on gold chain vest!
Don’t you guys have a song that’s all heroic quotes about stars and circles and space time?
Eddie: ‘Like Animal.’ The wormhole video.
Sissy: That’s just a dialogue for the video—that’s not in the song.
Eddie: We always make fun of each other that we’re a bit like Grey Gardens, because we live in a compound in Los Feliz hills, and we really just work in a bubble. We were kind of making fun of that when we made the ‘Like Animal’ video.
Sissy: Crazy hermits living in a state of decay!

L.A. RECORD AND MANIMAL VINYL PRESENT THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR WITH BLUE JUNGLE, ALL LEATHER, HALLOWEEN SWIM TEAM AND MAGICK DAGGERS ON THU., MAY 14, AT THE ECHOPLEX, 1154 GLENDALE BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8 PM / $10 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR’S BOLSHEVIK DISCO RELEASES THIS SUMMER ON MANIMAL. VISIT THE POLYAMOROUS AFFAIR AT THEPOLYAMOROUSAFFAIR.COM OR MYSPACE.COM/THEPOLYAMOROUSAFFAIR.