Interview With Straight Crimes

Originally appeared in Maximum Rocknroll #372 (May 2014).

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I can’t help seeing Oakland’s Erin Allen as a sort of renaissance man. Established as a visual artist; Allen is also abundantly active as a musician. Most in the Bay Area would be familiar with him for his parts in such noise rock and art punk bands as Sisterfucker, Work, Child Pornography, and High Castle. I first crossed paths with Allen in the spring of 2013 when I was crashing on the couch at the Huffin House, where he lives. At that time he was just launching a new project, an abrasive two-piece punk band called Straight Crimes. Won over by the grit and the hopeful nihilism of the songs, I sat down with Allen to talk about Straight Crimes, and their new 7” record.

MRR: Where did the name Straight Crimes come from? What does it mean?

The name is old. It’s been around for a while. I came up with it when I went on tour with Child Pornography. Because people were having trouble with that name I came up with Straight Crimes.

MRR: As an alternative?

Kind of an alternative. But I had also made some music as Child Pornography, and put it all on a CD, and called that Straight Crimes. And I was pretty much playing that music for the tour. I was watching the TV show Cops while making the music, and I sampled from it heavily. And I swore not to watch Cops ever again after that (laughs). The name to me means the straight life is not void of criminality. It’s dealing with marriage and its dealing with things that are…

MRR: The straight life in a conformist sense?

Yeah, and I also just think the name is funny. I just chose to use it because I had been in bands with fucked up names, and I just thought this was more open-ended.

MRR: I remember you were telling me once that people thought Straight Crimes had to do with “straight” as opposed to “queer.”

Yeah, I got a lot of flack for it at first. Some shit happened on the internet (laughs). That shit happens, and it only happened one time, but yeah I got flack for it at first.

MRR: How would you define Straight Crimes? A friend of mine called it “garage rock,” and I don’t really see it that way. How do you see it?

Blues punk. I mean, I just try to write songs with a guitar, and I pay attention to what has been done before with other guitar music.

MRR: I see it more as a sort of stripped down punk rock.

Well, there are flourishes there. I guess what I do with the guitar sometimes, there’s all that twang thing that I do. I mean, I’m not offended by being called garage rock. Some people would be.

MRR: Are there any particular bands you were influenced by?

I think what formed me as a guitar player was being a bass player first. And then I got turned on to Arab On Radar, and that taught me how to play guitar. I feel like I steal a lot from the B52’s, because there are a lot of moves that they do that I totally rip off. That guy had like two or three strings, and I basically play the guitar like I have two or three strings, even though I have five. And the detuning came from wanting to sound like Arab On Radar and Pink and Brown. Pink and Brown was an old John Dwyer project from San Francisco. I guess in general, I listen to a lot of jazz literally all the time. Mainly Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and Roland Kirk. Jazz and Elvis. Lots of Elvis. I am disappointed at the punk view of Elvis. People in the underground generally dismiss him. I don’t think you have to like his music, but to hate on Elvis in a conceptual manner comes from an uninformed and ignorant point of view.

MRR: It’s interesting that you started as a bass player, yet Straight Crimes has no bass player.

I guess I play all the bass parts on the guitar. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, especially now since I don’t have a drummer (laughs). It’s always been a question whether or not to get a bass player, to sound fuller or whatever. But the whole thing about having a bass player for the band, especially in its recent past when I still had a drummer, is that this person would be doing essentially what I’m doing, and I would be telling them what to do, and they would just be another face. And I’m fine with that because it would be cool to have another person there with us, because maybe the audience would get bored with looking at me, and then looking at the drummer, maybe they would need to have someone else to look at too? But then that’s all the bass player would be, and they would be this person that I’d be bossing around, and I don’t want to tell someone what to do. So that’s always just kind of made me nervous about having a bass player.

MRR: Are you going to go with the drum machine from here on out? Because you’ve had two drummers now, right?

Yeah, I mean, essentially both drummers—Mick Crosby and Brad Bingham—have just had to leave town for one reason or another. I have experience with a drum machine because of Child Pornography, so I just decided to go for it and try it out. And it’s working. I made some four-track recordings. That made me feel a little bit more confident about it. There’s going to be a handful of drummers helping me out. Thomas from Baus, and Steven from Processors, are going to help me out for a couple of gigs in March.

MRR: Didn’t you play drums in another band?

I’ve played drums in Sisterfucker, and I played drums in Work. And I also played drums in a band called Fuck You. Now I’m in Violence Creeps playing drums.

MRR: How did you transition from Child Pornography to Straight Crimes?

Well, Child Pornography is punk music. It’s keyboard music. I had a drum machine. It was blues punk too. It was like the Screamers. I mean, the Screamers were just playing their instrument. They weren’t playing arpeggios. They weren’t hooking up their keyboards to sequencers and shit. They were just playing their instruments, and that’s what we were doing.

MRR: Was it just transitioning from keyboard to guitar?

Yeah. I mean, I played guitar in Child Pornography, but then I stopped. And then I started playing guitar again because of my other band High Castle.

MRR: Let talk about your new 7” for a minute. You have a lot of songs. Why put these four particular songs on the 7”?

Because they were the best ones.

MRR: You think they’re the best ones?

Maybe, yeah. It was all about math. It was going to be a 12”, and then I thought that would be unwise because we aren’t going on tour or anything. We don’t have a van and we don’t have jobs. It just seemed more economical, because people don’t fucking buy records from bands here, they buy smaller things like tapes and 7”s.

MRR: What’s your favorite song on the 7”?

“Punch a Flower” is probably my favorite song, or “It’s a Shitty Night.” I chose those songs because they all seemed to have the same feeling. Like on the Wack Emcees tape, those songs are from the same recording session, but are more grindy, and more straightforward punk. These four are more like pop songs, something that someone would just want to sing along to.

MRR: I wouldn’t say “pop,” but the 7” is more melodic. And the tapes seem more noise rock, more gritty.

I would agree.

MRR: There’s a phrase from the song “Punch a Flower” about “wrathless abandon.” Do you think that pretty much sums up what you’re going for?

Yeah, I mean, that’s my worldview. I just write the songs and I don’t think of words until after writing the songs. I mean, they’re full of intent. “Punch a Flower” is a song about punk music, it’s about being disappointed with punk music while being a punk, or growing up with punk.

MRR: Is that why on the inside of the 7” jacket it says “punk is not a virtue”?

Definitely. It’s like, I want to be punk but I don’t know why I want to be punk. That’s my angle. That’s where I’m coming from. That’s why the words are what they are. The “punk is not a virtue” thing is something I came up with because some people who are punk lie, cheat, and steal. I mean, punk music is something that has been around for—when was the first Black Flag record, 1978?—and it’s now 2014, and punk was way before that record, and we keep doing it, and we do it for a reason. But we forget that we are ripping off rock n’ roll and jazz and blues. And people forget about all this stuff. So “punk is not a virtue” is about that. But it’s also about punks are shitty and stupid most of the time. I mean, um, I’m shitty and stupid (laughs).

MRR: Would you say that sums up your lyrics?

Yeah, yeah. And I like writing songs about God and shit.

MRR: Yeah, one of my favorite songs is called “Spiritual Nada.” It’s from one of the tapes.

I have a weird religious background. I grew up in a weird evangelical Buddhist shindig. I feel like I grew up with the same grammatical religious bullshit that everyone else grew up with if they grew up in a religious household. Every world event that is major and is affecting our lives is touched with religion. And so how could I not write about that. I just wrote a song about Heaven. (laughs)

MRR: So you have two cassettes?

The first cassette was with the first drummer, Brad Bingham, and some of those songs are on the next cassette. The first cassette also features a bass player that we got off of Craigslist. His name is Jeffry Ribz. I put out a Craigslist ad, and he answered it. He just jammed to the songs. But then he wasn’t really available for the next tape, and he just sent me a poem, and that’s why there’s that poem in the second cassette. I mean, the second tape is basically just what couldn’t make it on the 7”. It’s just from the same recording session. And side two is just a bunch of live jams.

MRR: I know you’re a painter. How is your visual work connected to your music? I mean, I can see you put a lot of work into the jacket of the 7”. I’m just trying to find a line between what you do visually and what you do musically.

The posters are the most direct thing I do that you can assign to my music. The poster series is influenced by the art of flyers, and protest language, and just, you know, attitude. I feel like it just makes sense for me to continue doing that. It’s from tour lingo, and conversations that I have with my friends, and lyrics of my songs or other bands lyrics. So that’s a direct connection right there. Not to say that isn’t in my other art, but for that poster series there’s always an exchange. And it’s always easy for them to be right there at a punk show to sling them or give them to friends.

Photo: Kelby Vera

MRR: I find the use of the term “protest language” interesting. Do you think that influences your music at all?

Oh yeah definitely. I guess more in an utterance way, more in the way in which I sing.

MRR: The disconnect for me is that I understand your protesting, but I don’t know what you’re protesting. I don’t really hear Straight Crimes as a political band, yet there is something that you’re protesting.

I don’t want Straight Crimes to be a political band, but it is. What I want is for people to get a glimpse, get an idea, and then to form their own idea, form their own thoughts. I don’t ever want to give somebody an answer. I generally try to pose questions. But as of late I’m trying not to just pose questions, but also tell stories and be more narrative. But generally my attitude is to pose questions. I mean, that’s what the band name kind of is. Straight Crimes is kind of a question.

MRR: There’s a confrontation. But I feel like it’s in a more social way. Do you feel like art needs to be confrontational?

Generally, yeah. I participate in making confrontational imagery. That doesn’t sell, but that’s what’s remembered, and that’s what’s discussed. There’s all sort of art that is sold that is rich people’s wallpaper.

MRR: Some of your lyrics from “Punch a Flower” are “it’s easy to perceive, what you want to see/cough it up and call it blood it’s so simple to name it love.” What can you tell me about that?

Shit. I don’t know where that came from.

MRR: I think you’re talking about the phoniness of expression, in a way. It’s easy to put something out there are say, “this is my statement about the world.” But maybe there’s not always something behind that.

It’s hard for me to have a conversation about my lyrics, because my lyrics are pieced together. The way that I’m going to sing is pretty dictated by the music once the song is written. And I’m singing ad-lib, phonetically, making a mess of myself. And then lines work there way in. I guess that part in that song right there, well, I guess that first part is about High Castle breaking up. And the second part is about me falling out of love with somebody. All this different stuff happening. All these different things happening in different stages of when that song was existing.

MRR: Well, you talk about the breaking up of the band, and then the breaking up of a relationship. There are things that tie these words together.

Yeah, I don’t know if I can give you an answer. [laughs] For the most part, High Castle was a totally collaborative band. Maybe two songs I totally wrote, but the rest was just us jamming it out. “Punch a Flower” was one of the songs that I totally wrote for High Castle and we performed it at our last show. The lyrics were not fully developed at the time, or maybe rather, I changed some of the lines when I decided to do it as Straight Crimes. When High Castle broke up, it was weird because we kind of did it as a sit down, round table discussion. We just all agreed that we couldn’t write songs together anymore, but still wanted to be friends. I asked if I could still play “Punch a Flower” because I was already doing demos for Straight Crimes. Since I wrote the song and it was the direction I was going in, they said, “Yeah, but the High Castle version will always be better.”

MRR: I feel like your lyrics are really personal.

It’s funny, I really strive to write lyrics now, but you know when I was in Sisterfucker with Vanessa Harris half the time we were writing the lyrics right before we were going to record the vocals. And now she’s in Stillsuit where she sings, but she doesn’t have lyrics. They pretty much do what I do right before I write lyrics. (laughs) But they are steadfast, and they are sticking to it. I mean, it’s so weird, the pressure to write words. I definitely have the intention, but it’s weird that I would want to write the words, because most of the time you’re not going to fucking hear them at a fucking house show.

MRR: That’s just a way of being expressive, but keeping things hidden at the same time. Do you feel comfortable talking about your lyrics?

No, I don’t. (laughs) I wish words could be more heard at shows, but sometimes even because of the singing style, you just can’t understand the words. I can’t for the life of me understand what the fuck that guy in Sparks is singing about.

MRR: I want to get back to the music. I’m not a musician, but listening to the tapes many of your songs have a “marching” sound. I was trying to figure out where that comes from.

That comes from the Screamers, from bands like Crass. It comes from Sonic Youth’s more trotting rhythmic style. The “marching” feel I think is something that I’m very attracted to because there’s something about it that’s very protest-like, but celebratory at the same time. And also it’s like a dance beat too. Which is also like a lot of blues music that I listen to. I mean, I like making music that someone could move to. I started writing songs when I started fucking around with a drum machine. I guess that’s what has kind of informed me the most.

MRR: How do you see yourself, as the band Straight Crimes, relating to punk in Oakland? I guess what I’m trying to get at is that you’re really a solo artist, and that’s unusual. I mean, everyone is in a band.

I’m not by myself. The bands that I play with are writing those songs for me, basically. The friends that I have conversations with are writing the lyrics for me. I feel like I could be making this music with other people just as well as I’m making paintings with two other people. Collaboration is very natural to me.

MRR: So when you say they’re writing the songs for you do mean by knowing them, being exposed to them?

Yeah, what they do influences me. Nothing we do comes from nowhere. It comes from somewhere. And there’s so much different shit here in Oakland that can affect me, and it does. I don’t really feel alone. As far as the songs go, I might come up with a song and show it to a drummer, but what they do to it drastically changes it. And sometimes I change what I’m doing according to what they’re doing. Even though I’m acting alone I still feel like I’m participating with other people.

MRR: It’s interesting because I know the other project you’re involved in is a collaborative painting group, Club Paint. That’s a really curious contrast to you being in a band where you’re the only member.

Well, up to a few days a go I had another band member. (laughs)

MRR: But here you hold the reigns, so to speak.

There is always the person with the intent who is going to take charge… but I’m always open to input. (laughs)

MRR: How do you think it’s going to go tonight with just your drum machine?

Oh, it’s going to be the best show in the world. The only problem with the drum machine is that it can only be programmed for ten songs. Mick, the last drummer, he knew thirty-five songs!

Kelly Dessaint’s A Masque of Infamy

Originally appeared in Maximum Rocknroll #368 (January 2014).

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I remember growing up in the ‘80s. The underground was truly underground, not something you could look up on Google. Discovering a cassette of something like Metallica or Slayer at the local one-stop shopping center was like finding gold, while finding anything by the Misfits or the Sex Pistols was impossible. And if you lived in the outskirts, you probably didn’t even know anything countercultural existed until someone made you a mixtape. Youth culture was in a straightjacket, and it was a struggle to get out of it. Those may have been simpler times, but they were also more dysfunctional. Adults, no matter how irrational, ruled like tyrants. Looking back, it really isn’t that surprising that in the early ‘90s there was a boom of crazy syndicated talk shows airing the country’s dirty laundry. I mean, let’s face it, our parents were nuts.

Kelly Dessaint’s coming of age novel A Masque of Infamy traverses this chaotic period, following teenage Louis Baudrey in the midst of punk’s second wave. Relocating from Southern California with his brother, father and his father’s friend Rick to a small town in Alabama, Baudrey goes through all the troubles in high school you’d expect from an outcast. He’s a punk, a troublemaker, but also a kid just trying to find his people. He searches for affinity and clashes with conformity like any rebellious teen would. Yet, what I thought was going to be a typical novel full of regurgitated hijinks and pranks, turns rather heavy when the truth about Baudrey’s family is unearthed. Baudrey’s formative years are placed over a backdrop of child sexual abuse and child pornography. After the shit hits the fan, Baudrey ends up institutionalized, apparently for having suicidal tendencies. The dirt of the novel really paraphrases the dysfunction of the era. It’s a story that could have easily been on Donahue or the Jerry Springer Show.

What Dessaint does so well with his novel is recreated the teenage worldview. Although Louis Baudrey is based on Dessaint, only an exceptionally talented writer can recreate the mindset of a teenager without becoming a caricature. Over the course of the novel Dessaint pulls this off with Baudrey, building a struggling, stubborn, yet growing character. He never mocks, or belittles Baudrey. He never makes Baudrey into a buffoon, or overcooks Baudrey’s rebellion. He never shames Baudrey for making the wrong choices. Instead he justifies Baudrey’s actions with his personality, as any good writer should.

Demographically, Baudrey is from Generation X, and it shows. He spends his time fighting his way through the selfish irrationality of the 1980s. As someone who grew up during this time it was easy for me to step into Baudrey’s shoes. Not just in the collecting of tapes, the music he listens to, or the things he values, but in the cold, careless, self-centered adult world around him. Baudrey’s father is your classic fuck-up, one who would sacrifice his children to maintain his own level of perverse happiness. But Baudrey’s mother isn’t much better. When she’s confronted with everything that’s happened she asks herself why this has happened to her. That moment stuck with me. It felt like something my own mother would have said. With his depiction of the absurdity of the adults, Dessaint hits the nail on the head. It was like stepping back in time into a nightmare. Yes, for many of my friends it really was as ugly of a picture as Dessaint paints.

Dessaint proves himself to be a persuasive storyteller. He has a direct utilitarian use of language. It’s not poetic, but it helps him build a convincing portrait of the period, a difficult task for any fiction writer who tries to write in the past. He also isn’t afraid to throw the hard stuff in your face, and he doesn’t dance around the issues. But he still entertains you. He get’s you to care about his characters, and about what’s going to happen next. Most importantly, he keeps you wanting to read on. I would probably recommend anything by Kelly Dessaint.

Valerie Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto

Originally appeared in Maximum Rocknroll #367 (December 2013).

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In October AK Press released a new edition of Valerie Solanas’s infamous SCUM Manifesto. Written in 1967, the manifesto has become controversial for its call to eliminate the male sex. SCUM, it is said, stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men. So much has been written about this fascinating text over the years that it’s almost impossible to pin down an accurate appraisal of the manifesto. The original publisher, Maurice Girodias, a sort of Malcolm McLaren type, saw the statement as a parody: think Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” or the Dead Kennedy’s “Kill the Poor.” Lester Bangs saw the punk rock in Solanas, and dreamt about what a great front woman she would have been. Others have attested to the seriousness of Solanas’s convictions. Her 1968 shooting of Andy Warhol is often cited as evidence to the sincerity of her mission.

But what makes each new version of the SCUM Manifesto special isn’t the actual manifesto. That can be found for free all over the Internet. What makes each new version of the manifesto special is the texts it’s packaged with. The last version of the manifesto was put out by Verso in 2004. In that version the manifesto served as a footnote to philosopher Avital Ronell’s long-winded essay about Solanas. Ronell’s essay added very little to the discussion, although she tried very hard by quoting Derrida and other French philosophers. Ronell kept her distance from Solanas. She always looked from the outside, and was never really able to make sense of her fascination with Solanas.

On the other hand, the foreword by acclaimed queer author Michelle Tea that comes with the new AK Press version does exactly what Ronell’s essay was afraid to do. Tea’s foreword is an anecdotal map of similarities between her own life and Solanas’s. Starting with their abusive fathers and stepfathers, extending through their lives as prostitutes, their dreams of violence, and into their lives as writers. Tea’s foreword briefly removes the sociopath tag from Solanas, and brings her closer to home. She makes Solanas someone the reader can identify with. Not someone who was insane, but someone who was pushed over the edge by a sexist society that dominates everything. Tea makes Solanas tragic in her struggle, and ahead of her time in her revolt.

But Tea’s foreword doesn’t just humanize Solanas; it also reminds us that there is a brilliant, double-edge to the SCUM Manifesto. The manifesto is both “real and totally not,“ as Tea writes. There is a political reality hidden behind the absurdity. When I first read the SCUM Manifesto years ago I was enraged and angered by it. I saw it as counterrevolutionary and ridiculous. I felt unfairly attacked simply for being a man. Tea’s foreword reminds me that the anger I felt at Solanas’s words is akin to the anger women, queers, and would-be Valeries feel everyday when they are absurdly attacked by all the bullshit society throws at them.

This new edition from AK Press is essentially a repackaging of the version they put out in 1996, and retains the biographical outline by Freddie Baer. But the addition of Tea’s foreword rounds the manifesto out, placing it in a context that can be helpful for both radicals and punks. Unlike Ronell’s introduction to the Verso version, which painted Solanas as a psychotic to be ogled at and theorized about, Tea’s foreword recognizes Solanas more for her struggles than for her eccentricities.

Interview With Big Black Cloud

Originally appeared in Maximum Rocknroll #365 (October 2013).

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For me, music’s value lies in its ability to bring out the animalistic, brutalized, repressed side of humanity. In a sense, I see rock n’ roll as a ritual that can disarm what culture has stamped on us. When it’s at its best, it’s a process of de-evolution, turning listeners into wild, sweaty, chaotic participants. Big Black Cloud’s newest record, Black Friday (Eolian Records), exemplifies this. Hailing from Portland, Oregon, the trio—Nick Capello (guitar, vocals), Soo Koelbli (bass, vocals), and Travis Wainwright (drums)—has been playing together for seven years. I first saw them in 2006 at a house venue in Portland known as the Richland, and have watched them morph from a theatric art garage punk ensemble to an intelligent, feverish, full of panic and rage three piece. On the weekend of the Trayvon Martin verdict, Big Black Cloud came through the Bay Area while on a west coast tour with label-mates Drunk Dad. That Sunday I strapped on my overalls and took a walk through the protest-laden streets of Downtown Oakland to the Night Light bar where I had a brief question and answer session with the band.

What’s the origin of your name? What does it represent?

Nick: It was originally Here Comes a Big Black Cloud, which was a reference to a song that we had when me and Soo were in a band in New Orleans.

Soo: It also comes from the fact that we left New Orleans because of Hurricane Katrina and came to Portland, which is overcast all the time.

When people ask you about what kind of music you play what do you say? How do you explain it?

Nick: I usually say noise rock. I usually just go for something basic. Yeah, noise rock.

Soo: I would say it’s a loaded question (laughs).

Travis: Yeah, sort of abrasive noise rock.

When I first met you guys I remember it was sort of like garage rock, like the Mummies and the Oblivians. Do you not identify with that anymore?

Soo: No.

Nick: I mean there are certain elements that are garage-like I guess, but it’s more just being influenced by rock n’ roll.

Soo: Yeah, there are a lot of elements to it. But I think noise rock is the way to go.

What bands would you say have influenced you?

Soo: Brainbombs.

Nick: Brainbombs.

Travis: Acid Mothers Temple.

Nick: Arab On Radar.

Travis: The Beatles.

Nick: Yeah, we all like the Beatles a lot.

Oh, wow. Strange.

Nick: I listen to a lot of jazz.

What kind of jazz musicians?

Nick: I like Miles Davis. Eric Dolphy. For me, the more chaotic and weird the better.

Travis: Charles Mingus.

Well, who are you into right now though, as opposed to who you’ve listen to throughout your…

Nick: Right now I listen to a lot of jazz. I love jazz… and Kiss. Seriously, I listen to a lot of Kiss.

This new album, Black Friday, is your first as a three piece, right?

Nick: Yeah, but there’s a tape. But this is the first LP.

Your last album, Dark Age, was really expansive. How have you guys changed musically between Dark Age, and this new release, Black Friday?

Nick: We dropped two members, and that’s a big thing. We had to rethink our sound.

Soo: I think we play better together. We actually listen to each other’s parts a lot more.

Nick: Yeah, there’s a lot more give and take.

Travis: Instead of just burying it in random noise.

Nick: It’s more nuanced. It’s a little more… Well, I guess its not a little more spastic.

Soo: I think it’s more deliberate, though.

Do you think you’ve become better musicians? Do you think you’re more challenged now?

Soo: Hell yes.

Travis: Yeah, we write harder songs. That’s for sure. They take a lot longer to write, usually.

Soo: I think we all had to level up when we became a three piece. Because as a five piece, especially with a layer of noise guitar on top of everything, you just couldn’t hear everything, whereas everything now is audible.

What was the recording process for this album like? Who recorded it?

Soo: Alex Yusimov at the Pool Recording Studio in North Portland.

Nick: He’s done our last three records.

Soo: Black Friday took two years to get put out. This was kind of a nightmare album.

Nick: It took a year to make.

So: Yes, but we lost half of the album and we had to go back and rerecord it.

Are the lost tracks the same that appear on the cassette release, Shitty Vibrations?

Nick: Yes, those were like outtakes.

Soo: No, not just, because it also had a live set recorded at…

Nick: Oh, it also had a live set recorded at the Frawg Pound, and then there was one song that was recorded at…

Soo: Portland Air and Space.

Travis: That’s where we recorded the song “Shitty Vibrations.”

Soo: But, yeah, this album we didn’t even think was going to come out on vinyl. Four days before we got the call from Eolian we had a band meeting where we had decided we were just going to put Black Friday out on tape because we couldn’t afford to put it out on our own label, Stankhouse Records. We felt kind of, at that point, that it was kind of hindering progress, you know. We wanted to tour on something,

Nick: Well, he asked about the recording process, and the recording process was pretty fun, because Alex—and we have done three records with him—really indulged us and let us get pretty weird. We did all kinds of weird shit, and smoked a lot of weed.

Soo: So did Alex. (laughs)

Nick: Yeah, everybody was really, really high. And fucking around with weird shit.

Soo: And not all of it worked out.

Nick: A lot of it didn’t.

Travis: And in between the first and second sessions we wrote some new songs.

Nick: And we went on tour.

Travis: And refined the songs that we had, so it turned out better than it would have.

Is there a statement behind this new sound, from Dark Age to now? Is there a philosophy behind it? Is there something you’re trying to say?

Nick: No, not particularly. You know, conceptually we’ve always been about alienation and being paranoid.

Soo: Anxiety.

Nick: Being pissed. It’s all pretty emotional. I guess there’s not really a point to it.

Soo: I don’t think the statement has changed too much. I think our albums all sound pretty different one to the next, but I think that’s kind of part of our band. It’s just not sticking towards sound, but kind of continuing to explore whatever we happen to be into.

Yeah, I mean, I see it as sort of an agonizing sound of transformation. You know, whenever you’re going through a transformation it’s never comfortable. I always remember this movie clip from American Werewolf in London, the transformation scene, and that reminds me of you guys.

Soo: (laughs)

Travis: Sweet.

Nick: (laughs)

Soo: It’s never comfortable and it’s always a little bit messy. I don’t think we ever really perfected one sound before moving onto the next. But that’s kind of what’s fun about it.

It’s not like after the transformation. It’s like in the process.

Travis: Yeah.

How do the songs develop then?

Travis: A lot of them come from just a couple people being in the basement starting to play. They just come from a jam, and then become a song instantly.

Nick: Or it will be a riff. Someone will just have a riff. And then we’ll just fuck around with the riff. We’re all really self-conscious and critical, so there’s always, like, sometimes things will happen naturally, and we’ll be like, “Ah, we can’t do that, we do that too much. Let’s think of a different way.” End the song different, or something, you know.

Soo: We write a lot more collectively than we used to.

Did that sort of change come with the reduced membership of the band?

Nick: Yeah, yeah. It’s just harder to communicate with more people. You know, to be on the same level.

Two of the tracks on the new album, the title track and “Terror of Cosmic Loneliness,” are pretty intense instrumentals. Do you place more value on the music than the lyrics?

Soo: I do.

Nick: I don’t. They are equally important to me, but I write most of the lyrics.

Soo, why do you feel the music is more important?

Soo: One, probably because I don’t write as many lyrics, and because I think that’s just how I feel about music in general. I tend to see lyrics more as an afterthought, or a flourish to the thing. I’m happy if the lyrics fit the music and what it sounds like it’s trying to express.

Travis: I think the vocals are really important. Actually, I find that usually my favorite vocal moments are songs when it’s a sparse vocal part, but it just brings the intensity up so much, lyrically and musically.

I guess this would be directed at Nick. The lyrics are always pretty dark and psychological. What goes into writing the lyrics?

Nick: It depends. Typically I’ll come up with a couple of words first, or a rhyme scheme that I like, or just a line, and I’ll just rewrite, and rewrite, and rewrite, over and over again. I feel like my brain is a fucking hornet’s nest sometimes. I’m just trying to convey that feeling, and I think the music conveys that feeling. I feel like this with this band too. Aesthetically, it’s sometimes kind of hard to write things that are softer or innocent. I feel like this band is a highly conceptual band, aesthetically, musically, and lyrically. So I just try to find things that would sound right with the music. Different words, you know. I get stuck and I repeat myself too, like the word “brain” is in a lot of songs. The word “cities” is in a lot of songs. I just get stuck on shit like that.

Which brings me to my next question: Is “Bomb My Brain” a reference to the Brainbombs?

Nick: Well, “Bomb My Brain” is actually… (pause)

Travis: (laughs)

Soo: (laughs)

Nick: …yeah, totally. I was thinking about how cool their name sounds, and we needed lyrics for that song so I came up with that. This song is actually about how I think my boss fucking sucks though.

Soo: Are you sure you want that to be in the interview?

Nick: You know how many bosses I have? They can sit and guess which one I hate. He knows I don’t like him. Motherfucker knows I don’t like him.

My favorite songs on Black Friday are the last two: “Human Host” and “Medusa.” Can you talk a little bit about each of those songs, both musically and lyrically?

Soo: Nick and I wrote the words to “Human Host” separately. I wrote my parts and he wrote his parts. We talked a lot about the theme of it, which is I guess the idea of parasites in a few different ways.

Nick: It also comes back to this transformation thing. Wanting to see something pushed through. Don’t want to feel uncomfortable. Don’t want to be there on the inside. I want to be there when it pushes through, and transforms. It’s kind of like a lot of our themes, super sci-fi.

Soo: I also found it had to do with personal relationships, and how you tend to find a lot of your personal relationships are parasitic, and you find yourself at one or the other end of that.

Nick: Musically that song is easy as shit.

Travis: Yeah. It was one of our steps into writing more slow and sparse songs, and exploring space instead of just packing in a bunch of noise.

Soo: That song came about after we went to see Acid Mothers Temple play, and we were in that phase of pretending to be Acid Mothers Temple (laughs). Which was awesome!

Nick: Oh yeah. That was totally great.

I had kind of a weird reaction to that song because I immediately thought of it in Freudian terms, so I thought it was kind of creepy. A reference to like, you want to be back inside the womb, you know, but maybe I just misheard some of the lyrics.

Nick: No, no, no. Totally. That song is like our “sex” song. I feel like that’s the song that makes people want to fuck.

Soo: It’s so sexy.

Well what about “Medusa” then?

Nick: Well, first of all, “Medusa” is a rip off of a Cyril Neville song, like the beginning of it. And I heard that and I was like, “Fuck, man, we’ve got to rip that off.” And then, originally when I first had the idea for the song, I was telling these guys, “Dude, this will be like the first song on the record.” It will have the big build up, and then come in, and so originally it was supposed to be the first song on the record. Ironically it ended up being the last song on the record. Lyrically, I mean that one is real vague. It’s kind of about this comic book that I read where this lady can take her head off, and it flies around the jungle. And the song is also kind of about this documentary I watched about jungle cats. So, it’s kind of about both of those. I guess it’s about a fear—a sort of panic type mode—with this overseeing thing that’s inescapable, and you’re the person it’s pursuing.

So how does this pull into the Medusa myth?

Nick: I think it might have just been a rhyme scheme thing. I don’t remember.

Because I remember at some point you sing about the eyes.

Nick: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that’s what I was talking about, looking into eyes. Being afraid you’d turn to stone, like she’s Medusa.

And, you know, Medusa’s a very sexual character. Turns men hard. Turns men to stone.

Nick: Yeah, yeah. Totally. I think our music is super fucking sexual. It’s very sexual music. It’s violent and sexual.

And that’s what real rock n’ roll does. It’s really sexual.

Soo: Yeah.

Nick: We all love to fuck, Brandon.

Soo: (laughs)

Travis: (laughs)

You’d think that (laughs). Well, what about that song musically?

Travis: That one took awhile.

Nick: That was a weird one to figure out, because it was a conceptual thing. We had the bare-nare-nare. That was already laid out, but after that we were like, “Fuck, where do we go from that?” We knew that we wanted to have a build up, and we had the chords, but it took a second. And then there’s this whole breakdown in the middle. And Soo and I, we had a bunch of practices—just the two of us—to figure out the middle, because Travis was out of town or some shit. Me and Soo kept getting together and were like, “What are we going to do in the middle of this? How are we going to write a bridge to this song?”

Soo: I think that’s a pretty good example too of how we function differently as a three piece now, because that’s something we never did before. For Nick and I to get together and actually listen to one person’s riff and try to actually write something that makes sense, as opposed to as a five piece when we would plunge into it way more and not be listening to each other.

Travis: Yeah, because it’d basically be one person’s idea with the five piece, and everyone is augmenting that instead of like now where we are coming up with it together.

Nick: When we became a three piece it was kind of weird because we had to rethink what kind of music we made, because we didn’t know what kind of songs we could write. There’s a lot of shit we tried that just didn’t work. When we remade the record we recorded a shit load of songs that we’ll never play again and will never see the light of day. And after hearing them recorded we were like, “Ah, we’re not really good at that. That’s just not our thing.” And that’s definitely when the album was coming together and were like, “We’re good at that thing. We should explore that territory.” Rather than taking a song that has a riff that sounds like the Kinks or something and bludgeoning it to death.

Travis: Going into the record we decided to take our time, just to make sure that we got it.

Nick: Well, that’s what was great about working with Alex. He’d just let us fuck around.

I think as writers you’re tighter, but do you also think you’ve loosened up a bit? I feel like a song like “Hate Myself” feels much looser. It feels more traditional rock n’ roll where the other songs feel like they have a heavier side to them. It seems like you guys can strip it down and at the same time do stuff that’s more intricate. I don’t think you guys would have had the courage to do something like “Hate Myself” before. I think before you were more concerned with trying to be too smart, and now you’ve eased up a bit.

Soo: I guess so. I never really thought of that.

Nick: I think a lot of times we’re a lot more playful and have a sense of humor than we actually come off as having. I feel like a lot of times people are like, “Ah man, ‘Hate Myself,’ and ‘Pile of Shit’?!”

Soo: A lot of it’s really tongue-in-cheek.

Nick: I thought “Hate Myself” was fucking hilarious.

I feel like those two (“Hate Myself” and “Pile of Shit”) are more of the punk rock songs of the album.

Nick: Totally.

Soo: I think we’ve loosened up in another way too. Something we never did before but we do now is a little bit more improvisation. We jam a lot more in practice, but even in shows there are some songs that don’t have definite endings, where it’s always kind of different and we feel it out. There’s a jam we do now that we play live a lot, and it doesn’t even have parts. It’s never solid and its fine like that. And that’s something we never would have done a few years ago, because it would have been a mess, a fucking mess.

Do you think this comes with being better musicians?

Travis: I think it comes with being able to play with each other better.

Nick: It’s with being a better band. It’s not being better musicians.

Soo: And I think it comes with we’ve played together for eight years now, the three of us. I think we can anticipate what each other is going to do a little bit more, and we’ve become a lot more attentive to how each other plays.

We talked about my favorite songs on the album, but what are your favorite songs on the album to play?

Travis: You know we only play about half of the songs on the record. The other half is new material.

Nick: This tour “Pile of Shit” has been one of my favorites to play. I’ve been really digging that. I always like playing “Cities of the Red Night,” but I like that song way more than these two guys. And I think we all like “Black Friday” a lot. I love playing “Black Friday.”

Soo: “Black Friday” is my absolute favorite.

Travis: And it’s not one we play, but “Gettin’ Heavy in The Jungle” is one of my favorite parts of the record.

What is it about these songs?

Nick: I guess its just the song itself feels good. I like playing the faster songs. And I like “Black Friday” just because I get to do all that shit with the slide that’s ridiculous but it’s really fun to do.

Soo: I like “Black Friday” because it’s so full of anxiety, so tense and frantic. I kind of think of it as our version of, like, “The Flight of the Bumblebee” or something (laughs).

Nick: It’s almost like a blues song but fucked up.

Soo: I like “Human Host” too. We don’t really play it anymore.

Travis: Yeah, that one’s fun, because it’s sinister but soothing at the same time. It’s really fun to play and really fun to listen too.

On the Shitty Vibrations tape you have a song called “Cocaine World.” What’s your relationship with drugs?

Travis: We have a strong relationship to weed.

Nick: We have a strong relationship to drugs. Those lyrics are a joke. I had a dream and there was a stupid song in the dream about cocaine, and I basically just rearrange the lyrics for that song.

Soo: We have a strong relationship to drugs.

Nick: Yeah, we really like to party.

With your newer sound do you feel you get more respect?

Nick: Yes! I think we’re getting a lot more respect than we used to. People are paying attention. I don’t know, it’s weird.

Travis: It’s not for everybody.

Nick: But in Portland, I feel we definitely get more respect there.

Well, it seems to me that Eolian usually does heavier music.

Nick: They still do heavier music. We’re just on the label too.

Soo: Yeah, this is kind of an experiment for them. Testing out the waters to see if they can widen their scope.

Do you guys consider yourselves outsiders? Where do you think you fit in musically?

Soo: I think we’re outsiders, definitely.

Nick: I don’t know, man.

Travis: We fit with a lot of things, but we don’t fit into much.

Nick: We’re not heavy enough to be metal. We are always too something to be something else. It’s always too far in one direction to be something else.

Are there any bands you identify with?

Nick: Oh definitely, but that doesn’t mean we sound like them. Yeah, I don’t know. I think we’re outsiders.

What’s going on with Stankhouse Records?

Travis: It’s been on hiatus due to financial restrains mostly, but it will be back.

What were the last tapes you guys put out?

Travis: Drunk Dad’s Failhouse EP, Valkyrie Rodeo’s Ready, Set, Ruin, Tiny Knives’ Static, and our own Shitty Vibrations.

Nick: Hooded Hags is going to have a tape out on Stankhouse soon.

I’m out of questions. Is there anything else you guys wanted to say?

Travis: Where can I get the best deal on some overalls?

Richard Hell’s I Dreamed I Was A Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography

Originally appeared in Maximum Rocknroll #365 (October 2013).

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It must have been in 2006 when I saw Richard Hell read in Portland at Powell’s Books on Hawthorne. He was promoting his novel Godlike. The small space reserved for readings was filled with chairs but more than half of them were empty. A glammed out girl in studs and heels asked Hell about his time with the Heartbreakers. Bluntly, like an annoyed high school teacher, Hell made it clear he wasn’t going to answer any questions about bands or Tom Verlaine or Johnny Thunders. In spite of the book’s trashy characters and Hell’s obvious talent as a writer, the crowd looked bored and tired as Hell read from his provocative novel.

Earlier this year Hell finally gave the public what they always wanted. In March Ecco Press released Hell’s tell-all autobiography I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, which covers his life up to the early eighties. The book begins with Hell’s childhood in Kentucky, and works its way through a number of episodes – first crushes, first sexual experiences, first records, running away and so on – before getting to the meat of the book: when he finds his way to New York City with the man who would be known as Tom Verlaine. The two partners do the poet thing, work menial jobs, and even go so far as to found their own literary journal. Eventually they start the band Television, and from there the book takes on a new direction, strictly focusing on anecdotes and gossip about the early punk scene in New York. Band members, ex-girlfriends, and people Hell admires get the most coverage.

At times it seems the primary focus of the book is his relationship with Verlaine, which he paints as one of friends who become collaborators, rivals and even enemies. The love is there, but so is the hate. It seems no matter what he does, his damaged relationship with Verlaine haunts him. It’s quite refreshing to hear someone like Hell speak honestly and self-consciously. He is self-critical and never denies the size of his ego. He never pauses to paint a pretty picture of himself or someone else when it isn’t deserved, and vice versa. For example, when he compares himself to Johnny Rotten he admits, “He was about the whole world; I was about myself.”

Yet, perhaps it is his devotion to directness and truth that hurts the book. When contrasting Hell’s book with Patti Smith’s recent bestseller Just Kids, Smith’s comes off as the better read, but I question her sincerity. She depicts herself as an innocent, with very little of the sex and drugs that usually goes along with rock n’ roll. At one point in his book, Hell even points the finger at Smith, claiming her affair with his buddy Verlaine clinched the conflict between himself and Verlaine. Hell depicts her as a backstabbing opportunist. That’s the thing about Hell’s book: it isn’t afraid to show the bleak, conflict-ridden side of the New York scene. Cocaine, heroin, addiction, betrayal, death, and sex are all regularly discussed. Truth isn’t always pretty. It doesn’t always make for smooth reading. When you tell it like it is, there’s not always a tidy package at the end. Unlike Smith’s book, not all of Hell’s stories have a powerful ending. Like life, they seem to end with a shrug and fade away.

And at times these anecdotes tend to read more like brief sketches that have been stitched together with a transparent and predictable structure. When a new character is introduced there’s a sure bet the next five or six pages will focus on that character before they disappear from the book forever. The book also never decides if it wants to be about Hell’s relationship with Verlaine, or about the New York punk scene in general. Verlaine seems to play an important part at the beginning of the book, but simply vanishes for large stretches. The epilogue, a recent chance encounter with Verlaine at a used bookstore, seems tacked on and unnecessary.

But it’s Hell’s documentation of the scene he participated in that makes the book a convenient companion to other punk books like Please Kill Me or From the Velvets to the Voidoids, which cover much of the same ground. Unfortunately, the book is a missed opportunity for Hell to produce a truly masterful book. As is, Hell’s punk rock tales, his youthful ambitions, and his personal relationships, simply float around. They are informative in a historical sense, but directionless. There is nothing tethering them together. Because of Hell’s skill as a writer, the book is by all accounts an enjoyable collection, but with a much-improved structure, the book could have been a punk classic.