All posts by John Fortunato

BUFFALO TOM ‘SMITTEN’ WITH REFLECTIVE EXPOSITION

Interviews

 

FOREWORD: Queens-bred Boston-based guitarist Bill Janovitz is the leader of Buffalo Tom, a band whose friendship with J. Mascis allowed the semi-legendary Dinosaur Jr. frontman to produce their first two formative albums. ‘93s Big Red Letter Day bettered Buffalo Tom’s initial offerings and ‘98s tightly-composed Smitten gave it a run for the money. Since then, Buffalo Tom went on hiatus while Janovitz released a few solo discs, including ‘97s hit-and-miss Lonesome Bill and bittersweet folk-rooted ’01 disc, Up Here. Under the pseudonym Crown Victoria, he did ‘04s Fireworks On TV! Happily, Buffalo Tom reunited nine years after Smitten for ‘7s Three Easy Pieces. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

 

Since meeting at the University of Massachusetts in 1986, Buffalo Tom guitarist-vocalist Bill Janovitz and bassist-vocalist Chris Colbourn (along with drummer Tom Maginnis) have released six consistently pleasing albums. Moving further away from the gritty sonic guitar thrust of their self-titled debut, ‘90s Birdbrain, ‘91s Let Me Come Over, and ‘95s Sleepy-Eyed – and closer to the dramatic folk-pop of ‘93s dynamic Big Red Letter Day and Janovitz’s solo entrée, Lonesome Bill – ‘98s charming Smitten puts reflective lyrics, sweeping melodies, and cushy harmonies up-front and foremost.

Soliciting memories of the Northeast twilight, Janovitz’s acoustic trinkets like “Postcard,” the lushly string-laced “Scottish Windows,” testimonial lullaby “The Bible,” and tender piano ballad “Wiser” delicately melt their way into your heart. The earthy dual harmonies of Colbourn and guest Carol Van Dyk (from respected Dutch band, Bettie Serveert) sweetly coalesce on the imagery-laden “Under Milkwood.”

Countering the softer songs are the blustery Replacements-like “Walking Wounded,” the propulsive rocker “See To Me,” and the organ-doused beat-driven “White Paint Morning.” But undoubtedly, the most infectious track on Smitten has to be the power pop opener, “Rachael,” with its swooning harmonies and flirty schoolyard naivete.

A big vinyl junkie, Janovitz recently purchased a few Miles Davis albums at a yard sale; and he was listening to a ‘70s Raspberries song right before calling me up at work one hot August afternoon.

Would you consider Smitten a natural progression from past albums?

 

BILL: I suppose so. The bottom line is we don’t want to put out the same record twice. We try to make each record somewhat different than the one before and make them unique. We can’t be like AC/DC. They found a winning formula and kept putting out the same song. But that’s not what keeps us together. We have the same lineup, but try to see what we could do with the balance of Buffalo Tom. Sleepy-Eyed was a little noisier than the album before it. So I don’t think our progression has been linear. We’re not shoegazers or even bellybuttom gazers.

Does the title of the album have to do with being ‘smitten’ by some real or imagined love interest?

 

BILL: We always have a long drawn-out fight over which title to choose. Smitten was inspired by the albums’ artwork. It has a narcissistic woman looking at the reflection of herself in the pond. It’s more of a dark play on the word smitten.

Where do you draw most of your inspiration for song ideas?

 

BILL: Most are personal, or even biographical. They tend to be about snippets of conversations or images from my life, but they’re not necessarily about me. They form as loose composite sketch. The song, “Register Side,” is probably one of the few narratives I’ve written.

Your voice has gained an emotional richness over the years.

 

BILL: On our first record, I wasn’t even paying attention to my voice since it was more like a garage record. Over the course of a few records, I care more. The turning point was Big Red Letter Day. We spent an inordinate amount of time with our producers, the Robb Brothers, who let us pay attention to pitch. Then, on the next record we were able to do vocals live in the studio. Before Big Red Letter Day, we did records with different combinations of Fort Apache guys. They were done relatively quickly. Then we toured with Let Me Come Over and it took a long time to make Big Red Letter Day. We tried to make a timeless classic instead of an over-the-top guitar record. So we went to California with our guitars, rented amps, and came up with sounds we weren’t used to. It changed up the whole format. Then we pared it down and did more of a garage record with Sleepy-Eyed.

Do you consider Buffalo Tom part of the still thriving Boston scene?

 

BILL: When we started out, Galaxy 500, Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., and the Lemonheads were getting big. I don’t go out as much as I used to, so I’m not as close to it now. Actually, back then we’d see those bands more often in Germany than in Boston. We’re still all friendly. I went to dinner with Tonya Donnelly the other night.

The lead single off Smitten, “Rachael,” has an effervescent youthfulness that adds to its catchy pop appeal. It’s perfect radio fodder.

 

BILL: Chris wrote that after being inspired by a movie (editor’s note: specifically, it was inspired by Guilletta Massina’s role in the Fellini film, Nights Of Cabiria). It may have a schoolyard romantic notion, but I can’t say for sure. It gives you this Lolita-type vibe.

Was there a conscious effort made to diversify the album by switching from fast to slow and soft to loud?

 

BILL: Yeah. There always is. We want the songs to flow together, but we had different ideas about the rotation. Some lightweight pop is tossed in near the end. But the arena rocker, “Walking Wounded,” seemed like the perfect closer since you could almost hear ‘thank you, good night’ at the end of it.

What did guest keyboardist Phil Aiken add to the songs?

 

BILL: He’s a local guy in his thirties. It’s funny. We were dipping our toes in the keyboard waters before. We only used them on previous records as an afterthought. This time we rearranged songs with traditional keyboards in mind. We were confident enough to expand beyond the basic rock instrumentation of guitar-bass-drums. I’ve always been into highly produced studio projects like 4AD Records. We mess with the keyboards so they don’t sound so roots-y and maybe closer to the atmosphere of early Rolling Stones records.

Chris has composed music for theatre productions of Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and John Steinbeck’s Of Mice And Men. Would Buffalo Tom consider soundtrack work?

 

BILL: We’ve been dying to get on a soundtrack for a long time. But we’d rather do scoring for films as opposed to just tossing in a song. Chris did locally based theatre for a friend, but he sees more movies than anyone I know.

 

ROCK-A-TEENS TURN UP FUZZY REVERB

Interviews

FOREWORD: The Rock-A-Teens were one of the finest ‘90s garage rock purveyors from the South, competing favorably against Detroit’s fertile retro throwbacks thanks to their fierce determination. A formative self-titled ’96 debut, ‘97s better Cry, and ‘98s Baby, A Little Rain Must Fall gave the Rock-A-Teens a firm club following across the US. But ‘99s Golden Time and ‘00s Sweet Bird Of Youth were pretty cool, too. It’s a shame they’ve since departed. I interviewed singer-guitarist Chris Lopez in ‘98 via phone. Never got to see ‘em play live, regrettably. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

Based just outside Atlanta in Cabbagetown, Georgia, swampy reverb addicts, the Rock-A-Teens twist compelling dramatic tension out of pale ‘60s garage rock and reliably cryptic ‘50s rockabilly. Rather than worry about proper chord structures and muddled echo, this menacing trio retains a crude, raw sound that just gets better with each album. Taking their cool moniker from a one-hit-wonder from the ‘50s (whose claim to fame was the rollicking “Woo-Hoo”), singer-guitarist Chris Lopez, drummer Justin Hughes, and bassist Brandon Smith scruff up a dizzying array of material.

On their self-titled debut and sophomore set, Cry, the Rock-A-Teens sounded like they recorded each tune inside a tunnel, giving the beat-driven songs a faraway feel perfectly suited to their primitive style. But the newly assembled Baby, A Little Rain Must Fall, the microphones actually sound like they’re in the same room as the instruments.

Footstomping “Teen Muscle/Teen Hustle” leads into the thumpin’ “Don’t Destroy The Night” and “N.Y.By Helicopter” (a simple little no-fi ditty concocted from home tapes). The emotionally drenched “I Could’ve Just Died” and “Leave What’s Left Of Me” semi-counter the forward marching “Carla Anne” and the fast-paced charged-up “Ether Sunday.” And the dirge-y static-filled “Stardust 680 AM” sounds like a delectable leftover from one of the Rock-A-Teens first two albums. Producer David Barbe gives the songs better dynamic range but never intrudes on the bands’ roughhewn appeal.

Chris Lopez shared a few ideas with me over the phone from his front porch.

Have you lived in Cabbagetown, Georgia, your entire life? Is that where you first discovered your love for music?

 

CHRIS: No. I’ve only lived there half my life. I’ve lived all around and had a normal childhood. During my misspent youth, I listened to a lot of records in the basement. My older brother used to play drums when I was real young. There’d be tapes of the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Neil Diamond lying around, but when I really got into music as a teen it was punk rock. The Ramones were one of the first non-basketball arena concerts I attended at age fifteen. Before that, I saw Ted Nugent and these Sha Na Na auto shows.

Would you consider the Roc-A-Teens a lo-fi band?

 

CHRIS: Our first album could be considered lo-fi, but not in the traditional Sebadoh style. It wasn’t four-track lo-fi because it was actually recorded in a big gymnasium. The second album, Cry, was as hi-fi as it could get. But it’s the organ and reverb that get people freaked out.

In an article, you mention the Rock-A-Teens have an ‘Orbisonic’ sound. I thought that was a rather profound observation.

 

CHRIS: It’s just that kind of Roy Orbison aesthetic. His hits outside “Oh, Pretty Woman” were massive ballads with strings, like “Crying” and “Only The Lonely.” Our slower numbers are like that – almost operatic and over-the-top.

Why do you love to soak your songs in loads of reverb?

 

CHRIS: Reverb is standard on most amplifiers. I have an old shitty Epiphone amp that I put the volume way up on. It gives me a very deep sound that’s hard to re-create live because it gets lost.

Where’d you come up with the depression-bound album title?

 

CHRIS: I think it’s from a record by Vern Gosdin, who’s known as the ‘Voice of Country Music.’ (Actually, I think they nixed it from Glenn Yarbrough’s ’65 hit, “Baby The Rain Must Fall”) It just had a goofball ring. I was gonna name it Cokes + Cakes + Stomach Aches, but that got shot down. This album has a little more pop to it. It’s just a natural progression on our old shit. But a friend of mine was taken aback by it and then couldn’t explain why. Actually, “Teen Muscle/ Teen Hustle” is a glam-rock song we hope will replace Gary Glitter’s “Rock And Roll Part 2″ at sporting events and make us lots of money. (laughter)

What did producer David Barbe’s experienced hand add to the new records’ sound?

 

CHRIS: Naturally he pressed buttons and turned knobs in his Athens studio, splitting time at the production board with Andy from Servitron. He offered suggestions and cheerleading. He played the fake Hawaiian guitar on “I Could’ve Just Died.”

What was that depressed morsel about?

 

CHRIS: Most of our stuff is black humor. “I Could’ve Just Died” is the story of a guy going to a wedding who drinks too much, makes a fool of himself, kicks himself in the ass, then falls down on the glass table. But that’s not something I’ve ever done.

How have the Rock-A-Teens improved since the first gigs in the early ‘90s?

 

CHRIS: We never thought we’d come this far. We never thought we’d make a record. There was this neighborhood honky tonk we’d play with other local bands. We just kept writing songs, making tapes we’d send around. We toured with Cat Power before our first album came out. We’d go to New York and exclusively play the Cooler on Monday nights. We played Brownies once, also.

The Rock-A-Teens transcend simple categorization, but I’d like to think there’s some garage-y ‘60s connection.

 

CHRIS: We’re our own little entity. We’re not like Olivia Tremor Control or Neutral Milk Hotel. We’re inadvertently creating our own niche. We don’t consider ourselves a garage band or strictly rockabilly. There’s a whole history book of music from 1900 forward that blows our mind and all gets sucked in.

“Carla Ann” seems to have an eerie Brit-pub rock tone. Am I way off base?

 

CHRIS: That’s the most straightforward rock song we’ve ever done, bordering on pop. There’s a Jesus & Mary Chain-like bridge. Their album, Psychocandy, had a profound influence on me with all that filtered feedback. Underneath the noise were classic, simple, three-chord pop songs. I used to live with a record addict who’d trade stuff all the time. He bought Jesus & Mary Chain’s first single, “Upside Down,” which had a squealing opening and catchy little riffs. I remember reading an interview where they claimed the greatest song of all-time was the Shangri-La’s “Leader Of The Pack.” Then I picked up the Shangri-La’s Greatest Hits and got myself hooked. They had strings and rhythms and soaring notes you could attempt to capture on guitar.

Your newer songs have an increased emotional impact. Are you writing about first-hand accounts more often?

 

CHRIS: I guess so. Some songs start with truths and run into fiction. I love to make listeners weep and get drunk with melancholy. It’s emotional purging. Thematically – not to sound goofy – I now expound on subject matter. On “Leave What’s Left Of Me,” I find myself laying on the battlefield wounded, telling someone to leave me there to die and just move on. That was inspired by Kelly Hogan (a former bandmate and solo artist) who moved away to Chicago to work at Bloodshot Records. By the way, she has a split single of Gospel songs with Neko Case coming out soon.

What does a live Rock-A-Teens show generally sound like?

 

CHRIS: We try to keep it separate from the studio sound, but it’s a crapshoot. In Austin playing the South By Southwest Conference recently, we were sitting in the van drinking Wild Turkey before the show. We went on to play hard and just have fun. But the small stage we played on had a curved corner and one of our guys kept falling off the stage. We just like to keep it raw live.

 

MIKE WATT PONDERS MINUTEMEN WHILE ‘CONTEMPLATING THE ENGINE ROOM’

Interviews,

FOREWORD: There truly is no other like ex-Minutemen icon, Mike Watt. My friend Al and I are convinced he’s the most approachable and fun guy in all of music. His solo debut, Ballhog Or Tugboat? featured a cornucopia of underground sensations who had befriended the very personable Watt – Eddie Vedder, Evan Dando, Meat Puppets, Sonic Youth, Dave Pirner, Flea, Pat Smear, Frank Black, etc.

At a pre-show party in Manhattan, Watt was drinking bourbon and coke before what he called “an overly efficient waitress” took his drink away before it was done. We walked him to the venue he was gonna play at but had to stop at some sidewalk-decked restaurant because the owner recognized him and wanted to say hi. We never stayed to see him play because the club was streaming hot and overcrowded with douchebag industry types.

Last time I saw Watt, he was playing bass in J. Mascis & The Fog at the Bowery Ballroom around ’05. He was skinny as hell since he’d just gotten an enlarged perineum drained and had to relearn his instrument. Still, Watt soldiered on, releasing his third solo disc, The Secondman’s Middle Stand in ’04 (featuring vocals by Petra Haden). When Iggy & the Stooges re-formed, Watt joined on bass for decent ‘06 comeback, The Weirdness. He also has a regular internet radio program, The Watt From Pedro Show. What follows is a weighty conversation with Watt concerning punk’s early days, the Minutemen, and his solo stuff.

This article originally appeared in Brutarian (a cool Washington DC magazine with great illustrations as well as articles) to support ‘97s Contemplating The Engine Room. I’ve also included, at the bottom, a concurrent Smug Magazine article concerning Watt’s conspiracy theories.

 

I remember when I was young always wanting to hang out with the older kids who had cars, smoked dope, drank liquor, and were cool. Well, San Pedro native Mike Watt fits the mold of that wiser, more developed street kid. In the early ‘80s, he was in the Minutemen, a highly influential and unheralded avant-rock trio whose lead singer-guitarist D. Boon died in a van accident in ‘85.

At the urging of Ohio fan, Ed Crawford, Watt picked up the pieces, and along with Crawford, formed the ambitious Firehose. They put out six albums from ’86 to ’93 (Flyin’ The Flannel and if’n being personal faves).

In early September at a Columbia Records release party, I met the crazed Watt while he was drinking bourbon and coke. With cheap shit bass in hand (he bought it for $50 then had the nerve to return it the next day), we walked to NYC’s dismal, sweaty Elbow Room, where Watt showcased material from his second solo LP, the loosely-coined ‘punk rock opera’ Contemplating The Engine Room (made with Jazz-informed guitarist Nels Cline and drummer Stephen Hodges).

The basic Contemplating The Engine Room story according to Watt: “this guy runs away from a farm town, joins the Navy, finds a crew, they get their routine together, and pull into a port and have some R & R. They get drunk, konk out. The boilerman sleepwalks, falls in the water, and drowns. But it’s not a documentary: it’s mostly about the Minutemen. The boilerman is D. Boon. The fireman is George Hurley and I’m the machinist. The whole boat is like the old SST Records family. I mention Husker Du and the Meat Puppets. We were all on this one big boat.”

I respond to Watt: Yeah. The boat down the underground tunnel for bands not getting enough popularity even though they’re better than the dogshit infiltrating the airwaves.

WATT: Even with all the shit that went down, we always thought this was not supposed to happen. We played around, traveled about. So what if it was eleven guys in one van? At least we were doing it. I look back at those days and realize that’s what made me who I am now. Be true to yourself and let the freak flag fly. Fuck the people who hate punk. It was big in England, but over here in America everyone called you a fag. The people who really hated us were the rock and rollers. They were running the studios. We used to have to have to play Polish and Ukrainian halls.

Commercial radio and classic rock stars with big heads could eat my ass. Pretentious loads!

WATT: But we learned to be self-reliant and create our own little world. We made our own little record labels and own our little circuit. Ani Di Franco and the riot girls with Kill Rock Stars Records do that now. That spirit is still here. And I think we helped build that up. And I hope the doors never get shut.

How bad does MTV suck?

WATT: I look at MTV like a telephone pole everybody wants to put their flyer on. I heard its mostly game shows now. Are Jenny Mc Carthy’s tits plastic though?

They probably are. And that’s such an insecurity problem when you have to increase size. What’s the matter? Some guy isn’t going to fuck you because you’re flat?

WATT: A friends of mine who’s a talent agent in Hollywood told me almost every girl on TV has plastic knobs.

By the way, my friend told me to ask you if we should open trade with Cuba to get good cigars.

WATT: And help break the mafia – the cigar mafia. I think if we get half our shoes from Red China, we could lighten up with the cigars from Cuba. As soon as Castro’s gone, it’s over. He has a one-man system. People are starving. But the US just needs a country to kick around. I think we should open up the market completely. I think I should play there. Why should I have to go to Europe instead of playing Latin America?

Right. In fact, “Fireman Hurley” (from Engine Room) has Spanish guitar, Latin rhythms, and danceable bass lines.

WATT: I had been asked by people to use nylon strings on my record. I said OK. And that Nels is so easygoing. He’s no stuck-up motherfucker like most goddamn guitar players.

On Ballhog Or Tugboat?, J. Mascis plays a little guitar. I heard he’s a rather difficult character.

WATT: He’s just a shy kid. Well, he talks slow so people can’t handle that. They think he’s a slacker. I think he’s a good cat. He’s out touring again.

What was the first concert you attended as a kid?

WATT: T. Rex at the Long Branch Auditorium in 1971. D. Boon’s dad sat with us in the crowd. He was smiling. He didn’t know anything about rock. But Marc Bolan got killed in a car accident afterwards. I visited the tree in London that killed him. That tree is all bent over from the car hitting it. I think Joey Ramone is putting together a T. Rex tribute at CBGB’s for him.

How did you originally meet D. Boon?

WATT: We were twelve when we met. In the park, by accident, he jumped out of a tree and landed on me. He thought I was this guy Eskimo. He had memorized a whole George Carlin album. And I had never heard of George Carlin. And he’s reciting all these bits, and I’m like, ‘Jesus Christ, this is the smartest kid I ever met.’ The next day he took me over to his house and played the whole record. His dad was into Buck Owens, who had all these Country radio hits in the ‘60s and ‘70s. That was all Boon knew when I met him. I asked him, ‘Boon, haven’t you heard of The Who, Cream, and Creedence?’ That’s why Creedence was such a big band for us. They were a bridge for us since D. Boon’s favorite song was “Tall Dark Stranger” by Buck Owens. I told him, you got to hear some other shit. Then he liked T. Rex, Alice Cooper, Blue Oyster Cult, and Black Sabbath. We learned every Black Sabbath song.

Then how did you mix Jazz elements into the Minutemen songs?

WATT: I don’t know. We never listened to Jazz as kids. Jazz was punk to us. It sounded like noise. Imagine never hearing Jazz and then being turned on to Albert Ayler and John Coltrane. As a teen, the only bassists that mattered to me were Geezer Butler, Jack Bruce, and John Entwistle. It’s weird the way things turn out.

How come you’re not a flake like most Southern Californians are?

WATT: Because I’m originally from Virginia, where my father was a sailor. We got stuck in California because of the Viet Nam War. My mother got sick of moving and got divorced. She said my father married the Navy instead of her. The Navy is really fucked with the family. They move you every year. They yank kids out of school and tell you to report to this town in thirty days.

What would you have done after D. Boon died in ’85 if Minutemen fan Ed Crawford didn’t get you back into making music as Firehose?

WATT: I was in a really bad state. I didn’t want to play after D. Boon got killed. But then Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth came over with that Ciccone Youth idea. It was my idea to do Madonna’s “Step Into The Groove” and “Burnin’ Up” for a single. That was my way back into music. But the rest of the Ciccone Youth album is a joke. What happened is Sonic Youth told a lot of people they were going to make their version of the Beatles White Album. So what they did was take my Madonna songs and build a concept around it and called it The Whitey Album. But I wasn’t making fun of Madonna by covering those songs. It was a serious tribute. I went to a Madonna gig and I couldn’t get over all these little girls dressed like her singing along. I never saw girls flock to see a girl play before, unless it was Joan Jett. It was mind-boggling.

I own some of Joan Jett’s early Runaways singles, like “Cherry Bomb.” The only other girl band who rocked as hard as them in the ‘70s was Fanny.

WATT: Fanny was a total lesbian band with big Afros.

I didn’t know they were lesbians. Sounds delectable.

WATT: Oh yeah. They were pre-Indigo (Girls). Very k.d.

I bet k.d. lang’s got a bigger dick than me.

WATT: So does Joan, I heard. You know, k.d. is actually a performance artist. She’s singing torch songs now. She always reminded me of old school lesbian Phranc, who was in a band, Nervous Gender. They were these intense gay punk guys. A lot of them have since died of AIDS. They had a song with a chorus that went: ‘Jesus is just like me/ another cocksucker from Galileo/ Jesus Christ was a homosexual nymphomaniac/ a homosexual nymphomaniac.’ For a Pedro guy like me to come up to Hollywood and hear this was so fuckin’ bizarre. I never saw a band like that. Phranc only had one song in the band back then, and it was “My Mommy’s Chest.” Punk rock was a mind blow. It wasn’t these hardcore little kids from Orange County.

Who were some of your favorite punk bands from back in the ‘70s?

WATT: I loved the Germs. I loved the Dils, the old X, the Bags. I liked the whole scene. A lot of them didn’t have vans so they didn’t like to tour. That’s why I like Black Flag. They were about taking it to the people. I think the Hollywood bands thought they were all going to get signed and become famous. Other people knew it was just a fad and they were having fun with it. But Greg Ginn (of Black Flag) knew he was going to have fun with it and take it around. He literally built that club scene that didn’t exist. It was a domino effect. Kids would tell kids about gigs at their college these bands were coming around and it got bigger. That’s how I got signed by Columbia. We changed the way labels looked at us.

Did Columbia ever tell you how to make your albums?

WATT: No way. Our contract wouldn’t allow them to. They promised artist control with none of this demo shit. Some artists moan at interviews about control, but they let the record labels spend a lot of money on their pretty faces. A lot of these cats get into contracts and don’t protect themselves. Even Greg Ginn knew not to change the Minutemen.

What were some of the dilemmas you faced when the Minutemen were starting out?

WATT: A lot of times D. Boon would get pulled off the stage by bouncers when we’d start our gig because they couldn’t believe he was in the band. I think that opened things up. When people saw this huge guy in the band maybe they thought, ‘I could try this.’ That’s what I had originally thought with those punk rockers. ‘Those guys are up there. Why don’t we go for it, D. Boon?’ We thought being in a band was about good looks and costumes and knowing all the notes. We grew up with arena rock but could never see ourselves as arena rockers. Punk rock we thought we could do.

How do you get off calling Contemplating The Engine Room a ‘punk rock opera’? The only real punk-related item is “The Bluejacket’s Manual.”

WATT: Well. “The Bluejacket’s Manual” is about boot camp. I relate punk rock to boot camp. I compare my father leaving a farm town to the Minutemen bursting open and getting away from arena rock.

Part of the inspiration for the new album comes from Richard Mc Kenna’s naval novel, The Sand Pebbles.

WATT: The book is great. I read it before recording this while on tour with Perry Farrell. But the movie with Steve Mc Queen was always my favorite movie. So I try to link all these parallels. I called it a punk opera so these little kids would listen to it and give it a try. I wanted to blow minds. If I called it a concept album they’d shelve it next to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon. When I first heard the word punk used to express artists, I laughed. Where I live that’s a guy in jail who gets fucked for cigarettes. He holds the guy’s little belt loops and it a little wuss. I thought, ‘Why would anyone want to call themselves that?’ That’s a jailhouse sissy.

What’s with all the storm sounds towards the end of the album?

WATT: That’s when the guy on the boat drowns. Also, the Minutemen didn’t have a happy ending. D. Boon dies and I didn’t know how to sugar-coat it. So it’s like a tragic opera. See, you don’t know this stuff unless Watt tells you. That’s all Pedro waves in the background. Pedro people are all rednecks and not that enlightened. It’s a harbor town. I’m staying because of the geography and it’s proximity to Hollywood.

So did you return that bass to the shop you brought it from in New York City like you said you would?

WATT: Yes.

What type of bass guitar was it?

WATT: Lim-Gar. It was a pawnshop piece of shit. The night before I had to go on after that Cars guy Ric Ocasek at the Elbow Room – what a laugh that was. He stalls for an hour and fucking plays fifteen-year-old songs like “Just What I Needed.” The sound guy, Mr. Door Knob pony tail is like, ‘Come on Mike,’ rushing me. And I’m like, ‘Sony paid for this room so why are you rushing me?’ Ocasek was never in the building. He just drove up and went onstage.

I hope that place burns down.

WATT: So do I.

While you were trying to eat food in the dark at your record release party, what possessed you to drink bourbon with coke?

WATT: Why, is that not happening?

Oh, it’s happening to your gut.

WATT: Well the caffeine keeps you up.

Did you ever have to play a show while you were completely fucked up?

WATT: I can’t hear pitch and I can’t tune. I try to avoid that. A lot of kids think you’re drunk out of your mind. But playing Minutemen songs would be too difficult.

Yeah. Those Minutemen songs were only 90 seconds long.

WATT: With thirty parts.

How did your stint as bassist in Perry Farrell’s Porno For Pyros go?

WATT: I couldn’t have done this punk rock opera without spending ten months in the S.S. Porno. That was quite an experience. He’s kind of like D. Boon. He gets onstage and sings. I was getting into all the things he had us do, like get onstage in pajamas. I was watching him. He has a great way of getting his music over. He doesn’t use D minor chords. He uses movie words or theme words. That’s what I did with Nels.

Nels Cline did a great job on the Geraldine Fibbers latest album, Butch. What did his playing add to Watt’s sound?

WATT: He’s from the scene from twenty years ago, doing improv music as the Nels Cline Trio. Nels is a cat who’d never say ‘That’s not my style’ or ‘oh, that’s not me.’ On Engine Room, I’d say to him, the sailors are laughing, and he’d just get into it. He likes making music like theatre. At first, Hodges was really thrown for a loop. I wanted to bring in a new guy. And since he worked with Tom Waits, who turns his music into stories, I decided to bring him in. He has played Classical and Blues. He plays glockenspiel on “In The Engine Room.” But Nels knew what to do from the start. I had a little easel there with all the songs written down. And each song had a different time of day. This song takes place before dawn. And that was it.

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MIKE WATT UNLOADS CONSPIRACY THEORIES FOR DUMB-AT-HEART

 

Singer-songwriter/ bassist Mike Watt became an underground champion when he played alongside the late guitarist D. Boon in the prolific avant-rock trio, the Minutemen from 1980 to 1985. After Boon’s death in a van accident, Watt formed Firehose with Minutemen drummer George Hurley and Minutemen fan Ed Crawford. Six hell-raising albums later, Watt collaborated with his many indie rock pals on his belated solo debut, Ballhog Or Tugboat?

Currently, Watt is riding high with his semi-autobiographical long player, Contemplating The Engine Room, a punk rock opera filled with instrumental deconstruction’s and nifty homage’s to D. Boon, punk life, and his naval father. He’s also featured in the one-off Wylde Ratz, a side project with Steve Shelley and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Julian Lennon, and Ron Asheton (of the Stooges).

As a foremost authority on conspiracy theories, UFO’s, extreme politics, Internet newsgroups, and just about any other off-handed topic you care to bring up, Watt shared some profound insights before his Halloween show at NYC’s Tramps.

Will you be decorated for tonight’s Halloween show?

WATT: I’ve played nineteen Halloweens in a row. Tonight, I’ll be dressed in a sailors uniform. In the early ‘80s, when the Replacements were young, I remember playing this gig with them on Halloween. I had green shoes, a big red nose, a white face, and was dressed as a clown. And that fucking singer, Paul Westerberg, was giving me shit. And I said, ‘Who the fuck are you dressed like, a rock and roller?’ He was looking down on us. The bassist, Tommy Stinson, who was only fifteen, had painted his guitar strings bright orange, and his brother was wearing a dress. They go out there all fucked up and couldn’t make it through “Black Diamond” and some covers. But Westerberg gave me shit for wearing a Halloween costume I made with my own hands.

What was D. Boon dressed as that night?

WATT: D. Boon had the funniest suit. He had all these layers of green on with fatigues. And he goes to me, ‘Posk,’ which was my private conspiratorial nickname, short for Poskeynitt, ‘Posk, what am I?’ And I said, ‘You look like D. Boon.’ ‘No. Really what am I?’ And I said, ‘I’m lost.’ He goes, ‘I’m an artichoke.’

What was D. Boon’s first name?

WATT: D. was short for Dennes. The guy in Blue Oyster Cult was E. Bloom, Eric Bloom, and since we were avidly into BOC, D. had his first name shortened. Before I met him, he had only listened to Buck Owens. His favorite tune was “Tall Dark Stranger.”:

Why don’t most conspiracies work?

WATT: Because the guys on top are totally beholden to their underlings, and their underlings lie to them. They’ll lie for money, or because they’ll be punished. Then the guys on top become more insulated while these ‘side mice’ start extorting money, setting them up and selling them out to other conspirators. Adam Smith, the inventor of Capitalism, said whenever two of us get together, we conspire against the rest. In right wing militias, conspiracies are the glue that holds it together.

(At this point, Watt looks up at Tramps exposed basement plumbing and becomes temporarily distracted)

WATT: Don’t you think turd pipes should be clear, so we could have raffles and see what everybody ate.

(laughter) What’s your take on the Kennedy assassination?

WATT: There could be many collusion’s linked to the JFK assassination. The mob and the Cubans had something to do with it –they even tried to kill Fidel Castro with a loaded cigar. LBJ took a step down from Speaker of the House to become Kennedy’s VP. And the mob lost a lot of money when Battista fled Cuba, because Cuba was the mob’s own little haven. Also, LBJ had these kickback programs throughout the States, and Bobby Kennedy was going to turn it over. And Oswald was a strange character. Why was he allowed to go to Russia to marry, come back and be stationed as a marine when he was supposed to be sporting Communist propaganda. Some silly game play was going on. Shit got out of hand and the CIA and FBI are afraid to open the files. It’s like a terrific car accident in the fog. Everyone is responsible, but everyone is in their own little car with their own agenda.

What about Russian conspiracies?

WATT: The Bolsheviks were a conspiracy. Lenin wouldn’t use Russian bodyguards. He used Latvians. He was almost killed by a Socialist revolutionary. Trotsky had sailors shot for wanting anarchy.

How about record industry conspiracies?

WATT: A guy puts together a band and wants them to be major rock stars. But all the radio stations, Spin, and Rolling Stone have to get involved. There’s lots of collusion’s, but it’s still a federalism… Hey, is there a heavy piss smell down here. At that big shoe box in Boston, the Middle East, there was a really bad ammonia piss stink yesterday.

Were the Minutemen a conspiracy?

WATT: Yes. It was a conspiracy against all rock and rollers. We were going to break our foot off in their ass and lay waste by taking it into our own hands. The great conspiracy for all punk bands is to find out how to stay young. The future belongs to the efficient. The word underground comes from Arcadia. It’s an old Greek idea that says all this shit could come to the surface, but the truth will be a river running underneath. And those who know where to dig the well will have a tap on the whole idea. All we have in this world is faith – I believe that’s a wall over there. I believe there’s a smell of piss in this room. We carry our own conspiracy around in our pants… the fecal soilettes.

What about UFO’s?

WATT: How could you not believe in UFO’s They’re unidentified, that’s all. We just need better words to describe what we see. When it comes down to math and science words are too inexact.

What conspiracies fo you face in your hometown of San Pedro, California?

WATT: San Pedro, Wilmington, and Long Branch make up the harbor. It’s all Latin and Catholic, but the eastside hates the westside. If you’re driving your car, and they ask where you’re from, say nowhere. I have a bullet hole in the back of my van. The town is very rough. Here’s how most shootings in my town start. There’s a wedding reception, some unwelcome cats come to the party, get thrown out, and come back with guns. Pride has a lot to do with it. You have to stick up for your homies. It’s a blood-brother bond that sets the seeds for the next great treason.

Amongst charges of sexual indiscretion, cocaine trafficking, and illegal campaign funds, was there also a conspiracy that elected Bill Clinton president?

WATT: It came down to looks. Former President Bush won the Iraq War one year too early. Bush lost it when he went into a supermarket and didn’t know what a barcode reader was. Clinton, on the other hand, was like vaudeville. He knew how to work the crowd and was from a one-party state, Arkansas, where he made deals with chicken farmers. He had to learn to finesse crowds like Hitler did.

Ig you had one Sunday sermon to give, what wisdom would you share?

WATT: I would talk about Christ being in doubt on the cross asking, ‘Why’d you forsake me?’

How could we achieve world harmony?

WATT: Jazz player John Coltrane wanted to find harmony and a spiritual place in his life. But he kept overreaching, poking out and grabbing. He was trying to get beyond imposed boundaries. He’d practice twenty hours a day. Where is the eye of the pyramid focused? We need conspiracies and collaborators because the world is too big for one of us. We need compadres. They help you write the story with some spiel.

PORTISHEAD’S CRUDE EPONYMOUS SEQUEL IS NO ‘DUMMY’

Interviews

FOREWORD: Portishead are the pride of Bristol, England. A fascinatingly consistent ambient lounge-pop combo led by strident soprano starlet, Beth Gibbons, they were at the epicenter of the mid-‘90s trip-hop explosion alongside Tricky and Massive Attack.

Phenomenal ’94 debut, Dummy, draped Gibbons’ starkly melancholic voice inside dramatic ambient lounge-pop settings and gained the band aboveground recognition. ‘97s belated self-titled follow-up heightened the climactic emotional intensity, unveiling a richer austere moodiness that reduces some of its precursors’ majestic Goth uplift.

Though I never got to speak to Portishead talking head, Beth Gibbons, I did manage to sneak in a one-hour phoner with multi-instrumentalist producer Adrian Utley to promote Portishead’s well-received self-titled second LP. After an eleven-year layoff (to pursue other projects), Portishead returned stronger than ever on ‘08s brilliantly realized Third. This article originally appeared in Cover magazine.

 

The smell of death lingers around Portishead’s gloom-obsessed eponymous second album. Significantly darker than their critically acclaimed trip-hop prog-dance ’94 debut, Dummy, their challenging, if belated, follow-up retains similar dirge-y thematic tension and dramatic exquisiteness as newfound European trip-hop competitors such as Morcheeba, Sneaker Pimps, Babyfox, Hooverphonic and Olive. But those groups lack a singer as breathlessly brooding as Beth Gibbons, whose voice begs for salvation with a chilly uneasiness enhanced by moodily ethereal theatricality.

Between recordings, Bristol-based Portishead filmed their first live appearance since ’95, auspiciously accompanying themselves with a 30-piece orchestra at Manhattan’s spacious Roseland Ballroom. In ’96, the band appeared in and composed the soundtrack for the black and white short film, To Kill A Dead Man.

A year earlier, Dummy received the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, awarded by British critics to the most accomplished album of the year. Struggling to attain a higher standard and stay one step ahead of the broadening ambient trip-hop movement, Portishead spent two years refining its idiosyncratic sound.

On “All Mine,” Gibbons’ shadowy moans evoke ‘60s film noir (or perhaps, a heroin-induced version of Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger”). String-laden nightmare, “Half Day Closing” places her muzzled liquefied melodramatics atop hazy swirls of feedback, found sounds, and witchy keyboard loops. And the operatic “Humming” delves deep into Gibbons’ emotional abyss.

Since they shared a common interest in hip-hop culture, Portishead programmer-keyboardist Geoff Barrow brought in seasoned multi-instrumentalist Adrian Utley. After the sessions for the second album were finished, they allowed Utley, a self-taught musician, to come aboard as a full time member. A Jazz enthusiast influenced by hard-ass rappers, Public Enemy, Utley had roamed England playing for many undistinguished bands during the ‘80s before meeting Barrow in a local recording studio.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Give me a short synopsis about the new self-titled disc.

ADRIAN: We approached this album as a thematic work. It’s important to us that the new album works as a whole. We gathered a bunch of songs and looked at areas where we could make the entirety connect. It took us just over two years to do this album. We changed our working methods. We no longer sample anybody else. But we got a bit lost and it took about a year to get anything substantial done. Geoff, Dave, and I were busy making our own loops. Then, our drummer, Clive Deamer, would come in and play. But it took us ages. It was an unwieldy way of working. We would get an idea for an eight bar segment and we’d work on a multi-track to make all the samples fit. This oversimplifies it, but we’d take beats, bass lines, verses, and chorus sections and then sample it and see if we could manipulate it. When we moved out of our own studio and into a residential studio, we mutually started writing. But we don’t discuss lyrical content with Beth. She’s in her own little world. We usually send backing tracks to Beth and she writes verses and choruses and molds it together.

The moodily stark lyrics Beth Gibbons provides for the second album provide a dramatically surrealistic sense of longing and despair only hinted at on Dummy.

ADRIAN: Some critics think both albums sound the same, but that’s completely untrue. Our feelings of being frustrated and not believing in ourselves anymore for awhile made us nearly lose our way on this album. The light nearly went out. I think you could hear that frustration coming through. We wanted to change what we were doing because we were hearing a lot of sounds that we had previously made on TV ads. We felt we needed a change. The sounds we made we cannot totally abandon, so it was difficult to overcome that. The frustration, anger, and bleakness in what we are doing now comes through on record.

Which guitarists intrigued you as a teen?

ADRIAN: When I went to school, I wanted to play guitar like Jimi Hendrix. His Axis: Bold As Love was massive for me when I was thirteen. It was a very exciting album. In fact, it was the only album I owned for years. I was given it while I was living in the country. My dad was into Jazz and he had some pretty hip records. I first heard someone using a wah-wah pedal at school while I only had an acoustic guitar. To hear that kind of talking sound coming from a guitar was truly unbelievable. So the guitar was really my destiny. Though know I also play other instruments. I went to art school, didn’t like it, and got involved in a band. I toured England with a few bands and learned my craft. In England, we have ex-World War II army camps that were turned into holiday camps where poor people paid a small amount of money and everything is theirs. In the summer, there’d be dance bands. It was brilliant. I learned how to read music and I earned a living. We made terrible, appalling music. Then, I went around playing with soul bands and Jazz musicians I truly admired. I got to play with Big John Pattin, the American organist. But with Jazz, nobody knew who these important musicians were even though they spent their whole lives doing it.

Right. Presently Henry Threadgill and Ornette Coleman fit that bill.

ADRIAN: Yes. Absolutely. Their completely dedicated and diminutive. And they remain unknown – like Hank Mobley, a brilliant tenor sax player for Blue Note who died completely broke, with no money. So I did Jazz for ten years and studied hard. I had enough of that because you lose everything you own and are unappreciated. It’s intense. Nine gigs out of ten would be terrible because improvised music could go both ways. So I had enough of that. Luckily, I was always interested in all kinds of music. And I loved synthesizers. But it was Public Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back that really turned my head and made me want to do something else. I still travel with that album and A Tribe Called Quest’s Low End Theory. These albums made me look elsewhere.

Is that when you hooked up with Geoff Barrow?

ADRIAN: I first met Geoff in a studio. I was making a recording and he was making tea and just starting out. He was only eighteen at the time. There was a huge age gap between us but we both liked hip-hop. He knew loads about hip-hop culture and we began talking. It was a new world for me. Then I didn’t see him for a year because he went off to London to work. But we both moved into the same pre-production studio and I was getting into the beats. So we just started working together.

Do you enjoy bands like Morcheeba, Babyfox, Sneaker Pimps, and Hooverphonic? They’ve all been influenced by Portishead’s newfound trip-hop.

ADRIAN: No. I haven’t really listened to them. And that word trip-hop I don’t feel comfortable being associated with. When we first started, I think a British newspaper coined that term. As we remember it originally, it referred to instrumental hip-hop. It was just ambient beats with noise layered over the top, like the Mo Wax recording artists. We never felt related to that because it was the songs that were always at the root of our muse. So we felt uncomfortable being associated with it. Ultimately, catalogs don’t really matter in music. Blues is Blues and Jazz is Jazz. I think the press is starting to call us Goth-pop now.

Portishead’s music has always been truly unique and iconoclastic. When you started out, did each member feel unified in the direction the music went on the debut?

ADRIAN: We were working on a buzz and busting to do something original. And it was all these influences coming together. Geoff, Dave, and Beth laid the groundwork by getting a record deal. We were happy to get together. There was no stress on us. We thought we’d make a record and have enough money to make another. It was a good creative time for us. We never thought it would sell as many records as it did.

SPACE NEEDLE EATEN BY ‘MORAY EEL’

Interviews, ,

FOREWORD: Space Needle composer Jud Ehrbar never got the respect he deserved as one of the ‘90s most adventurous progressive rock avatars. But due to his permanent New York underground stature, I was able to speak with him on several occasions before and after New York gigs. I found his cosmic escapades riveting. But after ‘97s The Moray Eel Eat The Space Needle, Ehrbar settled into a backup role as drummer in band mate Anders Parker’s solo project during the next decade. This article originally appeared in HITS magazine.

(I’ve also included an Aquarian Weekly piece that follows.)

 

Despite the deceiving Space Needle moniker, this trio does not live in Seattle, where the famous pinhead monument of the same name reaches skyward. Instead, Space Needle features Northport, Long Island natives Jud Ehrbar (arrangements-drums) and Jeff Gatland (guitar) with upstate New York pal, Anders Parker (guitar).

Formed during stints in Poughkeepsie and Providence, this valiant trio plays the gamut from sweet pop ballads to freeform instrumental excursions. They rely on drifting, extended improvisations at live shows, mesmerizing awed fans with their musical ability and cohesion.

In ’95, Space Needle dropped the sophisticated requiem, Voyager, what some call the Dark Side Of The Moon of modern rock. With the recent release of the moodily kaleidoscopic The Moray Eel Eats The Space Needle, they move further into a sophisticated noisy Jazz direction. But do not be scared off, fans of ardent pop. The elegant “Never Lonely Alone” and the gorgeous “Love Left Us Strangers” are tenderly affectionate ballads that leave Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Toni Braxton crying on their ill-deserved Grammys.

Ehrbar’s musical inspirations include Eno’s Another Green World, Velvet Underground, and ‘70s prog-rock. He’s a musical chameleon able to fit into any popular style he desires. On the night of this ’97 interview, he was backing up the band, Long River Train, at lower Manhattan’s Pink Pony while band mate Anders Parker just happened to play an introspective acoustic set right afterwards. By the way, along with Anders’ brother John, who I’ve shared a few cocktails with in the past, Ehrbar and Parker also coexist in delectable indie pop band, Varnaline.

Since Space Needle’s mind-expanding experiments are sometimes difficult to grasp, have you ever encountered much jeering while on tour?

JUD: We had this guy from Little Rock, Arkansas, who must’ve surely disliked us. I had my drums set up near the foot of the stage and this redneck stood two feet in front of me and held his middle finger out for a few minutes. I just continued playing.

Rednecks are probably lost when you go beyond the third chord. What was your most confounding song on The Moray Eel?

JUD: The last track, “One Kind Of Lullaby.” We had been doing it live, playing it heavy and bombastic. Jeff (Gatland) said it sounded like a bad U2 song. So we had to reinvent it. It took several tries to figure out a better arrangement.

Has Space Needle ever been completely lost during one of its improvisational jams?

JUD: That can be a problem. But it’s also when we sometimes create our best songs. It’s really horrible and frustrating to be flopping through. It’s the worst feeling being onstage and sucking – which we’ve definitely done.

Has Space Needle played any real sleazy dives?

JUD: Well. Sometimes it’s hard to differentiate between the shows we have and the clubs we play. We love New York clubs such as Mercury Lounge and Brownies, but… Hey, Anders, what was the name of that one place in the Midwest?

ANDERS: Oh, it was in Omaha. Either the Iron Cage or the Cog Shop. They had shitty flat beer and there was a cold straight-edge punk crowd. We went over quite poorly as you’d expect. And the sound system was bad. But the people working there were very nice.

What’s the toughest part of touring?

JUD: We all get along well. But we’re usually drinking quite a bit and it dulls the nerves. We’ve had some equipment problems. We’ll show up with broken equipment after doing a crazy show the night before. That happens when you pack up drunk. The next day you do a sound check and it’s like, ‘Jesus Christ, what happened to my drum kit?’ Sometimes we’ll show up and our guitars will be broken.

What will be the singles from Moray Eel?

JUD: “Never Lonely Alone” backed with a 10″ remix of “Love Left Us Strangers” by Paul Riordan. He’s from L.A. and was an engineer for the Geto Boys and Scarface. There’s even a demo version Anders did of “One Kind Of Lullaby.” I did “Never Lonely Alone” by myself on four-track. I didn’t try to make it as slick as “Love Left Us Strangers,” which we made with every intention of getting airplay. “Love Left Us Strangers” is a look at a failed relationship that was doomed from the start while on “Never Lonely Alone,” I wrote from the point of view of somebody who is a loner that goes to movies by himself. It could never be about me. At the time, I realized listeners might get tired just hearing me relate my own personal experiences.

What artists have you been listening to recently?

JUD: While I’m not deeply immersed in it, there are a few Bay Area DJ’s sampling things that I enjoy. Dr. Octagon, DJ Shadow, and even Goldie have put out some refreshing stuff. There are also some great songwriters not necessarily from the indie rock scene which I really like, such as Joe Henry and Freedy Johnston.

How’d you get together with Sean Thompson in Long River Train?

JUD: I was just filling in on tour. But I’ve played with Sean up in Poughkeepsie when Anders and his brother, John, were starting out with me. We’ve been friends for some time.

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SPACE NEEDLE: THE AQUARIAN PIECE

Space Needle incorporate the avant-garde post-rock talents of percussionist-arranger Jud Ehrbar and guitarist Jeff Gatland, Northport, Long Island natives partnered with Varnaline frontman-guitarist Anders Parker. Together, this progressive trio rarely plays live. And when they do, instead of merely rehashing track from its Eno-esque space rock debut, Voyager, or shimmering sophomore set, The Moray Eel Eats The Space Needle, they either remit droning electronic orchestrations or blurry Jazz-related excursions.

“When I first started recording, I had no equipment. It was frustrating back then. I had all these expansive ideas but I couldn’t put them down. Maybe some of what we do is over people’s heads, but we have a fan base who know songs like “Where The Fuck’s My Wallet?” (a fascinatingly grueling 13-minute lead track on Moray Eel) from hearing it at earlier dates. If we worry about intimidating audiences, then it defeats the point of what we’re attempting to do,” Ehrbar explains as we sit on a couch downstairs at Knitting Factory before Space Needle’s alluring 45-minute set.

Whether or nor it’s risky to put an extended instrumental jam in the premier spot on an album is hardly the issue though. At the core of Moray Eel lies two tenderly crafted ballads concerning broken relationships. The warmly impassioned “Never Lonely Alone” fits contemporary radio like a ‘90s version of “Every Breath You Take.” And the synth-based soft-toned “Love Left Us Strangers” is one of the better moody contemplation’s in recent years. When Space Needle spruce up guitar fuzz and apply blurry sonics, they come up with the delicately murmured “Old Spice.”

When asked what the trio may perform on this cold January night at the Kntting Factory, Ehrbar looks up and frankly states, “I’m honestly not sure yet.”

Ehrbar’s cosmically esoteric material seems influenced by the Mahavihnu Orchestra and other Jazz-rock pioneers. But he’s also intrigued by ‘70s prog-rock legends, King Crimson, Yes, and Pink Floyd. He even recruited Yes album designer Roger Dean to draw the cover for Moray Eel.

Happily, Ehrbar’s not confined by the art for art’s sake gothic indulgences and lyrical pretensions which led to the downfall of prog-rock. Instead, he’s interested in the idiosyncratic introspection’s and eerie settings the relic style once relied on at its base.

Live, Space Needle break down the barriers separating noise from music. Lingering moods fluctuate unexpectedly and abandon formal patterns, resulting in enigmatically beautiful sounds.

As Space Needle slowly break into an improvised expedition so unstructured and atmospheric it took a few minutes to realize they weren’t just warming up, the crowd remained awestruck and mesmerized. The addition of Ithaca, New York violinist Max Buckholtz gives each instrumental a delicate tension. Then Buckholtz sat with his legs crossed and eyes shut at the edge of the stage, meditating while Parker and Gatland applied sonic guitars to Ehrbar’s hypnotic-to-frenetic percussion.

On Moray Eel, Buckholtz’s icy glissando battles back clustered drums on the teasing “Hot For Krishna.” And his galactic digressions give the exotic strip tease “Hyapatia Lee” proper soft porn imagery. His drifting passages somehow recall classically trained violinist Jean Luc Ponty’s celestial ‘70s solo recordings.

“We’re not good enough to be a Jazz combo so we do our best to make use of what instruments and skills we do have, “Ehrbar humbly and honestly insists. “Soemwhere down the road I’d like to maybe do soundtrack music. I think the Reservoir album I made by myself last year touched upon some of those ideas.”

VARNALINE GRAB ‘SHOT AND BEER’ BEFORE ‘SWEET LIFE’ KICKS IN

Interviews,

FOREWORD: I knew Varnaline frontman Anders Parker pretty well since his days with Jud Ehrbar in cosmic New York-via-Providence prog-rock experimentalists, Space Needle. I saw them play Mercury Lounge, Knitting Factory,  and Brownies within a year-and-a-half.

Varnaline was a roots-y singer-songwriter (side) project for Parker, who succeeded in mixing up contemplative laid-back orchestral wanderings with guitar-driven Crazy Horse-inspired moments. Before seeing him open up a show at Irving Plaza for Mark Lanegan, I interviewed the ‘bearded one’ to promote ‘98s nifty Sweet Life.

The last album he did under the pseudonym, Varnaline, ‘02s Songs In A Northern Key, really captured the essence of his honey-hushed baritone in soothingly lush, low key settings.

Since then, Parker’s released a few solo discs, such as ‘04s Tell It To The Dust (reviewed below interview), ‘05s The Wounded Astronaut, and a self-titled ’06 album. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

 

Varnaline began as a home-taping venture for transgressive upstate New York roots-rock multi-instrumentalist Anders Parker in the early ‘90s. Moving to Brooklyn hasn’t altered the gloomy solitude of Parker’s elliptical rural introspections and endearing nocturnal dramatics. Sweet Life combines the modest, heartfelt acoustic intimacy of backwoods-y 6-song EP A Shot And A Beer with the expansive rhapsodic flurries of ‘97s Varnaline and ‘96s Man Of Sin debut.

Sweet Life’s autumnal “Gulf Of Mexico,” silky orchestral, “Northern Lights,” and dirge-y diatribe, Now You’re Dirt” open the valiant set with splendid conviction. “All About Love” recalls In The Court Of The Crimson King more than the downtrodden “Saviors” (featuring trombonist Dean Jones) hints at The Band’s “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.”

Based on a Viet Nam vets rants, “Fuck & Fight” hedges against narcissistic ‘60s hippie lifestyles, and is a companion piece to the Moody Blues-ish “Tonite.” Written after a long night of partying, the poignant “Mare Imbrium” uses the moon as its referential metaphor.

Auxiliary members Jud Ehrbar (ex-Space Needle partner and Reservoir pilot) and John Parker (Anders’ brother) have now been installed as permanent fixtures for Varnaline’s current tour opening for Bob Mould.

Why’d you decide to move to Brooklyn from Upper New York?

ANDERS: My girlfriend lives in Brooklyn and I decided to move in with her. There’s a lot more people here and it’s close to Manhattan where something is always going on. But I can’t see living here forever. I like to go outside and not walk on concrete all the time. That doesn’t mean I want to live in a cave.

What musical artists inspired you as a kid?

ANDERS: Definitely the Beatles. Also, ‘50s rock and the Beach Boys I liked. My parents always had their records around. They were born in the ‘30s/ ‘40s, but they like the fact John and I cultivated our urge to get into the arts. They listened to the radio a lot. There’s still a stack of records at their house. My dad played guitar and piano. He went to school in the early ‘60s and liked folk revival stuff by Kingston Trio and the Weavers.

What instruments did you learn first?

ANDERS: I played saxophone in elementary school and drums in high school. After moving around, going to a few colleges, I realized music was the only thing I wanted to do. It meant so much to me.

Sweet Life seems to be more dynamic and better integrated than Varnaline’s first few releases.

ANDERS: It’s a more rounded record. It’s my version of a pop record. There were a lot of songs floating around, but these seemed to flow best. I demoed the songs extensively beforehand. There’s always work to be done. Each song has its own separate identity.

“Gulf Of Mexico” would probably sound good in the background of a dramatic movie. Would you consider soundtrack work?

ANDERS: It’s a very visual song. I wrote that while driving my car from upstate to Brooklyn. I liked the way the words sounded. It’s loosely about a person who’s waiting for everything to fall apart – possibly while that person is on a raft.

Do your songs deal with personal accounts or are they fictional characterizations?

ANDERS: It varies. It could be personal or something I overheard. Sometimes a sentence or a line inspires me.

Why title the album Sweet Life? That closing song is a sonic departure from the other tracks.

ANDERS: It encompasses some of the mood and it has some definite irony. Sweet Life was also the name of an upstate grocery store’s cheap brand of food which I subsided on up there.

“This Is The River” and “Underneath The Mountain” seem inspired by some of those rural upstate surroundings.

ANDERS: “Underneath The Mountain” was indirectly inspired by the movie Under The Volcano. It was about a drunk English guy at the end of his life and the frustrations he felt. I was thinking of how life is always on top of you. “This Is The River” was written right before we went into the studio. If you take away the production, it’d be like a folk-blues tune. I had this view of the river where people were swimming in a vaguely childlike imagery.

How does Sweet Life differ from previous Varnaline albums?

ANDERS: We got the opportunity to work in a great studio. The sounds of the instruments came out so well. Also, I used some of my folkier stuff with my rockier stuff. When we started out, we were more of a rock band. After doing this awhile, we brought in some acoustic ideas that were lying around but needed to be worked on. Sweet Life has more instrumentation and a more dynamic range. John plays upright bass and keyboards and we combine elements from the EP with elements from the first two albums. John Agnello was a great engineer who captured the sound we wanted. We talked to him about getting the full sound out of each individual instrument. Agnello had good ears and instinct. We felt we had a common language with him, and we were able to communicate with him well and trust him.

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STARKER PARKER

Anders Parker’s honeyed baritone isn’t far removed from Lou Barlow’s creamy hum, verbalizing hard won small victories, pent-up frustration, and itchy desperation in festering meditative verses. Thankfully, neither ‘newly coined’ soloist feels helplessly destitute or perilously distraught despite being overlooked by myopic mainstream nitwits while perched on an ever-narrowing limb in search of wider cult support.

An existential theme seems to bookend Parker’s Tell It To the Dust, going from the “built to rust” absolution of the scintillating title track (startlingly climaxing like Pink Floyd’s automaton “Welcome To The Machine”) to the blustery fuzz-toned mantra “Doornail (Hats Off To Buster Keaton).” The latter blasts Neil Young-endorsed 6-string distortion into a blistering liberation.

Between, Parker tailors accessible serenades such as calm bequeath “Goodbye Friend,” anticipatory organ-laced spellbinder “Something New,” and compassionate commiserate “Don’t Worry Honey, Everything’s Gonna Be Alright.” On dirge-y sad-eyed lament “Innocents,” Parker’s clear conscience allows him to assuredly glance beyond faulty conjecture and wish upon ‘sunbeams or maybe moonbeams’ in a doleful cracked tenor. For a resonantly uplifting counteraction, he offers mellifluent ‘let’s see a smile’ gem, “C’mon Now.”

Quite apropos, the sadly departing “Feel The Same” re-invests a few somber Lennon piano motifs to get its wearily somber mood across. When Parker remits heartbreaking campfire duet, “Keep Me Hanging On” (allied with Mascott alto Kendall Meade), he proves to be completely affecting as a contemporary Country crooner as well. Guests Jay Farrar (whose wicked harmonica screech usurps bass-rumbled, piano-tinkled highlight “Into The Sun”), Tianna Kennedy (cello), Joan Wasser (violin), and former Space Needle partner Jud Ehrbar (drums) decorously detail several stimulating numbers. Recommended.

THE BRUERY ORCHARD WHITE BELGIAN ALE

Beers A-Z
Subtle soft-tongued sunny-hazed light-bodied Belgian witbier retains well-rounded profile. Breaded wheat-oats bed cushions perfume-hopped lemon-fizzed white peach, yellow grape, and green banana fruiting as well as white-peppered coriander-clove-ginger spicing. Chalky lavender and limestone acridity may be off-putting to some, but mellow white Sangria finish proves indelible.

 

 

LONG TRAIL DOUBLE I.P.A.

Beers A-Z
Dry piney-fruited IPA lacks sufficient grassy-floral hop bite, but lively white grapefruit, red apple, peach, tangerine, and pineapple ripeness stick out above biscuit-y malt bottom. On tap, freshly squeezed citric nosing, mild floral-spiced orange-peeled grapefruit bittering, and pervasive alcohol-burned pine-sapped peach-pear-apple-cantaloupe fruiting (as well as tertiary mango-papaya tropicalia) seep into creamy caramel malting.

 

 

!!! PUT INARTICULATE EXCLAMATION POINT ON MUSIC

Interviews,

FOREWORD: Brooklyn’s !!! are an investigative ‘post-no wave’ dance rock collective. Though their name is perfectly abstract in print, its three unpronounceable exclamation points are now, as of ’09, interpreted as ‘chk chik chick.’ !!! guitarist Mario Andreoni truly loves all types of music. I could’ve spoke to him for days on end about experimental music but only had one hour. But I’ve got to give a major shout out to him for inviting my wife and I (and a hundred others) on a Paddlewheel Queen boat ride around Manhattan to promote ‘04s stimulating Louden Up Now. They did a short set and drinks were free. ‘07s challengingly abstract Myth Takes got the heads up from fans. This article originally appeared in Aquarian Weekly.

 

With a strangely exclamatory name like !!! (pronounced clik clik clik, pow pow pow, or as any thrice repeated one-syllable word), you’ve got to be good! And this artful Brooklyn-via-Sacramento octet certainly seems worthy, reaching back to Latino soul, ‘70s disco, and ‘80s no wave eccentricities for vitality, encouragement, and motivation.

Though !!! guitarist Mario Andreoni and saxophonist Allan Wilson remain steadfast in California’s tree-lined capitol, the admirably affable contingent’s contagious dance jams have reinvigorated New York City’s chronic club scene alongside better-known brethren The Rapture, Radio 4, and A.R.E. Weapons.

One year before recording their ’01 self-titled full length debut, !!! made a roughhewn ramshackle half-live lo-fi eight-track split single with post-rock experimentalists Out Hud, whose excellent ’02 entrée, S.T.R.E.E.T.D.A.D. deconstructed techno-electronic instrumentals. Sharing members Nic Offer, guitarist Tyler Pope, and bassist Justin VanDerVolgen, both defiant combos affirm that deep-grooved rhythms retain utmost importance.

During the ‘90s, Andreoni’s former band, The Popesmashers, which relied on Clash-like dub and abrasive Sonic Youth noise, joined forces with contemporary locals, Yah Mos, a Nation Of Ulysses-Motown punk-R&B hybrid, to concoct the variegated !!!

Preliminarily motivated by house music and a shared love for premier Jazz icons John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, and Charlie Hayden, these admitted vinyl fanatics concurrently developed a sweet tooth for ‘70s funk kings Chic, rock-soul legends Sly & The Family Stone, and West End disco mainstay Taana Gardner.

Adreoni, a pre-teen Jackson 5 and Kiss obsessive, was introduced to hard rockers Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin through his older brother thereafter. He soon discovered many ageless pop classics and estimable abandoned junk in one-dollar thrift store buns. Partaking in the same bargain hunting, fellow percussive partners Dan Gorman, Jason Racine, and John Pugh now keep the tidy tempos hot for the up-front Offer-Hope-Andreoni vocal-guitar barrage.

On’04s astonishingly funky Louden Up Now, !!! step ahead with multifarious fare such as the nifty squiggly ditty, “When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Karazzee,” the chiming electroclash banger, “Pardon My Freedom,” and the penetrating bass-throbbed bongo-laden horn-blurted exasperation, “Hello, Is This Thing On?”

Thrillingly seductive 10-minute medley, “Me & Giuliani Down By The Schoolyard (A True Story),” originally released on a fascinating butt-shaking EP, drifts from buoyant espionage motif to delusional hallucinatory insinuation, cultivating a scurried scuttlebutt reprisal targeting its mayoral figurehead.

An attractive sanctuary for foot-shuffling jitterbugs, Louden Up Now not only toils in modern dance culture, but keenly rejuvenates celebratory antecedents as far removed as ‘80s dub pub slugs Gang Of Four and sundry ‘70s kraut-rock schemers.

“The goal is to live up to your art,” Andreoni daringly declares.

How has your band improved since its ’01 full-length debut?

MARIO: We’re continually learning how we want to write music. The newness of playing music is apparent on the first album. Louden Up Now is a bit more comfortable groove-based live-like dance music.

Your band is being credited with stimulating the whole no wave Brooklyn scene – which includes Radio 4 and The Rapture.

MARIO: I’d never think we started this, but whenever we toured early on, there were very small audiences – a real DIY scene. We definitely stuck out. From that perspective within that small niche, we resurrected live bands playing dance music without having a hardcore political agenda. Rapture are more popular so people think we copied them. Bands we were influenced by – Can and Kraftwerk – we never looked at it as being much different from what they were doing. We just put our own spin on it. The logistics of the band being seven people with vast record collections… we’re all music fanatics.

Several early L.A. punk bands emanated from Sacramento. There’s some recognition due your hometown.

MARIO: Tales Of Terror were one of the better known bands with Sacramento roots. They were small compared to Black Flag, whom I saw in ’86. The punk scene was really on the fringe back then. It was weirder than what hardcore became in the ‘90s when it was regimented, loud, riff-y, scream-o shit. I was into metal back then.

Just as Fugazi and Minor Threat were East Coast radical punks snuffing DC politics, there were several Sacramento bands snubbing former California governor Ronald Reagan and his conservative ilk.

MARIO: That’s a good observation. The scene we came out of was politically charged. People would have critical mass rallies. Downtown Sacramento is like a grid with tons of trees and incredible beauty. So the youth that came out of the Loft scene were politically active or at least aware. Because it’s the state capitol, access to government archives was possible. Then again, Sacramento is a sleepy town and people get fucked up in the sun. So there’s balance of drunken politics. But the Sacramento scene had been dead for awhile. So maybe as years go by, having Arnold in office will allow a new strain of punk as a result.

Though you somewhat discount your bands’ political notions, the mega-dance saga, “Me & Guiliani Down By The Schoolyard” offhandedly snubs the former New York mayor.

MARIO: Moving to New York and then realizing this is where disco was created, thrived, and had a stranglehold on Latins, Cubans, and African-Americans, crossing so many barriers, it’s hard to believe Guiliani resurrected the cabaret law (restricting dancing to only licensed clubs). That’s made us think that as many props as he gets for saving New York City, he’s also done backhanded things. None of us are Z magazine Noam Chomsky disciples, but we’re aware of what’s going on in the world. Taking a jab like that fits. We can’t take ourselves too seriously with politics. But we enjoy introducing people to subversive politics while they have a good time listening to the band. We don’t want to be super-overtly political.

Yet your political dalliances are formidable. On the loose defecation, “Shit, Schiesse, Merde,” singer Nic Offer interjects, “What did Bush say when he met Tony Blair? Shit!’ That could relate to 9-11 or Iraqi insurgence.

MARIO: Nowadays, there’s this huge mindless retro-rock thing. Bands want to play like the Rolling Stones or Kinks and bring it back. But within our limited capacity, we like to bring things up that are wrong with the world and remind people to be aware of their surroundings.

And like an old !!! song title states, “There’s No Fuckin’ Rules, Dude,” is “Dear Can” in homage to the German Jazz-rock experimentalists Can?

MARIO: It’s really bombastic, rhythmically, influenced by dancehall, but syncopated like Can’s music. Damo Suzuki’s lyrics were so random. You weren’t sure what he was saying but it fit with the music well. We took that theme and ran with it. While it’s more modern sounding than Can, we’ve always been influenced by their strong rhythms.

Back to “Shit.” It reminds me of Pigbag, an ‘80s British dance outfit using spare rhythms that became huge in England after American no wavers Liquid Liquid, DNA, and ESG retired.

MARIO: Exactly. A lot of those bands we found out about after we started the band. Initially we were Jazz fans… like Don Cherry. As for Pigbag, “Rip Rig & Panic,” I think, was very adventurous. Those bands that existed on the fringe were important. There is a kinship. But they were ignored in the canon of alternative music history. I’ve been dying to see Jazz artists when I come to New York.

There are many fine Jazz artists that can’t get 100 people at a show while the Rolling Stones sell out stadiums doing oldies for $200 a ticket.

MARIO: Why would you go see some lame interpretation of the Stones and pay so much money for half-ass versions of their songs. I know (Jazz pioneer) Pharoah Sanders lives outside Sacramento as a born again Christian, but I’d jump at the opportunity to see what he’s up to. It’s sad how living in the right place at the right time is important. I’m humbled by the fact that bands I respect didn’t get the attention we get. That’s a reflection of our times. One of my favorite records is Curtis Mayfield’s Live At The Bitter End. There’s a small audience. Back then, he was really struggling after making timeless Impressions records and a small selling debut (prior to the mega-selling breakthrough Superfly soundtrack). It’s the most uplifting record. But there can’t be more than 100 people at the show.

What inspired the expletive ‘suck my fuckin’ dick/ like I give a fuck!’ “Pardon My Freedom”?

MARIO: The FCC did. Nic didn’t want to feel any limitations singing. I had apprehensions when he sang it live. It’s about people being too uptight.