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Marcia

Marcia Clifton is the drummer of Memphis' first punk band, The Klitz. After the group initially disbanded in 1980, she made some home recordings with her boyfriend (later husband) Hans Faulhaber. The duo employed a drum machine and recorded on a Fostex cassette recorder. It was a great session, combining Cleaners from Venus-style lo-fi production with danceable post-punk elements that were a hallmark of 1980-1983 underground music. Spacecase will be releasing a limited-edition lathe cut (25 copies) of two songs from this cassette very soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Circa 1983 photo by Marion Keisker (yes, of Sun Records/Elvis Presley fame)

Ryan: The Klitz ended in late 1980 when Lesa (Aldridge) moved to New Jersey. What were you doing in that interim period between then and when you started recording these tracks in the summer of 1983?

Marcia: When Lesa left town and The Klitz disbanded, we decided to either go back to college or get a job that wasn’t in the music industry. I had a job managing a boutique. It was a cool clothing store. And that’s where I met Hans (Faulhaber). Hans had recorded with Gail (Clifton) first at Ardent. That would’ve been early in 1983. Hans and I started dating. He didn’t have a home-recording setup like the ones you think of today. He had a little cassette recorder where you had a few tracks.

Ryan: It was a Fostex cassette recorder, not a reel-to-reel tape recorder, correct?

Marcia: Yes. A Fostex cassette recorder. Most of those songs I had already written. But I wrote them more as poetry. I didn’t necessarily want to put them to music. But Hans is a musician. He said, “Well, I can put some music to these, and I have a drum machine.” So, we recorded those in his apartment early in our courtship. We recorded these songs in 1983 and 1984.

Ryan: I didn’t realize that you weren’t actively pursuing music after the Klitz ended.

Marcia: That’s right. I didn’t do anything with music again until we recorded these songs. “Shy Guy” was about a heartbreak I’d had before I’d met Hans. I was the drummer in The Klitz. I’d written some songs, but I wasn’t like Gail (Clifton) and Lesa (Aldridge) who were always recording material or writing songs that we’d perform. When Hans and I started dating, he was the one who said, “Well, maybe you’ve got some songs in you.” To which I responded, “Well, I’ve got these poems…” Only a couple other songs from the batch of recordings I gave you were written afterwards. “This Love” was one of them.

Ryan: These songs were all recorded in Hans’ apartment, right?

Marcia: Yes, except for “Can’t Decide” and “French Boy.” Lesa wrote “French Boy” and “Can’t Decide” was a song I wrote in 1986. Those two tracks I added later to the recordings you have. The one Sid Selvidge sings was recorded later too.

Ryan: So, you wrote “Week at a Glance,” the song Sid sings on and the one you’re referring to?

Marcia: Exactly.

Ryan: Memphis music has always been underappreciated.

Marcia: Very underappreciated.

Ryan: And an overlooked musician from the Memphis music scene is the late Sid Selvidge. He ran the Peabody label and his record, The Cold of the Morning (1976), is outstanding. How did you meet and get to work with Sid?

Marcia: I knew him from Mud Boy & the Neutrons. Coincidentally, he also had stepdaughters who were my age. His stepdaughter Kathy Spivey was my friend. I went over to their house when I was 14 to hang out. Steve (Selvidge, Sid’s son and musician) was still a toddler. We’re talking about the early 1970s. We always knew Sid as an activist and poet. He was an anthropology professor at Southwestern (now Rhodes College). Sid was always this Midtown enigma to me. I didn’t really get to know him until Mud Boy and The Klitz started playing shows together.

Ryan: Did you ask him to record with you?

Marcia: Yeah, Hans asked him. Sid was the house band for a Memphis bar/restaurant called the North End. He was playing at Jefferson Square first, but unfortunately that place burned down to the ground. This was in addition to Sid’s other musical projects, including Mud Boy. By the time we recorded with Sid, Hans had upgraded from his little Fostex. He was recording more bands. So, he’d invited Sid over. Sid liked the song and the lyrics for “Week at a Glance”.

Ryan: Memphis is a city where music can happen independently, oblivious to what’s happening elsewhere. Nevertheless, bands like the Bush Tetras and Pylon were combining post punk with dance elements and a spartan sound. Were you aware of those bands or do you feel that working with a drum machine had more of an influence on these songs?

Marcia: No. I would say it was more about the technology. I’d heard of those bands, but they weren’t an influence. New wave was definitely going at that time. I think it was more a sign of the times.

Ryan: Did you ever perform these songs live?

Marcia: That never happened at the time, and I thought we would. Much later, our band SuperLo did some of these songs. That was with Hans, me and John Hampton’s wife Robin Robison.

Ryan: That would’ve been the 2010s, correct?

Marcia: Right. 2018. But going back to when we recorded these songs, I was in college. And I was in some ways living the music through Gail (Clifton). After The Klitz broke up, she was the only one who really continued with music. I would hang out and support her. The Klitz got back together in 2014. I enjoyed it so much I wondered why I’d ever stopped playing music.

Ryan: It seems like a matter of life taking over. I know you had your first child, Clover, around this time.

Marcia: Yes. Clover was born in 1991. I did have one short-lived band called Orbit Tomatoes before Clover was born. That was with our neighbor Tommy Foster who coincidentally owned a nightclub, so we became the house band. I played drums and bass guitar, and I did sing “French Boy.” Tommy was (Memphis organizer/musician) Bennett Foster’s father. He was such a wonderful person who died way too young. Anyway, I’m glad these songs are finally seeing the light of day.

Urinals/100 Flowers

http://www.spacecaserecords.com/spacecase-releases/a-brief-oral-history-of-the-urinals-and-100-flowers-by-ryan-leach-pocketbook

My Urinals/100 Flowers pocketbook is now available.

The Hero’s Staycation zine

What’s it like turning 40 in a new town as it and the rest of the USA shuts down due to the COVID-19 pandemic? How do people interact with one another after abnormally long periods of being alone? Why do politicians who are despised still receive 80,000,000 votes?

Gib Strange is one of the few individuals who can tackle such questions in a way that couples geopolitics, the breakdown of late-stage capitalism and the ways they affect and reshape daily existence—visiting the donut store is now an experience.

The Hero’s Staycation is an anachronism to 1990s zine culture. It’s the erudition found in the zine and its ability to break through today’s digital-culture groupthink that Gib achieves with this booklet. Like me, Gib is just old enough to remember an analog world that was print based and capable of deeper critical thought. It’s imperative that The Hero’s Staycation be made available in print. And here it is.

-Ryan Leach

Those Were Different Times, Part One

Before things started going sideways, Matt Taylor gave me the only copy of a VHS tape he’d edited in 1998. He called the video Short Circuit. We were all influenced by Tim Dowling's Listen video that had just come out. I'm reediting a lot of Short Circuit. -Ryan Leach

JT Aultz: This first time I saw JT Aultz was in 1996 at a skateboard contest at the Thousand Oaks Teen Center. Spanky was there with him—they lived nearby one another—and Spanky was sort of like JT’s understudy. At the time, JT was sponsored by Evol Skateboards which was Tony Magnusson’s company out of San Diego. I formally met JT a little later through Mike Taylor. Before Mike became a member of the rentier class, he was a normal kid who liked to skateboard. Mike lived in Agoura and JT lived there part time. One day in high school Mike told me, “JT’s coming to skate (our local spot) Borchard Park with us when we get out of school. He says he’s going to kickflip the three block.” I didn’t think that was possible for someone roughly my own age (16). JT showed up and kickflipped it in under five tries. You can see the footage here. The line from Webb Park and other SD footage were from Hi8 tapes JT gave to Matt Taylor for Short Circuit. JT lived in San Diego most of the time and he would visit Agoura periodically.

JT was always exceptionally good. From the first time I saw him skate, he was already on a different level. I didn’t know JT well—I remember we ran into each other at the DMV and got our driver’s license on the same day—but going off the few times I skated with him in ’98-‘99, I felt that he was underrated. There weren’t many people that young whose skating was that advanced. Before he took off with Real, he had some solid clips in Tim Dowling’s Listen video from around this time.

Van Wastell was one of my best friends. He taught me how to Smith grind. Van was 14 years old here. The tan shirt he’s wearing while doing those lines in the hallway at Newbury Park High—where we both went to school together—is a Renaissance Skateboards shirt. That was the short-lived Christian skate company that Caswell Berry rode for. Van caught the shirt at a Skate Street contest in Ventura. Van wasn’t sponsored yet. He got on Consolidated about a year later. Van always had impeccable balance. He was still progressing at this point, but he had uncanny board control. I was two years older than Van and I looked up to his older brother Kurt Wastell. Kurt was the first person I’d seen ollie over a bike rack on flat ground. It blew my mind. That must have been around late 1995.

Van passed away on September 6, 2008, and I’ve thought about him almost every day since. Near the end of his life, Van was getting into West German cinema—directors like Werner Herzog. He was an inquisitive person and he would’ve kept progressing—both as a skateboarder and as an individual. I skate with his memory so I’m always around a legend.

Thor was from Camarillo and he ripped. He skated with Eric Bork a lot. You could tell Thor was at the Camarillo park before you saw him. He would endlessly lipslide the living hell out of the pyramid—wheels screeching. If I recall correctly, Thor rode for Creature near the end of their initial run. Angel Saucedo screened his homey video Oh No! in 2011 at West Park in Ventura. I hadn’t seen Thor in more than a decade, but he recognized me and we had a great chat. What a great guy.

Tim Brauch: Spanky poached this footage of the late Tim Brauch skating the Ventura Skate Street mini at the 1998 pro contest. I’m glad he did. I remember reading in Spanish class—the teacher would let us use the internet when we finished our work early—that Tim had just died. This was in May 1999. I couldn’t believe it. We had seen him ripping less than a year earlier.

Jim Ruland Interview

Jim Ruland is a writer living in Southern California. His latest book is Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records.

Corporate Rock Sucks traces the history of Greg Ginn and SST Records. Originally founded as an electronics company, SST morphed into a record label to release material by Ginn’s band, Black Flag. Joe Carducci joined SST in 1981 and the imprint took off, becoming arguably the most influential independent label of the 1980s. Releases such as Black Flag’s Damaged (1981), Hüsker Dü’s Zen Arcade (1984), The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime (1984), Meat Puppets’ Meat Puppets II (1984) and Sonic Youth’s Sister (1987) cemented the label’s status. A series of self-inflicted wounds, distributors going bust and key personnel loss—including Carducci and Steve “Mugger” Corbin—caused SST’s effective demise by 1991.

Ruland exhaustively covers the successes and failures of SST in Corporate Rock Sucks. He provides portraits of SST’s owners and contributors and goes deep, interviewing the behind-the-scenes employees who made SST run. SST didn’t end well. To this day, there remains acrimony between some artists and the label, which makes Ruland’s book all the more impressive. It wasn’t an easy story to tell. Corporate Rock Sucks is a must have for anyone remotely interested in independent music.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Photos courtesy of Jim Ruland

Ryan Leach: When did SST Records first come to your attention?

Jim Ruland: It came very late. I’m 53 years old, so I graduated high school in ’86. That was the year Black Flag broke up. When I got into punk music, it was when I was in the Navy, right after high school. I was in San Diego. I listened to Devo and The Ramones. I saw The Ramones in Washington D.C. I thought of myself as someone who liked weird music, so I kept it to myself. I didn’t know there was a tribe of other people out there. I just knew that what I liked wasn’t popular. That includes other things like Dungeons & Dragons. Once I started writing for Flipside and really getting into the punk scene in Los Angeles, SST had already passed its heyday. I was into more underground labels like Hostage Records. This was around 2000 when I moved to Manhattan Beach. By that time, I already had (The Minutemen’s) Double Nickels on the Dime (1984), Sonic Youth’s Sister (1987) and Negativland’s Escape From Noise (1987). I didn’t think of SST as hugely vital at the time. At that point, I thought of it as a big indie whose time had come. It wasn’t until I started working with Keith Morris (on My Damage) that I really became interested in SST as a label.

Ryan: I didn’t realize how pivotal working with Keith on his memoir was to Corporate Rock Sucks.

Jim: Yeah. The other part of that is—when I moved to Manhattan Beach, living in the South Bay, I thought, “Okay, this is different.” I grew up on the East Coast and I didn’t come out to the West Coast until I joined the Navy. I began to understand that the South Bay wasn’t like the rest of Los Angeles. It wasn’t like Santa Monica, Venice or Malibu. It was a whole other thing. The more I learned about SST and Black Flag, it all started to make sense to me. I felt like that element was missing in other books about Black Flag and SST. For example, how are people in England going to know the difference between Hermosa Beach and Huntington Beach? They don’t. It’s all the same thing to them.

Ryan: What were some of the hurdles you encountered writing Corporate Rock Sucks? Obviously, the focal point of the book, Greg Ginn, isn’t known for his communication skills these days. Additionally, like some other ‘80s indie labels—SST certainly isn’t alone here—some people still harbor resentment towards the imprint.

Jim: I think you hit it on the head. I didn’t want to get sued by Greg Ginn or SST. The books I did with Keith and Bad Religion (Do What You Want: The Story of Bad Religion) went through legal reviews, so I had enough experience with that to know what I could and couldn’t say. But even then, I wanted to be extra careful. What I didn’t count on was that other people needed to be careful too. They had either ongoing legal matters with SST or they had legal issues that had been settled out of court. There were a number of people who didn’t want to go on the record saying anything negative about Greg Ginn or SST. The first few people I reached out to either said “no” or didn’t get back to me. I began to wonder what I had gotten myself into. Then I did what I always do. When you sell a book to a mainstream press, and I guess to some extent with indies as well, people are concerned with big names. “Who’s going to help you attract attention to this book?” I’ve never been interested in that. Like you, I’m more interested in the things very few people are into. I took a different approach. I tried to find the people who had never spoken with anyone. I looked for the folks whose names weren’t well known, but who were there.

Ryan: Who were some of the people who really came through for you?

Jim: So many people. The first one was Mugger (Steve Corbin). He opened the door. I should say that I started with a list of people and their email addresses from Keith Morris.

Ryan: Keith did the same thing for me when I was researching The Gun Club.

Jim: Keith is the best. If you’re into something, he isn’t angling for himself. He just wants to help. All of the former SST employees I talked with were great. Brian Long really came through. Virtually everyone I talked to passed the word onto somebody else. In terms of musicians, I talked to a lot of drummers and they were great. Maybe it’s because people don’t seek out the drummers right away. They want to talk to the vocalist or guitar player. The drummers all had a lot of interesting things to say.

Ryan: When I encounter people who haven’t been interviewed before, I typically find that they’ve been waiting to talk and have very thoughtful responses.

Jim: I definitely found that to be true. Sometimes when you interview someone, they’re holding back because they want to do something themselves. I didn’t encounter any of that with this book. People were very open with me and they had an emotional response to the material. For the people at SST, it was either the best time of their lives or somewhat traumatic. People have been frozen out because of their bad relations with the label.

Ryan: You did a great job finding secondary sources for your book, specifically with past Greg Ginn interviews. You went way back to the late 1960s and Ginn’s early years running SST Electronics. How did you track this material down?

Jim: There were some clues. Joe Carducci in his book, Enter Naomi (2007), had talked about it. Mugger and Keith had both discussed their memories of soldering equipment for SST at The Church. They did it for extra money and to help out Greg. In the early days of Black Flag, they’d often have band practice and then solder equipment afterwards. The two things sort of went hand in hand at the beginning. Once I had Ginn’s call sign, I was able to find other material.

I’m not an electronics guy or gear guy in general. So, when I started to do some of the research at the beginning, I was kind of intimidated by the devices Ginn was making. “What were these things?” Ginn received a patent for one of his products. There was some technical stuff I had to understand. I marveled that a kid (Greg Ginn) was able to decode all of this lingo. He started up a business that was selling gear to adults. This was back in the late 1960s. In the South Bay with the way the aerospace industry was taking off—you had a lot of people like Ginn’s dad (Regis) who were World War II veterans. These were the people Greg was conversing with on his amateur radio setup. I thought, “This kid is different. He’s not your typical teenager.”

Ryan: I felt that you treated Ginn judiciously. It’s important to remember how precocious Greg and his brother Raymond (Pettibon) were, as well as how left of the dial the Ginn family was.

Jim: I found people on both sides of the spectrum. There were people who had nothing but respect for Ginn with no animosity whatsoever. They would sometimes be upfront at the beginning. “Look, things didn’t work out in the end, but we also didn’t sell a lot of records. So there’s no reason for me to hold a grudge. Greg was the one who made our dream possible.” There are other people who feel quite differently. They feel harmed by him and the label. That actual theft took place. There are two different realities there. It came down to the band and at what point they interacted with the label. I don’t think painting Ginn with a one-color brush works in this story. I didn’t have an axe to grind. I wasn’t setting out to prove that Ginn was some sort of genius—although I think he is—and I wasn’t trying to prove that he was some kind of monster. I just told the story that I found.

The Meat Puppets

Ryan: Until Joe Carducci joined SST in 1981, it seemed that the label was a part-time concern for Black Flag to get their records out, as well as albums by their friends in bands like The Minutemen and Saccharine Trust. Would you say that it was Carducci who turned SST into a full-time operation?

Jim: I think that’s right. Also, to a lesser extent, it was Carducci and his money. He had money that he had invested that allowed SST to put out some more records that were in the pipeline. Carducci also had a partner who was a co-investor in the first or second Meat Puppets record. It was a small scene where everyone did everything. When Black Flag hit the road—which became a bigger necessity as their infamy grew with the LAPD—they needed someone like Joe Carducci to come in. I had a lot of respect for Joe as a writer going into the project. But I really came to appreciate what he did running SST. He brought his experience to the label. Joe had worked with distributors and recruited talented people. Mugger was the most important person they brought in first, then Carducci and next I would say Ray Farrell.

Ryan: Hindsight is 20/20. But reading Corporate Rock Sucks—and I believe Carducci mentions this in Enter Naomi—the Unicorn/MCA distribution deal was recognized by some at SST in real time as being a potentially disastrous decision.

Jim: Yeah. One naturally wonders, “Why did SST do that?” But it wasn’t something they did capriciously. They had literally been vacated from their spot by the LAPD when they had been on tour. They came back and they had nowhere to go. They were staying at a punk house in Hollywood, making calls out of payphones and doing business that way. They needed a place. That’s why when they had the opportunity to go to Unicorn—even though there were some potential warning signs that it wouldn’t be a good idea—it was because they had nowhere else to go.

Ryan: So, would you frame the decision as one made out of necessity and desperation?

Jim: Maybe desperation is a little too dramatic, but they were literally homeless, aside from living at Greg Ginn’s parents’ house. That was Rollins’ introduction to SST and Black Flag. They’d ask each other questions like, “Where are we going to eat? When are we going to practice again? We don’t know.”

Ryan: In the book, you include a photo of Black Flag with a newly joined Henry Rollins signing their Unicorn deal. He was living in Regis Ginn’s detached library, which Rollins refers to in Get in the Van as “The Shed.”

Jim: Apparently, there was some irritation by Ginn’s family over that. They didn’t like it being called “The Shed.” It was a little more than that with a power supply and lots of Regis’s books. It was more like a study. But from the outside, it did look like a shed.

Ryan: I’ve never been able to figure out how and why SST released so many records in 1987 and 1988. You mention the label putting out nearly 70 releases in 1987. Was it the success of The Bad Brains’ I Against I (1986) that helped bankroll some of it?

Jim: Once they got clear of Unicorn, they started making some money and putting things in the pipeline. That’s when they were able to have multiple successes. I Against I was the main one. I was told that was the biggest-selling album in the catalog by that point. But Sonic Youth and Hüsker Dü had also been successful. SST was growing and growing. It got to the point where Negativland sold 35,000 copies of Escape From Noise (1987). That’s the number I heard.

Ryan: That’s nuts.

Jim: It’s crazy, right?

Ryan: That’s the number a top-tier act on a successful independent label moves nowadays.

Jim: Right. No disrespect to Negativland—I think that’s a brilliant album—but they’re not a rock band.

Ryan: It’s esoteric music.

Jim: Exactly. I think they were brilliant at what they did. If you go back to tape splicing and some of the other experimental things that were happening in the analog era, it’s very easy to end up with something closer to Zoogz Rift than Negativland. No disrespect to Zoogz; it’s just that Negativland brought what they did to a high art. I think it was a case where SST was having sales on multiple fronts, which allowed them to grow at the rate that they did. With distribution, you needed constant releases to bring the money in. You’d have distributors holding out on you and angling for exclusive deals. They’d withhold payments. To get them to pay, labels could play the same game: “We have this new Hüsker Dü record and you’re not going to get it until we get paid.”

Spot with D. Boon

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, one of the things SST handled well was monitoring recording costs. They understood that running up studio bills could sink the business. Can you talk about that aspect of the label and the deals they struck with studios like Total Access?

Jim: It starts with Spot (Glen Lockett). He was the one who introduced Greg to Media Art. It was right down the street, also in Hermosa Beach, and bands like The Plimsouls were recording there. It wasn’t a garage; it was a recording studio. One of the things that surprised me, and I can’t recall if I put this in the book or not, but when Spot moved to Hermosa, he was homeless. He was working at a restaurant and writing record reviews. It wasn’t until he got that gig at Media Art and the people there understood his situation, that he had a place to stay for a bit. They were okay with him crashing at Media Art because they had had some break-ins. The owners gave Spot the keys and he spent his time figuring out the equipment. He learned how to record on the job. That was key because Spot would later share that knowledge with others. On an SST release it’ll say, “Produced by so-and-so,” but my suspicion—and this is just my opinion—was that it was a more collaborative process than we were led to believe. There were a lot of people working together in the interest of time and minimizing expenses, as you alluded to.

Media Art closed down and Wyn Davis opened up Total Access a short time later. One of the things Greg Ginn did with Total Access was strike a deal where they agreed on a bulk rate for a certain amount of hours. That allowed SST to record without waiting for money to come in; they’d already paid in advance. That made a huge difference. It was savvy decision by both Total Access and SST.

Ryan: Getting back to what we had just discussed, SST in ’87 and ’88 was putting out on average a little over five releases a month. You mentioned the success that they had experienced once freed up from the Unicorn debacle. But I posit that the seeds of the label’s demise can partially be found in that release schedule. It was way too much and I know Carducci had left in ’86, which didn’t help matters.

Jim: That decision to put out all of those records is what partially soured Sonic Youth on SST. And then when their statements and payments were late, according to Sonic Youth, that deepened the rift. Sonic Youth’s departure was much to the detriment of SST. So why did they release so many records? When Carducci, Mugger, Dukowski and Ginn were the four owners, they all had veto power over each other. By that time you had Ginn and Dukowski in one office and Mugger and Carducci in another. So, there was this split where they were thinking a little bit differently and they weren’t always in sync with one another. It happened naturally; they were working out of two different locations. Carducci points out over and over again in interviews that the first problem was splitting the office up like that. They should’ve all worked together at the same location to stay on the same page. But they didn’t. When Carducci left, I think Ginn said, “Okay, this is my label now. And we’re going to do what I want to do.” And what Ginn wanted to do was release a sh*tload of records. My opinion is that Ginn felt so handcuffed by the injunction and lawsuit with Unicorn that when he was finally free of it and had some cashflow, his position was, “We’re going to hit the gas pedal and show them what SST is about.”

Ryan: They weren’t the only label doing that. Cherry Red would put out a lot of records and later on Sympathy had a heavy release schedule. But Sonic Youth had a point. If SST was going to put out all of those records, how would their own albums stand out against the glut? How could the label effectively promote all of those releases? Most records lose money and they were putting out a lot of them. You mention Ginn’s tenure at UCLA pursuing a degree in business and he certainly had moments of brilliance. But that ’87 and ’88 run of records seemed like a suicide mission.

Jim: Like you, most people point to that as the beginning of the end. People wondered, “Why all this stuff?” There’s also another element to it. There’s a contrarian streak to Ginn. One of the mistakes people make in regards to Ginn, SST and Black Flag is that they view them in monolithic terms. “Black Flag invented American hardcore.” You can make an argument for that. But by 1984, with side two of My War, hardcore is not a musical project Black Flag has any interest in. They went on from there into more and more experimental things. The simple answer is that Ginn had varied and wide tastes that were constantly evolving. And he wanted to take the label with him.

Ryan: That’s a good point. You can see that in superficial ways, like Rollins and Ginn growing their hair long or Ginn wearing Grateful Dead shirts to hardcore shows. Ginn seemed indifferent to people’s opinions.

Jim: My feeling is that when he went to Europe and saw the punk-rock uniform—the mohawks, leather and boots—Ginn wanted out of that scene completely.

Ryan: There were other setbacks. Their distributor Jem went out of business in 1988 which was a major loss. Then Mugger, SST’s factotum, left the same year. If I’m not mistaken, another one of SST’s distributors folded before Jem did.

Jim: Yeah, Greenworld was the other distro. I wish I understood that aspect of the story better. Greenworld was located right up the street in Torrance. Enigma Records came out of Greenworld. It’s fascinating that this distributor, Greenworld, is paying very close attention to SST and New Alliance and is able to succeed for a while with their own label.

Ryan: Interestingly, Enigma is another label whose catalog is severely neglected. Tex and the Horseheads, Rain Parade and a myriad of other artists have had records in purgatory for years. Some got their music back, others haven’t. It appears to be a similar situation to SST.

Jim: Right.

Ryan: I realize its speculation on your part—Ginn doesn’t give many interviews theses days—but do you think he realized the potential ramifications of releasing Negativland’s “U2” EP (1991)?

Jim: I think he did. It’s 1991. MTV is nothing new. Music is being licensed for commercials. There were people coming to SST, asking for permission to use their music for different projects. SST knew what you could and couldn’t do. But there’s that contrarian streak with Ginn. He didn’t care. The gentleman who was hired as SST’s general manager, Daniel Spector, his story about that Negativland EP blew my mind. Is it possible that that story has gotten more dramatic after 30 years of storytelling? Sure. But it goes back to the way I structured the book. Here was this ambitious, savvy and not to mention brilliant guitar player—we haven’t even talked about Ginn’s musicianship—and somewhere along the line, he lost the plot and SST went sideways. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. What I found was someone who faced obstacles at every stage of Black Flag and SST’s growth and development and didn’t back down from a single fight, even when he knew there was very little chance that he could win.

Ryan: That’s an interesting position. If you go way back to the Polliwog Park show (July 22, 1979) and other things along the way, you can see how that contrarian streak worked for and against him—sometimes it depended on the audience.

Jim: Yeah.

Ryan: The Negativland fallout was him shooting himself in the foot for four years straight with his manifestos and press releases.

Jim: I think he’s that same person today.

Ryan: You close the book on a positive note—advocating for artists’ work to be returned to them. Unfortunately, I don’t see SST doing that voluntarily. What’s the latest on that situation?

Jim: I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think there’s going to be some sweeping SST declaration stating, “We’re going to give everything back to the artists.” I’m not an investigative journalist. I just told the story I found, talking with people and digging through zines from 40 years ago. I don’t know how much money Ginn makes from SST these days. I’m uncertain if public documents would shed light on this. Joe Carducci speculates in his book—it might have been in his newsletter—that Ginn has made more money on his real estate deals than he has selling records. Ginn bought a series of spaces in Long Beach, California, and when he sold them, he likely made a small fortune. I really don’t know what motivates Ginn artistically or financially today. I think making a blanket move where he gives the rights back to everyone probably exposes him to some kind of financial risk. People will naturally go, “Well, that’s great. But where’s the money owed to us?” I do think it’ll be handled on a case-by-case basis. Recently, I did speak with an artist who was able to buy back their music from SST.

Ryan: You mention there being questions about the location and condition of the master tapes themselves.

Jim: Something just happened which I found to be really interesting. It wasn’t with SST, but Cruz Records—one of Greg Ginn’s labels. Long story short, a guy reached out to me who has a studio in Long Beach. He found some old tape cases for masters. They were found in the studio’s storage attic and it confirmed his suspicion that the space was Ginn’s old recording studio, Casa Destroy. I interviewed him just yesterday; he had reached out to SST. He said, “Hey, I have these tape cases. I’d be happy to ship them to you if you’d like.” Ginn asked, “Are the master tapes in them?” And he responded, “No. It’s just the cases.” Ginn replied, “Well, no, we don’t want them.” What’s unusual about that is—you’d think they’d know where the master tapes are located. That’s just me speculating. No one really knows. I’ve heard all kinds of rumors of people in the SST universe sitting on stashes of master tapes.

Ryan: Didn’t short-term Black Flag drummer Emil Johnson take off with some master tapes back in the early 1980s?

Jim: He did. I interviewed Mugger’s former girlfriend. She told me that master tapes had been stored in her closet for over a year. I’m just speculating, but what that tells me is that those tapes weren’t safe and secure at SST. But then, how could they be if they were constantly moving around from place to place? There are people who look at Ginn as some arch villain and that this was his scheme all along. I don’t think that’s true. Things just got out of hand. I don’t mean to exonerate or make excuses for him. But there’s a good chance that Ginn doesn’t have the masters to all of those records. It wasn’t some Machiavellian plot. Yes, artists signed terrible contracts. But I think that’s just the contract that he had.

Ryan: What’s going on right now, Jim? I know you’re working on a book with Evan Dando.

Jim: Yeah, I have a draft of that I’m getting ready to send to my agent. We’ll see how that goes. I also write fiction. I have a novel in the pipeline that I’m excited about. I’ve been working on it for a very long time. I won’t call it a punk book, but it’s punk adjacent. It’s a dysfunctional, vigilante story with a lot of alcoholics, drug addicts and a couple punk rockers in it. It’s called Make It Stop and it’s coming out on Rare Bird Books in February of 2023.

John Talley-Jones Interview

Urinals vocalist/bassist John Talley-Jones discusses the band’s early 7″s.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Photo courtesy of Kat Talley-Jones

Ryan Leach: What do you recall about the recording session for your self-titled debut 7”? (Released in 1979, the 7” EP includes “Dead Flowers,” “Hologram,” “Last Days of Man on Earth,” and “Surfin’ with the Shah.”)

John Talley-Jones: The reason that record happened was because Vitus Mataré saw us on Halloween of 1978. That was the debut of the three piece (John Talley-Jones, Kjehl Johansen and Kevin Barrett) at the dormitory at UCLA. As soon as we finished our set, Vitus came up to us and said, “Hey, do you guys want to record a single?” That blew my mind because the songs were not very well performed. I think Vitus understood conceptually what we were doing. But it wasn’t terribly musical, per se. However, Vitus always liked that stuff; he’s perverse that way. We thought, “Sure. Let’s record a record.” We recorded the first 7” at Vitus’ parents’ house. It was off Sunset Boulevard, to the west of the 405 in Brentwood. Vitus was living in the pool house and his parents lived in the main house. We recorded in his pool house. Vitus had been experimenting, recording ambient stuff. Not music—rain, wind and natural sounds. He had taken a conventional Radio Shack microphone and coated it with some sort of resin in order to use it to record underwater. He decided that wasn’t working, so he scrapped the resin off. That’s the microphone we used for the drums and some of the overdubs. We recorded on Vitus’ Dokorder 4-track reel-to-reel machine. Only three of the tracks were working. Kjehl and I were playing through the same practice amp at the same time. That kind of explains why the record sounds the way that it does. It’s not very high fidelity. It was in a bare room with hard surfaces. There was kind of a natural slap back. I think Vitus was using the built-in reverb effect that came with the Dokorder. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the Dokorder. It was an inexpensive, Japanese-made reel-to-reel. They were made by Denki Onkyo.

Ryan: I mentioned to a friend of mine who cuts lacquers and fixes old analog synths and mixing boards that you recorded the early material on a Dokorder. His eyes lit up. He started telling me the strengths and weaknesses of the Dokorder. He has or had one.

John: So now you know too much!

Ryan: Not as much as you guys who actually recorded on one. But he gave me a thorough review of them.

John: That thing was always falling apart. Vitus was constantly re-soldering connections. His Dokorder saw a lot of heavy use. It got around. He use to take it to Last shows and record their live performances with it. Vitus used it for all of the Keats Rides a Harley (1981) recordings that he did: Gun Club, Leaving Trains, Earwigs, us (100 Flowers) and S Squad. Those tracks were all recorded on his Dokorder.

John Talley-Jones’ bonus anecdote on the subject of Vitus's Dokorder adventures: It went with us to San Diego for a Black Flag/Last/Urinals gig at which it was set up on a rickety table right up against center stage on the auditorium floor. Vitus ran an extension cord across the front of the stage to power it—there was no play, it was quite taut. I remember thinking that once the music started, the Dokorder was going to be toast. I don't recall if it survived the night, but even if it didn't, it was probably brought back from the dead (again).

Ryan: “Dead Flowers” was co-written by original Urinals guitarist Steve Willard. Do you recall if the song was performed at your debut show at UCLA as a five piece?

John: Steve did co-write the song. It probably was. I’ll have to go back and review the cassette of the show that still exists. I know we did four songs. We did “Jetsons Main Theme.”

Ryan: What memories come back to you about writing the songs on the first EP?

John: I recall that “Surfin’ with the Shah” predates the Urinals. Before I moved to Los Angeles, I lived in Marin County—or San Francisco—for a year. I wasn’t even thinking of forming a band or anything. But I went to a thrift store and bought an acoustic guitar that had a big ding in it. It cost like 99 cents or something. It only had three strings. I learned how to tune them as best I could. I composed “Surfin’ with the Shah” on that. I couldn’t play chords. I could only move my fingers up and down the neck one finger at a time. The other strings became drone strings. That’s how we ended up with that drone.

Ryan: Tim Quinn took the cover photograph of your self-titled EP.

John: We knew Tim from Neef. He was and still is a graphic artist. We were looking for someone to do the design and he volunteered to do it. We left the front cover with him. I think we cobbled the back cover on our own. You really can’t see what’s going on with the back cover because we printed it improperly without a whole lot of detail. But those are all tiny images of the band playing live.

Ryan: Where did you record your second 7”, “Another EP” (1979)?

John: That was recorded at a soundstage at the UCLA Film School. I was making a movie at that point. I told them that we needed to record the soundtrack, which we didn’t end up using. So, the school provided us with some time and an engineer. We were in a professional recording studio for that recording. You can hear it—the recording sounds considerably better than the first EP. The engineer was a British guy named Tony. He didn’t want his name on the record!

Ryan: That’s great!

John: We weren’t supposed to be using the facilities for any sort of money-making proposition. He couldn’t be involved with a commercial release. Again, it was another 3-track recording which was really peculiar. But the fidelity was so much better. The acoustics, microphones and mixing equipment were so much better. It ended up being light years beyond the first EP. We were really pleased. For the first time, we thought to ourselves, “Oh, we really sound like a proper band.” It was an eye-opening realization.

Ryan: I do recall an analog world and how much harder it was to record music and video. That must have been a revelatory experience for you guys.

John: It absolutely was. I ended up using a Urinals recording for the movie. But it wasn’t those recordings. It was the long version of “Don’t Make Me Kill Again” from our live three-piece debut. What I did was I bounced it back and forth between two tape machines until the sound was so distorted it sounded like a dull roar. That’s what I ended up using for the soundtrack to this film.

Ryan: So, you were just ping-ponging it?

John: Yeah. I was looking for a noisy texture and I got it.

Ryan: I’m curious about your movie. Was it a Super 8 or 16 mm film you were shooting?

John: This was my 16 mm project film. It was a 40-minute narrative film. Kevin (Barrett) and Kjehl (Johansen) are both in it. Kjehl has a speaking role.

Ryan: I didn’t know this film existed. Have you digitally transferred it?

John: This film is sitting in the closet next to where I’m sitting.

Ryan: It would be great if you transferred it.

John: I’m currently going through all of my early films and getting them digitally transferred by a place up in Fort Worth. So far I’ve got the first seven done. As we speak, he’s converting the next three. I’m gradually moving up to the 16 mm releases. Right now, we’re transferring the Super 8.

Ryan: That’s great to hear. I remember you mentioning to me earlier that you were in the Mass Comm/Media department with Phil Tolstead (The Huns) at UT (University of Texas at Austin).

John: Yeah.

Ryan: I didn’t realize you had continued with that when you moved to Los Angeles.

John: I did end up with a film degree (from UCLA).

Ryan: Obviously, Kat (Talley-Jones) has her songwriting credit on “Another EP” with “Ack Ack Ack Ack.” What memories do you have of composing “Black Hole,” “I’m White and Middle Class” and “I’m a Bug”?

John: I remember “Black Hole” being an attempt at a more pop song. I wrote that one on my own. I was in the dorm room, trying to learn how to play bass. That melody just happened. That’s how most of these songs were written. Kjehl and I were trying to learn our instruments and we’d end up with something that we thought we could bring into the band. We’d collaborate too.

Ryan: Your third 7” EP, “Sex,” contains a Joe Nolte cover, “Go Away Girl.” Obviously, the Urinals had the Last connection.

John: The Last used to do that song, back when we were going to see them on a regular basis. It was probably their most punky song, so it was the one for us to cover. The Last recorded it on two different occasions, but never released it.

Ryan: If there’s any art I associate with the Urinals, it’s the cover art for the “Sex” 7” EP. Obviously, it was also used for the cover of Negative Capability. It was drawn by Carey Southall. Can you tell me about Carey and how he ended up designing the cover?

John: Carey is someone I worked with at the UCLA bookstore. He was in the graphic design department. He was quite a good illustrator. I told Carey we needed a record design for our next single. I asked Carey if he would draw something for us, but use his non-dominate hand. So, you’re looking at an accomplished illustrator, but he’s using his left hand instead of his right hand or vice versa. I can’t recall if Carey was right or left handed. He did both the front and the back cover.

Ryan: I’ve underestimated how much support the Urinals received from your fellow UCLA classmates.

John: There was a community. We were using what we had available to us, including friends and acquaintances. Another thing of interest—the “Sex” single had three or four frames of Super 8 film taped to it. These are outtakes from a film project a friend of mine named Adam Dubov shot. I was in his film and I ended up with some unused footage and we just repurposed it.

Ryan: You recorded the first 100 Flowers 7” EP, “Presence of Mind,” at Ethan James’ (1946-2003) studio, Radio Tokyo, which I believe closed down in the late 1980s. Ethan seems overlooked today.

John: That’s too bad. Ethan was an interesting guy. He was very kind, low key and had a great sense of humor. Ethan had been the keyboard player in a later version of Blue Cheer. He had this little house in Venice that he turned into a recording studio (Radio Tokyo). We recorded a bunch of stuff there, including the first Radwaste EP. It’s hard for me to differentiate these sessions from the ones we did at Orange County Recorders with Randy Burns. We were going back and forth between the two recording studios. The 100 Flowers LP end up with material from both places. I think we went in and recorded two or three songs at Radio Tokyo. We were working on the album in Orange County, but we were doing it piecemeal. We’d go down to Orange County Recorders when we had the money to pay for the sessions. Once a month or so. It took a long time to record and mix it. But we had the “Presence of Mind” material first, so we thought, “Let’s put this out while we’re working on the album.” So, that’s what happened. It was designed to be an announcement that the band exists. Technically speaking, “Salmonella” on Keats Rides a Harley was the debut of 100 Flowers. There was also a track called “Sensible Virgins” on the Life is Ugly (1982) compilation as well.

Ryan: “Mop Dub” is “Presence of Mind” played backwards, correct? Sort of like Neu! 2.

John: Yes, it is. But we added some additional stuff. Backward masking was a concept that the conservative right was all up in arms about at that moment in time. They were convinced there were satanic messages in music. So we did it. If you play it backwards, you can hear Kjehl saying, “Satan commands you. Obey.” We had a good time with that song.

Ryan: I really like the cover photo Kat (Talley-Jones) shot for “Presence of Mind.” It reminds of Hugo Ball and the Zurich Dada scene.

John: That’s a direct rip off—pardon me, a direct reference—to a Czech filmmaker named Věra Chytilová. She was part of the Czech film new wave in the mid-‘60s. She made a movie called Daisies (1966) which is really fascinating. It’s chaotic, anarchistic, feminist and colorful. It’s really energetic, a little hard to watch, but I highly recommend it. There’s a scene where the two female protagonists are wrapped up in newspapers. It looks like they’re shocked. The ”Presence of Mind” cover is a direct reference to that scene. If you flip it over, there’s a picture of Kevin looking through Venetian blinds. That’s a reference to the French new novelist Alain Robbe-Grillet. He was also a filmmaker in France throughout the 1960s and 1970s. He was known for what’s called the “new novel.” I was fascinated by him when I went to UT. Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay for Last Year at Marienbad (1961). Do you see how this all fits together?

Ryan: Absolutely. (The Urinals’ 2015 record is titled Next Year at Marienbad.)

John: So, he wrote Last Year at Marienbad and he was also directing. His first film was Tran-Europ-Express (1966). I saw that in Texas and it blew my mind. There’s a promotional press photograph for Robbe-Grillet on the back cover of one of his Grove Press books where he’s looking through a window with Venetian blinds. The picture of Kevin references that.

Ryan: I never would’ve figured that one out.

John: Yeah. It’s not apparent. That was what was going on with us. It kind of showed where we were coming from and what we were thinking about.

Ryan: “Drawing Fire” (1984) was released after 100 Flowers broke up. That was the first album that I’m aware of where you worked with Independent Project Press. Obviously, you had a connection with Independent Project Press through Savage Republic.

John: Kevin was on Bruce’s (Licher) first single (Project 197’s self-titled 7”, 1980). We knew Bruce from when he was going to art school at UCLA. Bruce did three projects with us. He did the Angst EP and the God and the State album. Angst was the first project Bruce did with us. That came out in ’83. And “Drawing Fire” came out in ’84. The God and the State album came out in ’85.

Ryan: 100 Flowers was over with when you recorded “Drawing Fire,” correct? I recall you mentioning to me once that you wanted to record the remaining material the band had written.

John: That’s correct. We had broken up in January of 1983. A month later the 100 Flowers self-titled LP had come out. What great timing! But we still had these songs that we wanted to get down on tape. We had agreed to record the final EP over the course of the next few months. Although we weren’t a band any longer, we felt obligated to wrap up what we had been working on. That’s why there’s a follow-up EP (“Drawing Fire”) a year later.

Ryan: That shows a diplomacy every band I’ve been in has lacked!

John: Well, it was hard to record that stuff. Kjehl and I weren’t really speaking. We’d take turns going into the studio. It was rare that we were in there at the same time.

Ryan: The final two 100 Hundred Flowers shows (January 28 and 29, 1983) are incredible, especially the footage of you playing with D. Boon dancing on stage.

John: Those were our last two shows at the Anti-Club. There was a show on Friday and another on Saturday as I recall. There were different support acts.

Ryan: I have the Minutemen and Savage Republic as playing on January 28 and the Leaving Trains and The Last on January 29.

John: Yeah. And Pell Mell was on the bill with the Minutemen on the 28th. They were kind of a last-minute addition. That was done as a favor to somebody. Our idea was to have two different evenings. One bill would have more of our pop friends, the other our punk and industrial friends. Each evening had a different flavor. We always felt that we never belonged exclusively to one camp or the other. We had pop leanings and punk leanings. As you can tell with “Drawing Fire,” we were getting closer to an industrial sound.

People Still Send Me Records

The Four Plugs, “Wrong Treatment/Biking Girl,” 7”

If there’s a 2023, this is surely a contender for best reissue of 2022. The Four Plugs were the UK DIY recording project of John Irvine. Amazingly recorded in December 1978, “Wrong Treatment/Biking Girl” sounds a couple of years ahead of its time. “Wrong Treatment” isn’t very musical. It’s a collage of heavily treated instruments with rudimentary drumming falling somewhere in between Moe Tucker and Helen Wiggin of The Shaggs. “Biking Girl” has subtle Howard Devoto hints with just Irvine on distorted guitar and vocals.

“Wrong Treatment/Biking Girl” is a UK-DIY must have. It’s right up there with Puritan Guitars, The Petticoats, The Normal, etc. The single was originally released on what I assume was Irvine’s imprint, Disposable Records. Now you can get a copy Stateside from Larry over there at ITR. -Ryan Leach (In the Red)

People Still Send Me Records

Unda Fluxit, Stone Ringing Sorrows, cassette

Stone Ringing Sorrows is the second release from Unda Fluxit, the solo vehicle of Boise, Idaho-based artist/musician Huma Aatifi. The music on Stone Ringing Sorrows is so liberated that only real mavericks like Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy or art brute musicians like Jandek and Kenneth Higney are relatable. Aatifi employs her own tuning, chords and repetitious guitar patterns that can get to a Michael Rother-level of hypnosis. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan, Stone Ringing Sorrows also has hints of the Arabic music Aatifi was surrounded by growing up. This one’s limited to 100 cassettes and is a top album of 2021. -Ryan Leach (ever/never)

People Still Send Me Records

Zurich Cloud Motors, Self-titled, LP

Mopar Merrill decided to reboot Bancroft Records at the worst time to press vinyl since Edison created the cylinder phonograph. Being a Dodge fan, that makes sense. Luckily, he’s coming out swinging with Zurich Cloud Motors’ self-titled LP. From Louisville, Kentucky, Zurich Cloud Motors are raw. Fans of early Destruction Unit—when they were synth punk—and the Scientists—when they were under the influence of Jeffrey Lee Pierce—will be into this record. The B side of the LP dips into Krautrock-influenced experimentation. Recommended. -Ryan Leach (Bancroft Records)

People Still Send Me Records

Power Supply, In the Time of the Sabre-toothed Tiger, LP

Power Supply is another supergroup of sorts from the incestuous Melbourne, Australia, scene, featuring Leon Stackpole (Ooga Boogas), Richard Stanley (Ooga Boogas, Onyas), Per Bystrom (Ooga Boogas, Voice Imitator) and Mikey Young (too many bands to list and a ton of mastering work). In the Time of the Sabre-toothed Tiger is a solid debut. Fans of Ooga Boogas are going to be all over this album. A lot of stylistic ground is covered on In the Time of the Sabre-toothed Tiger. However, it’s the B side of the album that I prefer, with its mid-tempo songs and early ‘70s Lou Reed-inspired vocals. The LP’s title-track is a real standout. In the Time of the Sabre-toothed Tiger is a co-release between Anti Fade in Australia and Goner in the States. My copy came on white vinyl. Recommended. -Ryan Leach

People Still Send Me Records

Exbats, Now Where Were We, LP

The Exbats are a father/daughter group from Tucson, Arizona. Now Where Were We is their first LP on Goner. It’s a compelling record inspired by girl-group harmonies and early ‘60s Brill Building pop. The songwriting is solid—the lyrics nail the genre and are witty enough to keep it sounding fresh—and Inez McLain does a great job on vocals. Any fan of the Girls in the Garage comps, the Beach Boys and The Last’s L.A. Explosion! will want to grab Now Where Were We. -Ryan Leach (Goner)

People Still Send Me Records

The Divine Horsem*n, Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix, Double LP

Who’d a thunk it? Thirty-four years after the Divine Horsem*n’s last release, Handful of Sand (1988) and breakup, Chris D. and Julie Christensen are back with a double LP. Long-time Divine Horsem*n Peter Andrus is on guitar, with DJ Bonebrake on drums and Bobby Permanent taking over for the late, great Robyn Jameson.

The Divine Horsem*n were a different band from the Flesh Eaters—just as good, but with a mellower dynamic—so those expecting some “Wedding Dice” need to familiarize themselves with the former group’s mid-‘80s catalog. Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix is excellent. Artists like Chris D. and Julie Christensen aren’t going to reform an old project just to go through the motions. The material here is all outstanding, with some of the original songs dating back to the late 1980s/1990s which explains the double LP, and stacks up against any of the band’s SST records. Peter Andrus’ formidable guitar playing really cuts through.

The Divine Horsem*n would throw a cover in here and there and Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix is no different. The title track of the record is a Jefferson Airplane song. Chris D., who’s worked extensively in film, finds a deep cut in “Can’t You See?”, apparently a song from Robert Downey, Sr.’s 1970 film Pound.

Hot Rise of an Ice Cream Phoenix is a no-brainer. Pick it up. As mentioned, my copy is a double-LP gatefold on clear, “blood-splattered” vinyl. Your copy may differ. -Ryan Leach (In the Red)

People Still Send Me Records

The Gun Club, Sex, Murder, Drugs and Bad Vibes: Live at the Starwood 1981, LP

Upon the release of Fire of Love (August 1981), the Gun Club’s profile rose precipitously—Jeffrey Lee Pierce garnering the cover of The New York Rocker (March 1982) and recording Miami (1982) with Chris Stein shortly thereafter. This live album was recorded several months (January 1981) before the release of Fire of Love, the Gun Club’s seminal debut LP, back when Jeffrey Lee Pierce was trying to get a toehold in the Los Angeles music scene.

A couple of notes right off the bat: Sex, Murder, Drugs and Bad Vibes was recorded by Vitus Mataré (The Last), who was the first person to produce the Gun Club for the Keats Rides a Harley (1981) compilation. The sound quality is good. Also, the lineup featured here is the one that would record Fire of Love and Miami. The early transitional stage—with Kid Congo Powers, Brad Dunning and Don Snowden—that was more reggae-influenced and shambolic was gone. Sex, Murder, Drugs and Bad Vibes features the dialed-in blues punk incarnation of the Gun Club that fans know and love.

All eleven of the songs on Sex, Murder, Drugs and Bad Vibes would eventually appear of Fire of Love and Miami. You can hear Pierce’s banter, introducing such soon-to-be-well-known songs like “Black Train” as “their train song.” Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a fan of James Brown’s Live at the Apollo LP, and you can hear him here taking a cue from Brown as he tells guitarist Ward Dotson to “slow it down,” Jeffrey already treating the Gun Club like his own soul review. Nevertheless, the Gun Clun sounds great on this album, and it’s amazing how quickly Jeffrey Lee Pierce, with assistance from Ward Dotson, Terry Graham and Rob Ritter, had developed such a compelling and formidable vision. They had only been together for about a year by this point.

Sex, Murder, Drugs and Bad Vibes is a great document, capturing Jeffrey Lee Pierce on the cusp on his ascent with the Gun Club. -Ryan Leach (Blixa Sounds)

People Still Send Me Records

Florry, Big Fall LP

I didn’t expect this record; then again, this is my introduction to Florry, the project of Philadelphia’s Francie Medosch. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything like Big Fall. There’s a slight connection with the Strapping Fieldhands’ last record, Across the Susquehanna (2021), this year’s best release that seemingly everyone missed. The late Jim Dickinson was quoted as saying, “The best performances never get recorded, the best recordings never get released and the best records don’t sell.” Of course, he was correct. Florry’s Big Fall proves Dickinson’s adage true—it’s another album that’s fallen under the radar—and it shows there’s no connection between public relations and good music. The obvious nexus with Florry is Gram Parsons’ work with the International Submarine Band, Byrds, etc. But there’s a playfulness on Big Fall reminiscent of the Holy Modal Rounders or something that would’ve appeared on ESP records. But it’s all here on Big Fall—whistle, double bass, pedal steel, etc. (When’s the last time you heard pedal steel in underground music?) Medosch is young and she’s already coming out of the gate with strong material. Gerard Cosloy over there at 12XU is keeping his ear to the ground. -Ryan Leach (12XU)

Kevin Barrett Interview, Part One

Kevin Barrett is the drummer of the Urinals and 100 Flowers. Barrett also played with the underrated God and the State and, alongside Urinals bandmate John Talley-Jones, in Radwaste. He currently resides in Twentynine Palms, California.

Kevin Barrett playing drums with the Urinals at UCLA’s Dykstra Hall dorm, circa 1978. Photo courtesy of Kat Talley-Jones.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Ryan: Where were you born?

Kevin: I was born in Concord, California. My family lived there until I was six. We moved to Oakland and were there from 1965 to 1972. We then moved back to Concord which is where I went to high school. My dad was a mechanic. He was head of maintenance for the Oakland Fire Department. He was a big deal in the fire-engine community. But my dad was always a mechanic. He wasn’t a college-educated person. My family had a chip on its shoulder about being blue-collar working class. My mom was a housewife. I went to Catholic schools for 12 years. Nevertheless, we weren’t a very religious family. My dad was a quiet Catholic. He’s gone now, but when he was alive he felt the Mass should be in Latin. He liked the old rituals. My uncle spoke Latin, but my dad didn’t. However, other than that, he wasn’t a rabid Catholic. My mother had a falling out with the Catholic Church when I was young. I can’t even recall what it was about.

I had very few friends. I was sort of invisible in school up until 8th grade. We had a theater teacher at school. I got involved in theater and that helped me out a lot. I would listen to AM radio. I think the first record I bought was by The Eagles. I was definitely into Seals and Crofts, Loggins and Messina and Elton John. I liked soft rock.

Ryan: David Gates and Bread.

Kevin: Exactly. I had a record player. It was semi-portable with rotating speakers. But it didn’t have a headphone jack. My dad was very mechanically inclined, so he installed a headphone jack into it. I could listen to records as loud as I wanted to on headphones. I would sit in my beanbag chair and listen to music. I haven’t thought about that in a while, but it strengthened my interest in music. My tastes back then were still very limited. The first concert I attended was an Elvin Bishop gig at a medium-sized club in San Francisco. It was very exciting. I must have been 17 or 18.

Ryan: Although you were interested in music, it sounds like you became acquainted with more avant-garde music once you started attending UCLA.

Kevin: Absolutely. I was the first person in my family to go to college. At that moment, I was really into the idea of getting the f*ck out of Concord and away from my family. My parents were not into me leaving at all. They wanted me to attend junior college. I had gotten a full scholarship to UCLA, but it was still going to be expensive. I arrived at UCLA, moved into the dorms and that afternoon started looking for a job. I knew if I didn’t work I would have to go back home. I got a part-time job on campus. It ended up being fine. It was very liberating.

Ryan: How long were you at UCLA before you met John (Talley-Jones) and Kjehl (Johansen)?

Kevin: We all lived on the same dorm floor. I met John within a couple of days of moving in. John’s got a lot of charisma. He’s always saying something interesting and he’d already lived in a bunch of different places. He was an appealing person. I must’ve met Kjehl at about the same time. Kjehl and John were older than me. It was only by two years, but in college that seemed like a lot. Kjehl was attending UCLA to finish his last two years of undergrad before going to law school. Kjehl was always more of a serious person, just generally. When I started hanging out with John, that’s when I heard new and different music. He had an amazing record collection. That was freshman year. We were roommates in my sophom*ore year. We lived together even after the dorms.

Ryan: I’ve talked with John and Kat (Talley-Jones). I know they were listening to Eno and Soft Machine. They were ahead of a lot of people.

Kevin: Right. I recall the first things that really spoke to me were The Ramones, The Clash, The Damned and The Sex Pistols. I would listen to Soft Machine and Hawkwind, but it didn’t have the same effect. Punk was such a break from the easy-listening stuff I had been listening to. I went from one extreme to the other.

Ryan: Do you recall the germinal stages of The Urinals? Of course, the very beginning would’ve also included Steve (Willard) and Delia (Frankel).

Kevin: John was the leader in the sense of bringing new music in. The Urinals started with me and him. We were listening to all of this new music, so it felt like we had to participate and form a band. We were doing stuff in the dorm. Weird, performance-art things. We took the contents of our little trashcan in our room and taped it up onto the wall. We called it “Modern Mambo, Part One.”

Ryan: That was your R. Mutt piece.

Kevin: Yeah. We took a TV set and put it in one of the stalls in the bathroom. For me, high school was very rote. In college, it changed to, “Here are these crazy ideas. Here’s the history and what people have done. Now what are you going to do about it?” I felt like we had to do something. John had a four-string guitar that he had started writing songs on. We decided we should record what he was coming up with. I played coat hangers on a shoebox for drums; John played his four-string guitar and sang. We only had a cassette recorder. We didn’t have a microphone, but we did have headphones. If you plugged the headphone jack into the microphone jack, you could sing into the earhole of the headphones. We recorded one or two songs that way.

Ryan: So those are the first things you and John did?

Kevin: As I recall. That was John and I messing around in the dorm room. The next thing that came up was a talent show in the dorm’s cafeteria. We decided to play it. Kjehl was definitely involved by that point. We were hanging out and he wanted to be in it. This was still my first year of college. My roommate at the time was Steve Willard. Steve was actually a pretty good guitar player. He was not into punk rock at all. We had to figure out who was going to play what instruments. John had that four-string guitar that he played like a bass, so it was obvious that he was going to be the bass player. Initially, I said, “Well, I’ll play keyboards.” I have no idea why I said it, but I did. Kjehl and John looked at me and said, “No, I don’t think so.” I’m tone deaf. The decision was made that I should play drums because I had already kind of started playing them. Kjehl ended up playing keyboards. We got Steve to play guitar because he knew how to. We realized that none of us could sing and play our instruments at the same time. So that’s why we got Delia to sing.

I needed a drum set. I didn’t have any money, so I went down to the toy store and they had a drum set for $35. “Okay, that’s what a drum set looks like and it’s $35. I can afford that.” It was a kickdrum with a pedal, two mounted drums and one cymbal with rivets in it for “sizzle effect.” It had mylar drumheads held together with springs. Tuning wasn’t an issue. Kjehl got one of those battery-powered organs for kids.

Kjehl’s approach was, “What does the music say we should do?” Whereas John and I were like, “What do you feel like doing?” John gave me confidence. He’d say, “Whatever you feel like doing is probably right. If you feel like pounding with both your hands and feet at the same time, that’s correct as long as it meshes with the song we’re doing.” It looked like I was having a tantrum. I couldn’t differentiate between my left and right side when I started drumming. John’s got perfect pitch. He can noodle around and write a song just off of what sounded good. He wouldn’t go, “Well, Bb has to go after Am” or something like that when he was coming up with songs.

We practiced two or three times before the talent show gig. We had a couple of songs John wrote. Steve really hated those songs. He was adamant that we had to do “regular songs.” We covered The Jam’s “This Is the Modern World.” We butchered that. I think we did that song twice. Our songs were like 30-seconds long. The band after us was a sort of jazz band. They really didn’t like us. We set up our toy instruments. John had actually gone to a pawnshop and bought a $60 bass. We had one tiny amp we ran the instruments through. I remember when we played, the jazz had this look on their faces: “How dare you get up on stage and offend us with this music.”

Ryan: Did any of John’s original songs appear on later singles?

Kevin: I don’t know if we did “Surfin’ with the Shah” at the talent show. That was one of the first songs John wrote. We did play a song called “You Piss Me Off.” The talent show was it for a while. We didn’t do anything else for the rest of that school year, at least as I recall. I’m sure John was writing songs and lyrics. He’s sort of a compulsive, creative type. Even back then, the only thing that mattered to me was the performance. I was interested in getting up on stage and playing. Partially, that was to my detriment. I was never into practicing. The only time I’d play drums was when I was playing with somebody. Kjehl got very proficient at guitar. He practiced and became a good guitar player. My theory about musicianship—it really became solidified when I heard other people play our songs. For example, George Hurley is an amazing drummer. But when the Minutemen covered “Ack Ack Ack,” it didn’t sound right to me. I mean, they were all playing in sync and everything; it had nothing to do with that. John and I felt that because we’re not following the rules, we play in a way that’s very personal and idiosyncratic. People hear our music and they like it, but no one would ever choose to play the way that we do. Even when people covered our songs, it felt too refined. When you learn how to do fancy drum stuff, you want to throw it into everything you’re doing. But I didn’t know any fancy drum stuff. I just knew how to beat the drums along to whatever song John had written.

Ryan: What do you recall about playing Raul’s in Austin? Obviously, that was your first show at a proper music venue.

Kevin: Yeah, we’d only previously played the talent show and at an on-campus ice-cream parlor and coffee shop. They’d do poetry readings and acoustic shows. We played there a couple of times to various shocked audiences. We tried to get shows in town. There was this one club I sent our tape to. I called about it a couple of weeks later. The owner’s name was Wayne (Mayotte). He owned Club 88.

Ryan: I know who you’re talking about.

Kevin: Really?

Ryan: I didn’t know Wayne personally, but he’s in The Decline of Western Civilization (1981).

Kevin: Exactly. I think his wife picked up the phone. I said, “Oh, hi, this is Kevin from the Urinals and I was wondering if Wayne had a chance to listen to our demo tape.” And she called out to Wayne: “Hey, Wayne, it’s Kevin from the Urinals. He wants to know if you’ve heard their demo tape.” He just started laughing. She got back on the line and said, “Oh, no. You’re not getting booked here.”

Through these connections John had—the people he knew in Texas were well known in the Austin scene. They could get a show whenever they wanted to. They let us headline because we were from out of town which was very nice of them. John has always been the unofficial Urinals tour manager. He likes to take charge and he has these visions of how things should be. That’s fine with me because I’m not very good at that stuff. John is very frugal. Going to Texas to play Raul’s was an example of that. John said, “We can’t afford to stay in a hotel. We can get to San Antonio in 26 hours.” So, we’re like, “Oh, okay.” So the four of us pile into Kjehl’s Mercury Capri. John’s parents lived in San Antonio. We’re driving. I was catching a cold. I was constantly blowing my nose with Kleenex stuffed up it. As it got later, we said, “Okay. We’ll drive in shifts. When the driver gets tired, it’s his responsibility to tap out and someone else will take over.” So we started doing that. The first shift was two hours. Then it was an hour and fifteen minutes. By 3 or 4 AM it was like every 15 minutes we’d have to pull over to let someone else take over driving. It was a weird and intense road trip, the four of us in this tiny car.

We got to San Antonio, then Austin. The local punk-rock crowd welcomed us. There weren’t a lot of people at the Raul’s show as I recall. That show might have been the first time I played on a real drum set. I broke the head on the snare drum I was borrowing.

Ryan: Were you using the Huns’ drummer’s (Tom Huckabee) kit?

Kevin: I think so. He was very nice about it. There were probably 20 or 30 people there who were into what we were doing which was new for us. When we had played the coffeeshop on campus, most people there were indifferent, just waiting for us to finish. Playing Raul’s was our first classic club experience. We got a soundcheck.

We had expectations that we had a limited reach. I liked what we were doing, some others did too, but a lot of people didn’t like it. That goes back to punk rock. Most people didn’t like it. And if you listened to what other people said, you wouldn’t be playing punk rock. If you listen to yourself, you can be more authentic.

That was my feeling about the drums. Several years later, sometime around 1982, I had friends who had a vocal group whose name I can no longer remember. They were really good. They got this producer who wanted to record them. He said, “You guys need to get a backup band together.” So they asked me to audition. I told them, “You guys know what I do. There’s nothing fancy.” And they said, “Yeah, we really like the way you play and want you to audition.” So I went to this real studio where they were auditioning musicians. The guy before me was really good. I couldn’t do what he was doing, but it didn’t bother me. So, I got up and did my thing. I played along to the song. Afterwards, I said, “Thanks for the opportunity. I really enjoyed it.” I had no expectations. The producer says to me, “Get off the drum set.” So I do. And he plays drums to the same tape I did. I said to him, “Oh, that sounded really good.” And he barked out, “That’s how the drums are supposed to sound to this song.” I go out to my car to leave, and the producer runs out of the studio, stops my car, and says, “Man, you need to practice.” He was angry. As I’m driving home, I’m thinking, “Maybe I should practice more.” By the time I get home, I had changed my mind: “That guy was insulting me!”

Ryan: Speaking of people who got it, Vitus Mataré certainly did.

Kevin: He got it immediately.

Ryan: Can you talk about Vitus and recording your self-titled debut EP? Although other people had recorded and released their own material by 1979, that was still early on.

Kevin: Sure. So, freshman year I go home for summer and I come back in September. John, Kjehl and I decided, “You know what? We should keep this going.” By that point, Kjehl had been playing guitar all summer. Steve and Delia had no interest in continuing with the group. There was going to be another show on our dorm’s floor for Halloween (1978). It was a good-sized party. We had three or four songs. Both Kjehl and John were plugged into a sh*tty amp. I was playing on a toy drum set. I think John sang the whole set through his headphones wrapped around his face. Vitus was there. We had three female friends of ours. They were dubbed “The Urinettes” and they’d jump up and down as we played. We didn’t overthink it. It felt more like performance art than anything. Vitus was friends with someone on our floor so he happened to be there. He immediately contacted us, saying, “I want to record you guys. You have to record something and put it out.” That had not crossed our minds at all. We told him, “Okay. We don’t know how to do any of that.” Vitus responded, “I’ve done this. I can show you how.”

Vitus lived in the Pacific Palisades. He had a big house with a pool and a pool house that he had set up a studio in. Vitus had microphones and a 4-track reel-to-reel Dokorder in it. I’m pretty certain only three channels worked.

Ryan: Dokorders weren’t known for their reliability.

Kevin: Yeah. He had two microphones. One was decent to bad. The other one Vitus had used to record underwater. He covered the membrane with resin. Once he was done recording underwater with it, Vitus tried to pick the resin off of it. It f*cked up the microphone, basically, but it still technically worked. Both John and Kjehl played through the same amp. And then you had drums. You only needed two mics. For the four songs we did, each time they’d set the mics up so the bad mic was on the amp, and the good mic was on the drums. We’d test to see how that configuration sounded. “Oh, I don’t know.” So then Vitus would switch them and put the good microphone on the amp and the bad microphone on the drums. And I remember that sounded best. That’s why the drums sound like a marimba. Very thin and brittle. I’m sure we recorded those songs all in one day. There might have been some overdubbing; we did have that third track. Vitus was a technical genius. He’d bounce tracks around.

Ryan: Ping-ponging tracks.

Kevin: Yeah. So, we had a tape. And then Vitus said, “You need to get it mastered.” “Okay, what is that?” All the technical stuff never interested me, so Vitus, John and maybe Kjehl went down to this mastering place that Vitus knew about. I heard that the mastering guy said something like, “Oh, these tracks need a lot of work.” Once we got them mastered, Vitus told us which pressing plant to use. We couldn’t afford to have labels made, so we individually marked the first records. Some of the records have messages on them. It was a little bit of a performance art kind of thing. We actually had a physical record in our hands. It seemed like a big deal.

On the distribution side, we’d go to independent record stores and ask, “Do you want to carry this?” Places like Rhino and Poo-Bah would take them. It was mostly on consignment. That was just another thing for us: “Okay, we’ve got records in stores.” It started to build up a little bit. There were a number of really good bands who hardly recorded or never released anything, like The Screamers. When you have a record out, people take you a little more seriously, even if they hate it.

Ryan: That microphone story is really interesting. I’ve never heard a record that sounded like your debut EP before or since.

Kevin: It was a weird combination of Vitus’ genius and his total acceptance of what we sounded like. He never attempted to change our music. His approach was “whatever you guys are doing is cool.” That EP captured our sound at the time.

In John’s mind, things fit together exactly. There were reasons behind everything. Why this note should be there, why we should stop the song here. When Kjehl and John would have friction about something, Kjehl would often say, “In music, you have to do this.” John would have different ideas.

Ryan: You brought up John’s ideas on song length. Wire’s Pink Flag is one of the few records from that period that employed the same sort of concision the Urinals did. It was really unorthodox.

Kevin: Yeah. I think the dynamic between the two of them was really good. Kjehl helped John open up to the notion of collaboration being beneficial. We were contributing. It wasn’t John’s vision being diluted, but John’s vision being elevated. But that was part of the conflict. John and I accepted our limitations. I don’t want to speak for Kjehl, but I got a sense that Kjehl felt that we were letting our limitations limit us. He wanted us to open up a little bit.

Ryan: Do you feel that Kjehl’s more “orthodox” approach coupled with your and John’s more “unorthodox” approach made that early material stronger?

Kevin: I think that’s true. Kjehl developed a really strong rhythmic sense. John and I played on an emotional level. We would often speed up and slow down together. We would see the same moment and pull and drag one another. Kjehl was like a metronome. He would often sound off because John and I were playing at another tempo. But it was actually Kjehl who was correct. Kjehl’s input was significant in impacting how the band sounded and how we evolved.

Kevin Barrett Interview, Part Two

Urinals playing at a house party. Photo courtesy of Kat Talley-Jones.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Ryan: The Last were obviously big Urinals supporters. Who else did you feel camaraderie with early on?

Kevin: The Last were our biggest supporters for the first couple of years. They were very generous with putting us on shows and referring to us. We played with the Minutemen a lot later on and had an affinity with them. The Last was connected to the Beach Scene. Black Flag and the Circle Jerks.

Ryan: Hermosa Beach.

Kevin: Hermosa. Vitus and Joe Nolte weren’t necessarily elder statesmen, but they got the music. The didn’t play punk rock, but they understood it. Through them, that’s how we connected with Black Flag, Circle Jerks, the Descendents and the Minutemen. We played a few shows with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. Certainly, we had an affinity with the Human Hands, Bpeople and Monitor. They were more like art rock or performance art.

Ryan: The LAFMS and Pasadena people.

Kevin: Exactly. We played some shows with the Meat Puppets. We were like the little brother band. We would play opening slots at shows.

Ryan: What was the impetus behind the name change from the Urinals to 100 Flowers?

Kevin: We got tagged as a hardcore band because of the name. “The Urinals must be hardcore.” We’d get thrown into these hardcore shows. I remember we played a gig in South Bay. It was with either Black Flag or the Circle Jerks. I’d wear stuff that was provocative to make people think. So I had on this tennis outfit: tennis shorts, tennis shirt with insignia on it and tennis shoes with white socks. We played our opening set. I had to walk through the audience to unload. I had a regular drum set by this point. I’d stack it so I could carry it all in one load. I’m carrying this tower of drum sh*t and it was obvious that everybody at this show f*cking hated us. My reaction was “I’m sorry you hate it, but nothing is going to change.” Between John and Kjehl there was this notion that the name was limiting us. At least one club—the Starwood—said they’d never book us because of the name. The told us, “We’re never gonna have the Dead Kennedys and the Urinals up on our billboard.” So those kinds of things were happening. We didn’t fit in with the hardcore scene, yet we couldn’t break out of it. There was a sense that we had done everything we could under that name. When we returned to the Urinals name—I always liked the name. I think it really confuses people. Some people think it’s a hardcore band. Some people laugh. There’s a Duchamp element to it. It’s whatever you want to make of the name. “I’m going to call it a fountain.”

Ryan: That Dada element was lost on folks.

Kevin: Yeah.

Ryan: You recorded parts of the 100 Flowers LP at Radio Tokyo which was Ethan James’ studio. Obviously, Vitus was still producing. Recording in a professional studio was a new experience for you guys.

Kevin: I recall being really intimidated by it initially. I had some anxiety about someone new listening to us. Since I didn’t practice, I was completely wiped out after a 30-minute set. So this idea that we’d go into the studio and I’d play each song 20 or 30 times, my reaction was, “No f*cking way.” The way I played wasn’t uncontrolled, but there was no guarantee I could do the same thing twice. However John and I felt like on that take was how it was going to go. Ethan (James) was good. He wasn’t critical in any way. Ethan and Vitus understood us.

Ryan: The final 100 Flowers shows were at the Anti-Club. You played with the Minutemen (1/28/1983) one night, The Last (1/29/1983) the next. I understand things were getting a little fractious.

Kevin: Yeah. My sense was that there had been this building tension between John and Kjehl. At times they’d ask me to be the arbiter, but I couldn’t really understand what the conflict was. I remember we were working up this new song and John wanted it to end on a certain note. Kjehl said, “No, it should end on this note.” They went back and forth for 20 minutes about this last note on this song. In the end, the only thing they could agree upon was to not do the song. Both of them had a point. Emotionally, I sided with John because I felt like I understood him better. Nevertheless, what Kjehl was saying was totally valid. Personally, I couldn’t comprehend why each one would dig in so hard on this one particular point. How could it possibly be that important? But they both felt very strongly about it. That was a symbol of how strong the tensions had become. It became unbearable.

The Urinals, circa 1996. Clockwise from top: Kevin Barrett, Kjehl Johansen, John Talley-Jones. Photo courtesy of Kat Talley-Jones.

Ryan: When the Urinals reformed in 1996 it seemed like people caught up to you guys. Your past work was getting its proper recognition.

Kevin: In a certain way, it did. We played in Canada a couple of times. One of those times we were introduced—it was a pretty big crowd—and the MC said, “Alright, ladies and gentlemen, the next band is the Urinals. This is the group that all of your favorite bands love.” That was a really nice intro. We played a club in San Francisco in the ‘90s. There were like six people there. And the announcer says, “Up next, the Urinals. Some of their records have been known to sell for up to $75.” Uh, okay! That was like our Spinal Tap moment.

It still felt like there was a ceiling, but it had been lifted some. It did feel like people were finally coming around. Younger people. Did you know about The Smell?

Ryan: Sure. I’m from Los Angeles. I’d go there pretty regularly.

Kevin: Right. So we would play there and these kids who were like 15 and 16, they’d know all the lyrics. It was great. Our music did translate over time.

Ryan: What are your memories of Rod Barker joining the Urinals in 1998?

Kevin: John and I decided to keep going after Kjehl had left for the second time. Rod had played in groups and had been the leader of bands. Rod was an excellent guitar player. He was a little more traditional rock ‘n’ roll—solos and stuff like that. He played with a passion that transcended any standard musical tropes. His goal wasn’t to mimic guitar players; Rod was simply very good. I thought that version of the Urinals had a good working relationship. It’s always hard to know what people are going through. He had things going on in his emotional life. Rod was smart and funny. He was easy to go on the road with.

I don’t recall exactly how Rod and John started having creative differences. I think it was partially based on Rod having confidence in his ability, knowledge and commitment to music and John feeling equally passionate about what he was doing. Rod would look at me and say, “Why don’t you agree with me?” I would respond, “John really believes in what he’s doing. I think we need to find a way to make it work and not butt heads.” That was always my mentality. I thought What Is Real and What Is Not (2003) was good. Rod wrote a lot of the stuff on the record which I thought was good. Rod had a different way of looking at things. I don’t like speaking ill of people, especially the dead. But Rod was a good singer; John was an excellent singer. Rod could sense he wasn’t as good of a singer as John. When they were deciding who would sing songs, typically the person who wrote the song would sing it, but not necessarily. I remember Rod coming up to me, very frustrated, and saying, “Yon know, I’ve been the leader of bands.”

Ryan: But that wasn’t the situation with the Urinals.

Kevin: Yeah. Early on, I thought I should sing too. But I was terrible. Then I figured out I didn’t need to sing. I could write some lyrics and do other stuff. But mostly I was happy doing my thing on the drums.

Ryan: The Urinals playing the Chaoyang International Pop Festival in Beijing (May 2005) is a great story.

Kevin: Rod’s girlfriend Emily was Chinese. She had been in the States for a while. Emily had connections back in China. One year Rod said, “Hey, we might be able to play this festival in China.” And then it fell through. So the next year, he said, “Maybe we’ll do the same festival this year.” And sure enough, we got the plane tickets. Emily had a different idea about the band. I think it was partially based on her ideas on what would work in China. She was saying, “Well, maybe you guys should do all Beetles covers.” And we’re like, “We’re not doing Beetles covers.” We had no idea where she even came up with that idea.

We get to China. The first night is the opening of this week-long music festival. But it was public. It was a cultural event that took over this park. They had four or five stages. People were selling stuff like crafts. That night we played at this biggish amphitheater. They wanted a small sample of the bands who were going to be in the festival, so we played one song. I think we played “I’m a Bug.” There were at least ten acts performing. There was us, this Russian rock ‘n’ roll band that was very glam, an all-brass band from Malmö, Sweden, a really accomplished Cuban band, a Romanian folk-dance group, and an all-girl high school classical orchestra from New Zealand.

We do the show. The people were very polite, but they were unsure of what to make of us. We were part of this dog and pony show of Cuban music, Romanian folk-dance and a brass band. That was the biggest show. And then we were obligated to play three or four more show on these little stages. At one of the earlier shows, Emily said, “Your set time is from 12:15 to 1:07.” We’re like, “Okay.” We play our set which was like 25 minutes. We got up and left; that was our set. And Emily was like, “You’ve got to play more.” We’re like, “No, the set’s over with.” Apparently, this was some major breach of protocol. She was devastated by this. Emily felt like we had embarrassed her in front of these important people and that it was horrible. Rod yelled at us for like an hour in our room. The resolution to this—she said people like clap-along songs and you have to talk to the audience. “You’re entertainers.” No, we’re a punk-rock band. We had a presenter—a beautiful, young Chinese woman in a fancy dress who’d introduce each song. It was very odd. There was still a lot of tension for the rest of the trip. I thought it had gotten resolved. My recollection is that about a month after we got back from China, we had met up with Rod at a coffeeshop. John and I had started talking about writing a history of the band. So we talked with Rod about it and about what we were going to do next. We thought it’d be a good idea to start writing down some of our memories and anecdotes. Rod’s comment was, “That sounds like homework.” Rod had gone back to China to do acoustic shows. I think Rod had announced there that he was quitting. It wasn’t like a blowup or anything. His mind was set. It felt like we were being abandoned, but I understood it.

Ryan: That’s interesting. I thought Rod had left the Urinals while you guys were still in China. In fact, it was about a month after you’d gotten back.

Kevin: Yeah. It was left hanging a little bit. John would talk with Rod more, so he might have had a stronger sense of what was going on. When we met him for that coffee, I was asking things like, “What are we going to do next? Where are we going to record? Where do you guys want to go?” And Rod was like, “No, I’m done.”

Ryan: I think Rob Roberge is now the longest tenured Urinals guitar player.

Kevin: Yes. I think so.

Ryan: He brought a sense of Americana music to the Urinals. You can hear it on Next Year at Marienbad (2015).

Kevin: Yeah.

Ryan: Can you talk about Rob joining? It seemed like he provided a shot in the arm for the band.

Kevin: Absolutely. It was a similar thing when Rod first joined. Rob brought a new energy and outlook to the band. It helped John and I think about music differently. Rob brought an Americana side to the band. He has a deep knowledge of music.

I was taking a writing class. Rob was the teacher of the writing class at night school. Sometime early on, I had mentioned the Urinals. Rob knew the Urinals. He liked the Urinals and was a music person, so we hit it off. Rob and his wife at the time had a place in Twentynine Palms. They would invite people out there. They’d say, “Anybody who wants to come on out to the desert this weekend, we’re going to be up there.” So I’d come out there. I always liked the desert. Though Rob, that’s how I met the person who sold this house to me (in Twentynine Palms). I knew Rob was a guitar player. I had heard him play; he seemed good. When we started with Rob, I think John was the most skeptical. That’s why we used a new name—the Chairs of Perception. That was one of the worst names ever. We had these lists of names. Each one of us had veto power. We’d just go, “No, no, no, no….” I can’t recall how Chairs of Perception came about. It was an interim thing. Once we solidified a relationship with Rob, we thought, “Can we just go back to being the Urinals?”

Ryan: Mike Martt of Tex and the Horseheads recorded the last Urinals LP, Next Year at Marienbad (2015). I really like Tex and the Horseheads. What was cutting that LP with Mike like?

Kevin: Mike was very interesting. I didn’t know him at all before the recording. I liked him right away. He had a great personality, very sincere and honest. Mike was easy to work with. I always have that initial anxiety whenever going into a recording studio. I’m worried the producer or engineer is going to say, “No. Absolutely not. You can’t do that.” I’ve had people say that to me. You’re trapped when you’re in a recording studio. Mike was not like that at all. He was very supportive. Mike made very helpful, constructive criticisms to John, Rob and me. My ideal is to do all the recordings in one day, and then Rob and John can do all the mixing and overdubbing stuff.

Ryan: I’m the same way: “You guys take care of it.”

Kevin: Right. I’m just not that helpful. Rob and John are really into it. Every once in a while, I’ll provide some input.

Ryan: Bringing it up the present, COVID-19 has put the brakes on just about everything. But what were you, Rob and John up to just before the pandemic hit? Are there any plans in the immediate future?

Kevin: I think John may have mentioned it to you, but I was diagnosed with throat cancer in November of 2019. I was on chemotherapy for five months and radiation for two months of that. I lost like 50 pounds. I was in pretty bad shape by the end. I have a wife who’s amazing and stayed by me. One of the possible side effects from chemo is peripheral neuropathy. I have it. It affects my hands and feet; it feels like I’m wearing an electrified compression suit. So there’s been a lot of relearning of how to do stuff. I finally set up my drums. I have an electronic set that I practice on sometimes. Playing it, my hands feels like I’m holding baseball bats with oven mitts. I had to relearn how to drive. I couldn’t really feel the steering wheel, so I’d grip it harder and harder to feel the f*cking thing. It was the same thing with the brake and gas pedals. That sense of where they are was impaired. It takes a lot of effort; I need to be aware of what I’m doing. I still haven’t figured out a way around the drums. I’m certainly on hold. John is a very creative person, so he’s continued which is great. For right now, I don’t what the future is for me with drumming. I’m hoping to get back into it. There’s some trepidation. Fortunately, the cancer is gone.

The Urinals in Brussels. Left to right: Rob Roberge, John Talley-Jones, Kevin Barrett. Photo courtesy of Kat Talley-Jones.

#Kevinbarrett #urinals #100flowers #interviews

Kid Congo Powers Interview

Kid Congo Powers was a founding member of the Gun Club. He also played with The Cramps and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Powers currently fronts Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds and recently completed a memoir, Some New Kind of Kick.

The following interview focuses on Some New Kind of Kick. In the book Powers recounts growing up in La Puente—a working-class, largely Latino city in Los Angeles County—in the 1960s, as well as his familial, professional and personal relationships. He describes the LA glam-rock scene (Powers was a frequenter of Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco), the interim period between glam and punk embodied by the Capitol Records swap meet, as well as LA’s first-wave, late-1970s punk scene.

Well written, edited and awash with amazing photos, Some New Kind of Kick will appeal to fans of underground music as well as those interested in 1960-1980s Los Angeles (think Claude Bessy and Mike Davis). The book will be available from In the Red Records, their first venture into book publishing, soon.

Interview by Ryan Leach

Kid Congo with the Pink Monkey Birds.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick reminded me of the New York Night Train oral histories you had compiled about 15 years ago. Was that the genesis of your book?

Kid: That was the genesis. You pinpointed it. Those pieces were done with Jonathan Toubin. It was a very early podcast. Jonathan wanted to do an audio version of my story for his website, New York Night Train. We did that back in the early 2000s. After we had completed those I left New York and moved to Washington D.C. I thought, “I have the outline for a book here.” Jonathan had created a discography and a timeline. I figured, “It’ll be great and really easy. We’ll just fill in some of the blanks and it’ll be done.” Here we are 15 years later.

Ryan: It was well worth it. It reads well. And I love the photographs. The photo of you as a kid with Frankenstein is amazing.

Kid: I’m glad you liked it. You’re the first person not involved in it that I’ve spoken with.

Ryan: As someone from Los Angeles I enjoyed reading about your father’s life and work as a union welder in the 1960s. My grandfather was a union truck driver and my father is a cabinetmaker. My dad’s cousins worked at the General Motors Van Nuys Assembly plant. In a way you captured an old industrial blue-collar working class that’s nowhere near as robust as it once was in Los Angeles. It reminded of Mike Davis’ writings on the subject.

Kid: I haven’t lived in LA for so long that I didn’t realize it doesn’t exist anymore. I felt the times. It was a reflection on my experiences and my family’s experiences. It was very working class. My dad was proud to be a union member. It served him very well. He and my mother were set up for the rest of their lives. I grew up with a sense that he earned an honest living. My parents always told me not to be embarrassed by what you did for work. People would ask me, “What’s your book about? What’s the thrust of it?” As I was writing it, I was like, “I don’t know. I’ll find out when it’s done.” What you mentioned was an aspect of that.

When I started the book and all throughout the writing I had gone to different writers’ workshops. We’d review each other’s work. It was a bunch of people who didn’t know me, didn’t know about music—at least the music I make. I just wanted to see if there was a story there. People were relating to what I was writing, which gave me the confidence to keep going.

Ryan: Some New Kind of Kick is different from Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s autobiography, Go Tell the Mountain. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help but think of Pierce’s work as I read yours. Was Go Tell the Mountain on your mind as you were writing?

Kid: When I was writing about Jeffrey—it was my version of the story. It was about my relationship with him. I wasn’t thinking about his autobiography much at all. His autobiography is very different than mine. Nevertheless, there are some similarities. But his book flew off into flights of prose and fantasy. I tried to stay away from the stories that were already out there. The thing that’s interesting about Jeffrey is that everyone has a completely different story to tell about him. Everyone’s relationship with him was different.

Ryan: It’s a spectrum that’s completely filled in.

Kid: Exactly. One of the most significant relationships I’ve had in my life was with Jeffrey. Meeting him changed my life. It was an enduring relationship. It was important for me to tell my story of Jeffrey.

Ryan: The early part of your book covers growing up in La Puente and having older sisters who caught the El Monte Legion Stadium scene—groups like Thee Midniters. You told me years ago that you and Jeffrey were thinking about those days during the writing and recording of Mother Juno (1987).

Kid: That’s definitely true. Growing up in that area is another thing Jeffrey and I bonded over. We were music hounds at a young age. We talked a lot about La Puente, El Monte and San Gabriel Valley’s culture. We were able to pinpoint sounds we heard growing up there—music playing out of cars and oldies mixed in with Jimi Hendrix and Santana. That was the sound of San Gabriel Valley. It wasn’t all lowrider music. We were drawn to that mix of things. I remember “Yellow Eyes” off Mother Juno was our tribute to the San Gabriel Valley sound.

Ryan: You describe the Capitol Records Swap Meet in Some New Kind of Kick. In the pre-punk/Back Door Man days that was an important meet-up spot whose significance remains underappreciated.

Kid: The Capitol Records Swap Meet was a once-a-month event and hangout. It was a congregation of record collectors and music fans. You’d see the same people there over and over again. It was a community. Somehow everyone who was a diehard music fan knew about it. You could find bootlegs there. It went from glam to more of a Back Door Man-influenced vibe which was the harder-edged Detroit stuff—The Stooges and the MC5. You went there looking for oddities and rare records. I was barely a record collector back then. It’s where I discovered a lot of music. You had to be a pretty dedicated music fan to get up at 6 AM to go there, especially if you were a teenager.

Ryan: I enjoyed reading about your experiences as a young gay man in the 1970s. You’d frequent Rodney’s English Disco; I didn’t know you were so close to The Screamers. While not downplaying the prejudices gay men faced in the 1970s, it seemed fortuitous that these places and people existed for you in that post-Stonewall period.

Kid: Yeah. I was obviously drawn to The Screamers for a variety of reasons. It was a funny time. People didn’t really discuss being gay. People knew we were gay. I knew you were gay; you knew I was gay. But the fact that we never openly discussed it was very strange. Part of that was protection. It also had to do with the punk ethos of labels being taboo. I don’t think that The Screamers were very politicized back then and neither was I. We were just going wild. I was super young and still discovering things. I had that glam-rock door to go through. It was much more of a fantasy world than anything based in reality. But it allowed queerness. It struck a chord with me and it was a tribe. However, I did discover later on that glam rock was more of a pose than a sexual revolution.

With some people in the punk scene like The Screamers and Gorilla Rose—they came from a background in drag and cabaret. I didn’t even know that when I met them. I found it out later on. They were already very experienced. They had an amazing camp aesthetic. I learned a lot about films and music through them. They were so advanced. It was all very serendipitous. I think my whole life has been serendipitous, floating from one thing to another.

Ryan: You were in West Berlin when the Berlin Wall was breached in November 1989. “Here’s another historical event. I’m sure Kid Congo is on the scene.”

Kid: I know! The FBI must have a dossier on me. I was in New York on 9/11 too.

Ryan: A person who appears frequently in your book is your cousin Theresa who was tragically murdered. I take it her death remains a cold case.

Kid: Cold case. Her death changed my entire life. It was all very innocent before she died. That stopped everything. It was a real source of trauma. All progress up until that point went on hold until I got jolted out of it. I eventually decided to experience everything I could because life is short. That trauma fueled a lot of bad things, a lot of self-destructive impulses. It was my main demon that chased me throughout my early adult life. It was good to write about it. It’s still there and that’s probably because her murder remains unsolved. I have no resolution with it. I was hoping the book would give me some closure. We’ll see if it does.

Ryan: Theresa was an important person in your life that you wanted people to know about. You champion her.

Kid: I wanted to pay tribute to her. She changed my life. I had her confidence. I was at a crossroads at that point in my life, dealing with my sexuality. I wanted people to know about Theresa beyond my family. My editor Chris Campion really pulled that one out of me. It was a story that I told, but he said, “There’s so much more to this.” I replied, “No! Don’t make me do it.” I had a lot of stories, but it was great having Chris there to pull them together to create one big story. My original concept for the book was a coming-of-age story. Although it still is, I was originally going to stop before I even joined the Gun Club (in 1979). It was probably because I didn’t want to look at some of the things that happened afterwards. It was very good for my music. Every time I got uncomfortable, I’d go, “Oh, I’ve got to make a record and go on tour for a year and not think about this.” A lot of it was too scary to even think about. But the more I did it, the less scary it became and the more a story emerged. I had a very different book in mind than the one I completed. I’m glad I was pushed in that direction and that I was willing to be pushed. I wanted to tell these stories, but it was difficult.

Ryan: Of course, there are lighter parts in your book. There are wonderful, infamous characters like Bradly Field who make appearances.

Kid: Bradly Field was also a queer punker. He was the partner of Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps. I met Kristian in Los Angeles. We all knew Lance Loud of The Mumps because he had starred in An American Life (1973) which was the first reality TV show. It aired on PBS. I was a fan of The Mumps. Bradly came out to LA with Kristian for an elongated stay during a Mumps recording session. Of course, Bradly and I hit it off when we met. Bradly was a drummer—he played a single drum and a cracked symbol—in Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. Bradly was a real character. He was kind of a Peter Lorre, misanthropic miscreant. Bradly was charming while abrasively horrible at the same time. We were friends and I always remained on Bradly’s good side so there was never a problem.

Bradly had invited me and some punkers to New York. He said that if we ever made it out there that we could stay with him. He probably had no idea we’d show up a month later. Bradly Field was an important person for me to know—an unashamedly gay, crazy person. He was a madman. I had very little interest in living a typical life. That includes a typical gay life. Bradly was just a great gay artist I met in New York when I was super young. He was also the tour manager of The Cramps at one point. You can imagine what that was like. Out of Lux and Ivy’s perverse nature they unleashed him on people.

Ryan: He was the right guy to have in your corner if the club didn’t pay you.

Kid: Exactly. Who was going to say “no” to Bradly?

Ryan: You mention an early Gun Club track called “Body and Soul” that I’m unfamiliar with. I know you have a rehearsal tape of the original Creeping Ritual/Gun Club lineup (Kid Congo Powers, Don Snowden, Brad Dunning and Jeffrey Lee Pierce). Are any of these unreleased tracks on that tape?

Kid: No. Although I do have tapes, there’s no Creeping Ritual material on them. I spoke with Brad (Dunning) and he has tapes too. We both agreed that they’re unlistenable. They’re so terrible. Nevertheless, I’m going to have them digitized and I’ll take another listen to them. “Body and Soul” is an early Creeping Ritual song. At the time we thought, “Oh, this sounds like a Mink DeVille song.” At least in our minds it did. To the best of my ability I did record an approximation of “Body and Soul” on the Congo Norvell record Abnormals Anonymous (1997). I sort of reimagined it. That song was the beginning of things for me with Jeffrey. It wasn’t a clear path when we started The Gun Club. We didn’t say, “Oh, we’re going to be a blues-mixed-with-punk band.” It was a lot of toying around. It had to do with finding a style. Jeffrey had a lot of ideas. We also had musical limitations to consider. We were trying to turn it into something cohesive. There was a lot of reggae influence at the beginning. Jeffrey was a visionary who wanted to make the Gun Club work. Of course, to us he was a really advanced musician. We thought (bassist) Don Snowden was the greatest too. What’s funny is that I saw Don in Valencia, Spain, where he lives now. He came to one of our (Kid Congo and the Pink Monkey Birds) shows a few years ago. He said, “Oh, I didn’t know how to play!”

Ryan: “I knew scales.”

Kid: Exactly. It was all perception. But we were ambitious and tenacious. We were certain we could make something really good out of what we had. That was it. We knew we had good taste in music. That was enough for us to continue on.

Ryan: I knew about The Cramps’ struggles with IRS Records and Miles Copeland. However, it took on a new meaning reading your book. Joining The Cramps started with a real high for you, recording Psychedelic Jungle (1981), and then stagnation occurred due to contractual conflicts.

Kid: There was excitement, success and activity for about a year or two. And then absolutely nothing. As I discuss in my book—and you can ask anyone who was in The Cramps—communication was not a big priority for Lux and Ivy. I was left to my own devices for a while. We were building, building, building and then it stopped. I wasn’t privy to what was going on. I knew they were depressed about it. The mood shifted. It was great recording Psychedelic Jungle and touring the world. The crowds were great everywhere we went. It was at that point that I started getting heavy into drugs. The time off left me with a lot of time to get into trouble. It was my first taste of any kind of success or notoriety. I’m not embarrassed to say that I fell into that trip: “Oh, you know who I am and I have all these musician friends now.” It was the gilded ‘80s. Things were quite decadent then. There was a lot of hard drug use. It wasn’t highly frowned upon to abuse those types of drugs in our circle. What was the reputation of The Gun Club? The drunkest, drug-addled band around. So there was a lot of support to go in that direction. Who knew it was going to go so downhill? We weren’t paying attention to consequences. Consequences be damned. So the drugs sapped a lot of energy out of it too.

I recorded the one studio album (Psychedelic Jungle) with The Cramps and a live album (Smell of Female). The live record was good and fun, but it was a means to an end. It was recorded to get out of a contract. The Cramps were always going to do it their way. Lux and Ivy weren’t going to follow anyone’s rules. I don’t know why people expected them to. To this day, I wonder why people want more. I mean, they gave you everything. People ask me, “When is Ivy going to play again?” I tell them, “She’s done enough. She paid her dues. The music was great.”

Ryan: I think after 30-something years of touring, she’s earned her union card.

Kid: Exactly. She’s done her union work.

Ryan: In your book you discuss West Berlin in the late 1980s. That was a strange period of extreme highs and lows. During that time you were playing with the Bad Seeds, working with people like Wim Wenders (in Wings of Desire) and witnessed the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the GDR. Nevertheless, it was a very dark period marred by substance abuse. Luckily, you came out of it unscathed. As you recount, some people didn’t.

Kid: It was a period of extremes. In my mind, for years, I rewrote that scene. I would say, “Berlin was great”—and it was, that part was true—and then I’d read interviews with Nick Cave and Mick Harvey and they’d say, “Oh, the Tender Prey (1988) period was just the worst. It’s hard to even talk about it.” And I was like, “It was great! What are you talking about?” Then when I started writing about it, I was like, “Oh, f*ck! It really wasn’t the best time.” I had been so focused on the good things and not the bad things. Prior to writing my book, I really hadn’t thought about how incredibly dark it was. That was a good thing for me to work out. Some very bad things happened to people around me. But while that was happening, it was a real peak for me as a musician. Some of the greatest work I was involved with was being done then. And yet I still chose to self-destruct. It was a case of right place, right time. But it was not necessarily what I thought it was.

Ryan: Digressing back a bit, when we would chat years back I would ask you where you were at with this project. You seemed to be warming up to it as time went on. And I finally found a copy of the group’s album in Sydney, Australia, a year ago. I’m talking about Fur Bible (1985).

Kid: Oh, you got it?

Ryan: I did.

Kid: In Australia?

Ryan: Yes. It was part of my carry-on luggage.

Kid: I’m sure I can pinpoint the person who sold it to you.

Ryan: Are you coming around to that material now? I like the record.

Kid: Oh, yeah. I hated it for so long. People would say to me, “Oh, the Fur Bible record is great.” I’d respond, “No. It can’t possibly be great. I’m not going to listen to it again, so don’t even try me.” Eventually, I did listen to it and I thought, “Oh, this is pretty good.” I came around to it. I like it.

Ryan: You’ve made the transition!

Kid: I feel warmly about it. I like all of the people involved with it. That was kind of a bad time too. It was that post-Gun Club period. I felt like I had tried something unsuccessful with Fur Bible. I had a little bit of shame about that. Everything else I had been involved with had been successful, in my eyes. People liked everything else and people didn’t really like Fur Bible. It was a sleeper.

Ryan: It is.

Kid: There’s nothing wrong with it. It was the first time I had put my voice on a record and it just irritated the hell out of me. It was a first step for me.

Ryan: You close your book with a heartfelt tribute to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. You wonder how your life would’ve turned out had you not met Jeffrey outside of that Pere Ubu show in 1979. Excluding family, I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone who’s had that sort of impact on my life.

Kid: As I was getting near the end of the book I was trying to figure out what it was about. A lot of it was about Jeffrey. Everything that moved me into becoming a musician and the life I lived after that was because of him. It was all because he said, “Here’s a guitar. You’re going to learn how to play it.” He had that confidence that I could do it. It was a mentorship. He would say, “You’re going to do this and you’re going to be great at it.” I was like, “Okay.” Jeffrey was the closest thing I had to a brother. We could have our arguments and disagreements, but in the end it didn’t matter. What mattered was our bond. Writing it down made it all clearer to me. His death sent me into a tailspin. I was entering the unknown. Jeffrey was like a cord that I had been hanging onto for so long and it was gone. I was more interested in writing about my relationship with him than about the music of the Gun Club. A lot of people loved Jeffrey. But there were others who said they loved him with disclaimers. I wanted to write something about Jeffrey without the disclaimers. That seemed like an important task—to honor him in a truthful manner.

Ryan: I’m glad that you did that. Jeffrey has his detractors, but they all seem to say something along the lines of “the guy still had the most indefatigable spirit and drive of any person I’ve ever known.”

Kid: That’s what drove everyone crazy!

Ryan: This book took you 15 years to finish. Completing it has to feel cathartic.

Kid: I don’t know. Maybe it will when I see the printed book. When I was living in New York there was no time for reflection. I started it after I left New York, but it was at such a slow pace. It was done piecemeal. I wanted to give up at times. I had a lot of self-doubt. And like I said, I’d just go on tour for a year and take a long break. The pandemic made me finally put it to bed. I couldn’t jump up and go away on tour anymore. It feels great to have it done. When I read it through after the final edit I was actually shocked. I was moved by it. It was a feeling of accomplishment. It’s a different feeling than what you get with music. Looking at it as one story has been an eye-opener for me. I thought to myself, “How did I do all of that?”

I see the book as the story of a music fan. I think most musicians start out as fans. Why would you do it otherwise? I never stopped being a fan. All of the opportunities that came my way were because I was a fan.