Black Sabbath are one of the only bands in the world that needs no introduction. This particular interview is a 45 minute chat with perhaps the least appreciated founding member of the band. Bill was in Mythology with Tony Iommi before they formed what would be soon be called Black Sabbath with Ozzy Osbourne and Geezer Butler in late ’60s Brum.

Bill brought a jazzy free vibe to the songs that would forever stamp his mark on those incredible ’70s albums. And between them the magical four-piece made unbeatable heavy music that will never be bettered. Bill’s input into these classic songs should not be underestimated. He sat back as the most relaxed member of the group but he penned a few killer tunes and sang well on a couple too.

Tony Iommi has (literally and metaphorically) worn the cross for Black Sabbath the longest – he’s kept the band going pretty much permanently across multiple line up changes and decades. But it is arguably Bill who has quietly held the torch for the original four piece line up the most. After Ozzy left the band in 1979 it seemed that Bill never really recovered or was able to accept different line-ups.

Whether this was the case or not, his drinking became a real problem for him and seriously affected his life on and off from that time to the late ’90s. Bill played on the killer first Dio fronted album Heaven and Hell (although says he doesn’t remember it) to various stints with the ’90s MK1 reformation tours both before and after he had a heart attack.

This interview took place long before the recently announced Sabbath reunion album and tour. Bill was warm, quick and very humble to speak too. It was a pretty emotional conversation for me. (And, as requested I did send him a pack of CDs by some of the best sons of Sabbath).

Black Sabbath have determined the course of my life, so it’s mind-blowing to talk to you. I’m really interested in the early days as a band. Your early work is pretty much all that matters when it comes to metal. Were your early influences blues music?

Bill: The influences were blues. In my case there was jazz. Tony also listened to jazz and one of his favourite guitar players was Django Reinhardt. Geezer and Ozzy liked blues and their tastes didn’t go back as far as Tony’s and mine did. As a child I was bought up on big band and swing. We all liked blues music and we all liked music that was somewhat different and we all liked to play loud. That was something that we were aware of, but playing really loud didn’t come till we’d been together for about a year. Within a couple of months of playing together we were already playing aggressively–that was the key to our passion right there.

That must have been around ’68 then. You were slowly dev-eloping an aggressive sound. Do you remember a certain point where you switched to this incredible dynamic that you found for the first album? Was there a key moment where you switched from a heavy blues band to the incredible sound you laid down on the first album?

Bill: I think the most significant happened when we wrote our first song together. It was at Tony’s house, in Park Lane, Aston. We wrote a song called “Wicked World”. It starts off with a very simple jazz feel, but it quickly goes into a ‘baam baam baaaaam bababababaam.’ As soon as those first notes came out, that was like a flat fifth right there, I think. We are all very attracted to dark notes–flat fifths or notes that are very, very powerful–that are often found in opera and Wagner or Beethoven. I know you’re a musician so you’ll know that the strength of a note can really determine the direction of a song.

The second example and probably the most well-known example was when we were rehearsing in Aston Community Centre and we went there one morning and Tony came up with the riff for “Black Sabbath” and we all fell in line. That was a major, major turning point. When we did that we were asking ourselves what the blazes we’d tapped in to. I know I came away feeling very, very secure in my soul. I knew that I’d tapped into something with the three other guys that was just killer. We were still incredibly poor at that point and down on our luck, but that was a real turning point right there.

That is still the ultimate heavy metal track for me. It’s just mind-blowing, the heaviness and power of it. I always say that to people when they ask me what my favorite track is. No one has come close to the first three or four albums you laid down. You obviously had tapped in to something very special, between the four of you. You were very much ahead of your time and you’re still changing people’s lives today.

Bill: Well thank you very much. I really appreciate your feedback and comments about the band. I agree with you. What that song has become, Marek, is our rallying cry. When everything else has turned to crap and we don’t know who we are anymore–and as time goes on and we lose each other a bit–whenever we play that song we look around at each other and we know that is our solidarity.

It must be an amazing feeling and experience to have that. You recorded that first album in 24 hours or something didn’t you? Do you remember that period? It’s such a perfect album.

Bill: I think we had about three days of studio time, but our circumstances were quite good. The band was very well rehearsed. We were already veterans of touring as that line up. We’d probably been playing together and touring for about two years. We’d been all over Europe, so we were a very tight unit by the time we went in to record that first album. The people around us told us they’d sorted us out making a record. We were used to things turning upside down and disappearing, but this actually came through and we actually did make a record. We went into the studio and did a set up. We put some mics up. We’d never been in a studio as Black Sabbath. I think the credit has to go, not only to the band, but the producers Tom Allen and Rodger Bain who really pulled it together. I think Geezer, in his eloquence, spoke the best of it when he said: ‘We came into the studio, then we walked out of the back door after a couple of days and just went back on the road.’ When I look back on that, and being a producer myself nowadays I just think we were madmen. To go into a studio and try to record this very raw and live stuff. Today that would be construed as a nightmare, but back then it was the real deal. It’s amazing in a production sense and the timing sense and the way we went about it, to come out with that album actually boggles me a bit. I’m still quite amazed.

You did a lot of touring back then. I heard the shows could be quite violent. Is that true?

Bill: The audiences were very rowdy. Only a couple of years before–and I’ll use Cream, who are a great band, as an example–the audiences for them were still very subdued. They were mainly listening and then would stand up and applaud. If you look at a Cream audience back then, there would be a couple of people getting their rocks off, but for the most part there would be a crowd intelligently listening to Cream, and rightly so. But by the time we were performing as Black Sabbath, the audiences were changing. Even the audiences that listened to Jimi Hendrix and major rock groups of the day had begun to change. Even our early audiences were very polite. It felt like playing in our living room. I remember the audiences changing in front of me. I remember that distinctly. The way they wore their clothes became different. We got a lot of leather jackets with studs. People’s hair changed. The whole look was just a sublime move. I think that was from a lot encouragement from us, and of course Ozzy. He wasn’t prepared to go into a room where people sat and applauded at the right place. We played loud and really aggressively. Ozzy refused to go on unless everybody got up. That’s where all the profanity with the audience started too. It was another turning point. I’d never seen another band do it. It was a crossover point. It was where the fire started. People got up and danced in such a restricted space. I think that’s why everybody started head banging, because there wasn’t enough room. It was just fucking unbelievable to watch. Everybody just rocked from their torsos upwards. It was nothing to do with the feet. It spread like wildfire all over England and Europe. Everybody was just rocking out, but in a completely different way than they had to Hendrix and Cream and our contemporaries of the day. It was quite the sight to see.

I don’t think anyone can argue that Sabbath were the band. You opened the doors for so many people and nobody can beat those albums you put out. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, metal kind of lost itself a bit, and I’m hoping it’s coming back now. People are looking back and understanding what you guys were all about. Did you feel that too? It must have been a huge loss when Ozzy left the band and it was a tragedy for metal. I don’t think metal really recovered from it. I’m not totally sure what I’m asking here, but how do you feel about heavy metal generally and the fractioning of the band in the late ‘70s?

Bill: I could understand why Oz was asked to leave, however it’s always been regrettable as far as I’m concerned. But I’m just one person in a four-person band. Behind the scenes and out of the public eye, there have been a lot of conversations and healing going on. There’s been time to make up–make amends and put your best foot forward. I was with Oz last week where he was picking up an award. That shows that we’re still a band, we’re still bandmates and still friends. I’ve tried to maintain friendships with all the guys. Just a couple of weeks ago I was chatting to Geezer and I haven’t spoken to Tony for a little while, but our conversations continue, we’re all still pretty open minded to each other. We’re all doing our own projects, but we’re not cut off from each other in any way. Also the reunion that we started about 10 years ago went very, very well. We’ve toured the world since 1999 as the original band. It was absolutely great. I loved it. I’d always hoped that the band could remain together and if anyone wanted to make their own albums or just take a break for a couple of years then they could, but that didn’t really happen with Black Sabbath. Oz was asked to leave. And what he’s gone on to do is phenomenal. He’s huge in the US and across the world. He’s a huge recording artist as well as the TV show and a couple of movies. He’s done incredibly well. All of us have done really well. We’re all really involved in music still. In fact that’s why I’m a bit groggy today. I was in the studio until really late last night finishing some mixes of some stuff I’m going to put out. Did I actually answer your question there?

Yeah, you did. Everything happens for a reason, and you’ve got those eight albums, which for some people are like a religious experience to listen to. Maybe you wouldn’t have surpassed them if Ozzy had stayed. Were you aware of any bands in the ‘80s and ‘90s that were following the concepts that you had in the early days? People like Saint Vitus and Trouble or Sleep?

Bill: In the ‘80s and for part of the ‘90s were really, really tough on me. That’s when my recovery from alcohol and drug addiction started. So for the most part I wasn’t really aware of any of the UK bands then. My nephew used to let me know which bands to look out for. I didn’t make any trips to England for a long time. It took me a few years to work out what was going on with me, and what it actually meant to be an addict. For me the lifesaver came in the form of Ozzy’s records. There was also a couple of songs that Tony did that I really liked. The saving grace for me was Metallica. I knew them from the beginning. Metallica for me was the life-saving force that came in and rescued all the bands that were flailing at the time. When I heard The Black Album (1991), I sat down and I played it and played it and played it. It was like listening to Sgt. Pepper’s (1967), which forever changed my life. I thought, ‘My god. Now we’re into something solid.’ Metallica really hit the spot with me. My biggest break into today came when I started listening to the gothic bands, and some grunge and bands that were a little bit rough around the edges. Today I think we’re in the most marvellous place with heavy metal. I’m just immersed in the amazement of the progress that has been made. Some of the guys and I had a bit of a tough time with the new bands, but there’s a lot of us older musicians who really love the new bands–it’s a bit like watching the grandkids. I hope I don’t sound big-headed, but I can tell what tree they originally came from. I actually get that same religious feeling you mentioned earlier when I hear some of these new bands. They’re doing amazing things. It takes me back to where we were in 1966.

I’d agree that Metallica definitely picked up your baton in 1983 and they and Black Sabbath are easily the best metal bands ever for me. It feels to me there are lots of good new bands who understand what you were about back in the ‘70s, and I think that the next decade is going to be really exciting for metal. I guess Geezer wrote a lot of your lyrics, but you had this power and intensity. Where did you pick that up from?

Bill: Part of it came from our predecessors. There were great bands in the ‘60s. A lot of bands were referencing flower power and peace. I want to make it clear that I’m not being negative about that whole movement, but we were from Aston and there wasn’t much of a hippie era going on there. At least 50 percent of our day was spent looking at the guy across the street to see if he was going to run over and kick you in the head. That was our reality. It was not someone running across the street to give us a flower. I think there was a lot of valuable things in the hippie–or counter-culture. But some of the ideals fell short. It was a great time in the ‘60s.

I guess things also got a bit darker in the ‘70s. You were just reflecting what was going on then.

Bill: Well, you’re right. That was a large part of it. When we went to play in Berlin in 1969, there was a wall up. That was a reality. The Russian forces in and around Berlin outnumbered the Allied forces 35 to one, with tanks. The Iron Curtain was a two-hour flight from London. We were reflecting on our times in Aston, and Aston back then was dog rough. We were talking about our reality.

There still is a sense of counter culture in there though– “Sweet Leaf” and “Children Of The Grave” and other anti-war songs.

Bill: Well, we were pissed off, you know? “Sweet Leaf” is a very aggressive song when we do it live. “Sweet Leaf” and “Iron Man” were the rallying points for all the young men coming back from Vietnam. And when I think about it– to be quite honest with you, Marek–I start to cry because life is precious and I can still see the audiences when we played those songs. All the vets were up the front, so all we could see were the vets. When those songs came on, they were trying to get out of their wheelchairs. They came to hear those songs. We’d give them our all. They were men that didn’t want to go to war. They were pushed into it and nobody thanked them when they came back.

Do you have any advice for any bands that are just starting out?

Bill: The first thing that any musician needs to have is self-honesty. That will take over when the musician is in 15 feet of snow in the middle of an ice storm in upstate New York and really wants to go home and have some of mum’s soup. You have to be honest about the music that you’re representing, because if you’re not, the music won’t hold you, the fame won’t hold you, whatever you want out of the fame won’t hold you safe in that upheaval. The storm could represent anything–being sick on the road or whatever. If you’ve got the passion for yourself and your bandmates then you may last the course.

Thanks so much for this interview. It’s been fantastic for me to talk to you. And thank you for the music that you’ve created. It’s still having a huge impact on generation after generation. Have a fantastic weekend. Thanks so much, Bill.

Bill: Before you go, I’ve really enjoyed talking with you. I hope I get to meet you. I’d really love for you to send me some CDs of your band. I would love to hear where you’re coming from, especially after hearing who your influences are for God’s sake! I’d love to hear what you’re doing. Please stay in touch. Give me a call whenever you like. We can connect up. Take care of yourself and stay strong. You mean a lot. You guys out there mean an awful lot.

You’ve played a few churches in London recently – most notably, St Stephen’s earlier in 2011 and St Giles In The Field just before Christmas – do you feel at home in a place with acoustics like that? Your music does suit that kind of setting.
I do. I don’t know what it is about churches. There’s definitely an atmosphere there and the sound is always really good. Every gig we’ve had in a church, we’ve really, really loved it. Maybe it’s the sound thing and the rows of wooden pews. And I guess the fact the audience feel they have to be quiet. It’s great for us as it feels like everyone’s paying attention. I love a good church gig.

Are you spiritual?
Well both my parents are Roman Catholic – my mum’s Italian and my dad’s Irish. They’re not over the top with it, but I was brought up going to Sunday School as a kid and stuff. I was obviously brought up with all that, but I’m not particularly religious in the sense of all the regulations, but I like to think there’s definitely something else. God knows what it is!

Well, literally. But I guess it’s good to do a few good shows in a church to get on their good side if something does exist.
That’s true – and it’s the end of the world isn’t it?

Yep – December 2012 is the end.
Well we’re alright for a bit. We should get a few more gigs in before then.

Would it be fair to compare you to Karen O and Cat Power and Lykke Li?
Oh that’s a nice mixture! Generally because they’re all very cool. I’ve been compared to quite a lot of different people, which I suppose is quite a good thing as people aren’t just telling me that I’m like one person. I suppose everyone in a way, and I guess it’s kind of an ego thing, finds that weird because you don’t like to think that you’re like someone else. You want to be an individual and the most original person in the world. But it’s great to be compared to people whose music I really enjoy. Especially someone like Karen O. I’ve not heard that one before. I guess the hair, definitely! I think she’s pretty amazing.

Would you say you were folk? Or as the Guardian so nicely put it, ‘Fucked up folk’?
I know right? That’s quite funny. It’s difficult, because I don’t know what we are. We don’t really think about it at all. We’re more like ‘this sounds alright – let’s do that.’ It did start off with my solo thing for years, which was very folky and acoustic. It definitely started out that way, but with me and Igor working together and developing things, it has all gone a bit more atmospheric and, I dunno, we’re just trying to experiment with what we’re doing.

People have mentioned that your lyrics are dark and depressing, but do you see them as a release of emotions – which is a positive thing. The Guardian, again, said ‘”Youth” plumbs Ian Curtis’ depths of bleakness’. I wasn’t expecting you to be so friendly!
I think it’s a relief that I’m actually friendly as I probably would be the most depressed person in the world. I enjoy really dark music. I love Joy Division and don’t think I can really write anything happy. I don’t know if that’s a conscious thing or I literally can’t. If I didn’t write songs, I think I’d be really weird [laughs]. I’d have a lot of shit that I just couldn’t get out. I’d have about 10 cats and just mutter away to myself and play the saw. It’s a release of emotion and I can just be rid of bad experiences. It is a bit like therapy where bad shit has happened but if you can put it down on paper and write about it and then sing it to people, then you’ll be alright. I dunno where I’m going with that!

The new EP – The Wild Youth (Communion Records, 2011) was recorded in Crouch End. You’re from North London – is that why?
I wish I was from there. I’m from proper North London. I’m in zone 9.

What, Amersham? That’s like not even in London. That’s a conveniently written press release.
[Laughing] I know! If I’m still in a zone then I’m from London. Igor is proper London. There’s not much good music from where I’m from. Actually, actually, Kyla La Grange and The Staves are both from the same areas as me. So, actually I lie – we’re pretty damn cool up there.

The Wild Youth EP has shown graduation in sound in terms of mass. There’s a lot more – electronic, booming drums etc. from, say, the DEMOS EP? Has Igor brought that influence in?
The way we work is that I will write the lyrics and acoustic guitar and then Igor and his crazy brain come along and he takes the song and works on it by himself and he comes up with the most amazing things. Then we work together and layer the vocals and guitars and stuff. We basically demoed everything that we eventually recorded in Crouch End and having someone like Ian Grimble (British Sea Power, Beth Orton) as our producer, we were then able to make the tinny sounds that we’d made in Igor’s room into this massive noise. The ideas were always there – we just needed the equipment and the knowledge of Ian to make them into a reality. It was great that Igor could get involved in the production side of things too; Ian was really open to listening to other people’s opinions.

Your vocals, especially live, are captivating, stretching people to the edges of their emotions – are you drained at the end of each performance? It feels you put a lot of yourself into it.
Kind of – not really drained. I mean after I’ve played I’m in a weird state. I need to have a cigarette and a big glass of wine. Now I’m with a band, I’m really excited. Before, when I was solo it was really heavy but now I get to share it with people. Even though it’s obviously not happy music and not that up-tempo, I’m excited by it. I especially like it when I’ve finished as I get ridiculously nervous. It is a release of nerves but you feel like you’ve achieved something.

The word ethereal is often used as a way to vaunt your music – would you concur?
It’s a little bit churchy and waily isn’t it? I’m kind of open to people saying what they think of the music. Ethereal has been used a lot but I do quite like that. I don’t ever really want to say what my music sounds like. I don’t think that’s what music is all about, I quite like people to listen to stuff and have their own opinion. It’s the same with lyrics – I don’t like explaining songs. Sometimes you go to a gig and the singer tells you when and why they wrote a song. I never do that – I think that ruins things. I want to judge for myself what something is about.

Tracklisting:

Blizzardo – Acid Trash Mix by SUPMAG

Blizzardo – You Don’t Know Jack by SUPMAG

They wear their references proudly on their sleeve: they have songs called “Jake Ryan” (the hunky love interest from John Hughes’ teen angst masterpiece, Sixteen Candles (1984)), “Veronica Sawyer” (Winona Ryder’s heroine in Heathers (1989), and a song in which a boy dressed as Teen Wolf goads a girl into drinking beer until she pukes) and “Brian Krakow” (Angela Chase’s nerdy best pal on My So-Called Life (1994-95)). Their first EP is called Youth (Moshi Moshi, 2010), and their debut album, Welcome to Condale (Moshi Moshi, 2011), is a concept album based around a fictional town in California, much like the mythical setting for all of John Hughes’ teen dramas, Shermer, Illinois.

And I could go on. Pages and pages could be devoted to Summer Camp’s grasp on the secret life of the American teenager (never mind that they were born and bred in the UK–but more on that later), but luckily, they have the songs to back up their obsession. Both Youth and Welcome to Condale are, like a lot of good pop nowadays, reminiscent of ’60s and ’80s pop, pulling their sound from both the Ronettes and the Psychedelic Furs. Elizabeth’s voice is constantly buoyed by Jeremy’s ultra-fuzzy guitars and synths. “Ghost Train” for example, bounces along on one of the catchier choruses in recent memory, in total contrast with Elizabeth desperately “trying to get through” to her man, aimlessly. Live, Summer Camp perform while a stream of found family photographs rotates on a screen behind them, creating scenarios full of holes and nameless extras in imaginary movies. The bands songs have a singing-into-your-hairbrush quality to them, but far from being as grating as that sounds, it adds a dimension of reality to the records. Perhaps the most engaging thing about Summer Camp is that they manage to pull this off without much, if any, irony–it’s not just nostalgia for nostalgia’s sake. In a way, you feel that Summer Camp truly do relate to the Jakes, Veronicas and Brians of the world.

I met up with Jeremy and Elizabeth in Williamsburg, the night after their first show in America as Summer Camp. (It should be noted that Jeremy is a solo musician in his own right, having released two albums on Transgressive Records and toured extensively.) I had no idea they were both super into Disneyland, but looking back on it, I totally should have known.

What exactly is your relationship with the films of John Hughes? In ‘SUP MAGAZINE 23 you guys did the letter to Ducky from Pretty in Pink (1986), so are you just lifelong fans or was it more a concept around the EP?
Elizabeth: Well, I will speak for myself and say that I am an intensely huge fan. (To Jeremy) I dunno, are you an intensely huge fan?
Jeremy: I’m not an intensely huge fan, but I’ve really enjoyed all the films of his that I’ve watched, and I think crucially, we were watching those films at a time when we were recording and writing the songs for the EP. That’s probably why so much of it leaked into the EP specifically.
Elizabeth: Yeah, but it wasn’t like, a concept thing.
Jeremy: I kind of think of it as like, a ‘context thing’, with the samples, and the pictures on the blog, and the artwork.
Elizabeth: When we were doing the EP, we were really into the idea of this American teenage experience. Both of us grew up as teenagers in England, so it’s something we’ve never experienced, but at the same time we’ve seen it in so many films. It seems to be this universe, this timeless experience that has been reproduced in every teen movie. It’s just really compelling, I think, from an outsider’s perspective.
Jeremy: It’s a fantasy. It’s as unrealistic as The Lord of the Rings or something. We’re perfectly aware that our experience through films bears no resemblance to what it’s actually like, and for us that makes it all the richer. We’re able to draw on stuff like John Hughes, Heathers and stuff like that. It just kind of makes it more real, in this sort of unrealistic sort of way. Wow, that makes no sense! (laughs)

I see what you mean. It’s like playing Dungeons and Dragons or something, only with teenagers and not mountain trolls.
Elizabeth: Yeah! And I think John Hughes has done the best job at representing those kind of teenage experiences, in this fictional world he cerated himself. Like how Sherman, IL isn’t a real place – I love that. The fact that it’s this place that all of these characters can intermingle was something we were really interested in, with the album as well as the EP.

You used a lot of film for your early videos as well, blond teens running around vacant lots and such. Where did you find it?
Jeremy: We actually didn’t make those videos, so we can look at them and say with complete objectivity that they’re the most amazing videos ever. It was really interesting, because looking back on it now, it seems really obvious, given the rest of what we do, to sort of cut up an amazing movie from the ’70s and set it to our music, but it wasn’t out idea. It was a good friend of ours named Paddy Power, who is a filmmaker in the UK. He just did it without even asking us, and send over the video for “Ghost Train”, and it was the perfect video for us. Then he did the same for “Round the Moon”, so those aren’t ones we can really take any credit for, but it did kind of just fit with our aesthetic perfectly.
Elizabeth: Yeah, and it was nice having someone who wasn’t us making the video, because I’m sure that if we tried to make it we would have done something really awful, like try and have us lip-synching to the camera, and like a train—
Jeremy: Wearing panda costumes.

In general, is film a medium that really inspires you? So much of what you guys do is heavily visual.
Elizabeth: Oh, yeah.
Jeremy: We both love film.
Elizabeth: Films are my life. I wanted to be an actress, so it’s something I’ve always been drawn to, and I wanted to be an actress mainly because I wanted to live in a film world (laughs). It kills me that when you see these things, they don’t actually exist, just constructs of people’s imaginations. My family’s obsessed with Disneyland and Disneyworld, and when I was a kid my parents would save up and we would all go. I’ve been to Disneyworld about 17 times. I loved the idea that you could have this world that you could go into and touch it, and you can see it and feel it, but it’s completely false. But it did kind of ruin things for me, like when I went to Africa, I got off the plane I was like “This is great, but it’s not the same at the Safari ride at Disneyworld!” There aren’t any lions coming to get you in the bushes. You can’t get a Mickey Mouse ice-cream.

You should just bring them with you, and be an ice-cream missionary. What was your favorite attraction at Disneyland?
Elizabeth: Well, the last time I went was when I was about 15, so I haven’t been for a while, but we’re going again next week, because Jeremy has never been—
Jeremy: Well, I’ve been to Disneyworld,not Disneyland.
Elizabeth: —with someone who is obsessed, like me. So I’m hoping to be like (makes childish, excited face), but it might not be the best.
Jeremy (in a slightly reprimanding tone): It’ll be amazing!
Elizabeth: I really love the Haunted House, and at Universal Studios they have this thing that’s based on The Twilight Zone, and it’s this whole hotel that’s done up like a 1930s mansion, and it has a lift that drops.
Jeremy: Amazing.
Elizabeth: Amazing.

So the American teenage experience is something you’re attracted to. This is your first time coming to America as a band, right?
Elizabeth: Yeah.

Did you have any expectations for how an American public would react to your interpretation of their culture?
Jeremy: We had very low expectations, which were surpassed to the utmost degree. We would have been really pleased had there been 30 people at the show. It’s our first time here, we haven’t earned anything yet. It was incredible that there was such a great turnout last night. People seemed really warm, people came up to us afterwards. It was absolutely amazing.
Elizabeth: There were things I hadn’t thought about, though. Because American culture was such a big influence, especially on the EP, I suddenly felt really self-conscious. In soundcheck when were were looking at all the slides, I was like, ‘This is really American. We are really representing our vision of what America is,’ and I suddenly got very, like, ‘Is that bad? Is this going to come across as a bit – not patronizing, but a bit condescending?’
Jeremy: Which we would never mean it to be, obviously.
Elizabeth: Also, I said… (trails off)
Jeremy: Ugh, it doesn’t matter.
Elizabeth: Yeah, it doesn’t matter (laughs).
Jeremy: No, actually, say it. Say it! This is how lame we are, that we obsessed over this.
Elizabeth: I said that I was wearing trainers like all the women from Jersey, but in Working Girl (1988), she’s from Staten Island, not New Jersey.

Someone heckled that after, actually. They were like, ‘STATEN ISLAND!’
Jeremy: Someone blogged about it last night. It was probably the same guy (laughs).
Elizabeth (groaning): Uuugghhhhh. But women from Jersey do it as well, right?

We have a phenomenon out here called Bridge and Tunnel, which basically means people from New Jersey, Long Island, Connecticut, et cetera who travel to Manhattan on the weekends. Since we were all on the Lower East Side, which has become prime Bridge and Tunnel stomping grounds over the last decade or so, I think everyone understood what you meant.
Elizabeth: Ok, so I didn’t really embarrass myself. (Mock seriously) It’s fine, I’m fine about it. It’s fine. It’s not a big deal.

When you first started talking about Jersey, I thought you were going to go off about Jersey Shore.
Elizabeth: My friends absolutely adore it. I watched one episode and I didn’t really get it.

It’s kind of something that needs to sit with you for a while. It’s really an experiment in anthropology. They’re an entire, fully-formed subset of people that exist outside of any other facet of society.
Elizabeth: We have this thing in England called My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, which I haven’t seen, but I imagine is a similar kind of thing. It’s the Irish Gypsy community throw these really elaborate weddings, where the bride has this amazing dress that like, lights up and has mechanical butterflies that move on them and stuff.
Jeremy: It’s pretty amazing.
Elizabeth: But I did see these Irish Gypsies on This Morning talking about how awful it was, how they were taking this small faction of their culture and saying that that was how everyone was like.
Jeremy: If you’re trying to make entertainment out of a small racial community, and you focus on the people with the biggest personalities who are the most outrageous, the other people in that community are not going to like it. It sucks! I totally agree with them.
Elizabeth: Same! So I resolved never to watch it.

How moral of you!
Elizabeth: That’ll make them really think.
Jeremy: You’re really making a difference. You should tweet about it as well.

Anyway, back to last night’s show. How do you choose the perfect slideshow photo?
Jeremy: It’s kind of a bit of a trade secret, actually.

Oh, really.
Elizabeth: No, not really. He’s just trying to make it sound exciting.
Jeremy: The truth of it is probably far more boring.
Elizabeth: We basically have a huge collection, and it’s just like anything, the ones that you like, you keep. We just have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. But I was thinking about this as well, all of them are families, and I suddenly was like, ‘What if there’s someone in the crowd whose parents are on the screen?’ There’s no way of checking who the subjects are when we get a photo.

Near where I live there’s this thrift store called The Thing, and they have boxes and boxes of old pictures. but I always get really weirded out by those photos.
Elizabeth: It’s emotional.

I always try to judge if that person in the photo is still alive or not. You’re like, ‘This looks like it’s from the ’70s, but she looks 50…’
Elizabeth: Once I found a whole photo album of this woman in various poses. Some of them were quite risqué, but not in a bad way, just showing her stockings and posing on a car bonnet. But it was just a bit weird because I thought, if that’s someone’s grandma, and they saw those [on stage or in our artwork] they’d be like, ‘Granny Mae, what are you doing?’
Jeremy: We’re hoping eventually to ask people to send in their own family photos, and we could make a slideshow out of it for the tour. Although, my personal experience of asking people to send stuff in is that it might also be quite disturbing, and/or quite disappointing, so we’ll see.

Are you very nostalgic people?
Jeremy: I think that’s really true of the EP. All of the songs for the EP were written in the first month of our existence as a band, some were even written before we had officially decided to become a band. It’s quite naïve, it’s quite concerned with teenage manners, and we’re not teenagers anymore, so looking back at being a teenager is always going to involve a certain amount of nostalgia. And I don’t want to say that on the album that has completely dropped out, but some of the songs take a slightly different direction, and there’s definitely darker material on Welcome to Condale. We’re not particularly nostalgic people, but everyone likes a bit of nostalgia.
Elizabeth: I think we are, actually. Say that we had a great day, we’d be like, ‘Oh, let’s go back and do the things that we did on that great day,’ and then you get back there and you’re like, “Eh, it’s just not the same.’ When you find something new, then it’s really special. I think we’re nostalgic is a kind of, ‘you-can-never-go-home-again’ way. The stuff that we’re nostalgic for isn’t real, so when we’re being nostalgic, it’s not real. If that makes any sense.
Jeremy: Nostalgia is weird, because it’s very self-defeating. You’re saying, ‘Ah, wasn’t that great! Oh, I don’t have it anymore.’ Ultimately, it makes you feel quite sad, and that’s why it’s such a special emotion.

Alexis Taylor by Milan Zrnic, from ’SUP 22
BUY!

Bill Callahan by Jason Nocito, from ’SUP 24
BUY!

DJ Nate by Bea Fremdermann, from ’SUP 23
BUY!

Moss by Sanna Charles, from ’SUP 20
BUY!

King of Pop by Milan Zrnic, from ’SUP 21
BUY!

Greg Fox is easier to track down than you’d think. For an artist who is involved in so many projects, and one who is on tour for over half of any given year, he’s surprisingly accessible. When he’s in his home base New York City, you can find the former Liturgy and Teeth Mountain drummer at Cong Ly, his favorite place to get pho, the Vietnamese noodle soup. In fact, Greg loves Cong Ly so much that the owner, Hai, is on the cover of another recent release, a split with DubKnowDub called Hai Life (Green Age Records, 2011). I met up with him, along with his collaborator and girlfriend Alex Drewchin (they play together in Guardian Alien), on a sticky Labor Day weekend in front of the small Chinatown restaurant. Eli Lehrhoff (Smhoak Mosheein, DubKnowDub), with whom he had recently toured and released a split tape, joined us as well.

I recognized him vaguely through his thick beard and long hair, and it turned out that he’d slept at my house in Seattle two years ago while on tour with Dan Deacon. See? He’s everywhere. We sat down over bowls of noodle soup to talk about the new record, life on the road, video games, Taoism, and aliens.

When we agreed to meet here, you said that you hung out here a lot and that you would be here for a while today. Is coming here a ritual for you?
Greg: Well, not really a ritual, but I probably started eating here a little less than three years ago, and I like eating here. It’s a good place to meet people. When the weather’s nice it’s nice to bike over here, and it’s just a thing that I do kind of regularly. So I’d hesitate to call it a ritual, but it is kind of a tradition.

It’s comfortable.
Greg: Yeah, if they had wi-fi here, I would spend a lot more time here. I would have my office in here. Hey, there’s Eli [Eli walks in the door and makes his way to our table]. But yeah, I like it here, the food’s always good. It’s really cheap.

You seem to know everyone.
Greg: Yeah, I don’t have to order. [to Eli] What’s up! [they shake hands] How’s it going man?

[The waiter comes and we order.]

Greg: During the whole quitting Liturgy thing, I got real stressed out about it, and I got a canker sore in my mouth that I think is stress-related.

How long ago did you make that decision?
Greg: I mean, it’s been on my mind for a long time, but it was something that needed to be timed well. We didn’t have anything booked after October. For a while I felt like I wanted to move on, and it felt like the best time to make the announcement. There was a set amount of stuff to do, but not too much: a short two week tour this month, then a couple of dates in October, and then there’s nothing else booked. Then the band started talking about booking something in February, and I just knew I needed to make the cut now. Because otherwise I knew I’d be looking at another six months of feeling like I needed to do something.

What was it that you felt like you needed to do? What made you feel uneasy about being in Liturgy?
Greg: Ultimately, I just have a lot of other stuff I’m trying to do. I was just starting to feel like it was an obligation more than something I wanted to spend my time doing. I was getting a lot of opportunities and offers to do other stuff as a drummer that I kept having to turn down because of this band that I wasn’t really feeling all that positive about. Ultimately, I’m happy I was in the band. I learned a lot of stuff and played a lot of great shows and met a lot of cool people. But it’s a short chapter in my life that I’m happy to just sort of turn the page on. I just needed to make a change. I also have other projects of my own that I want to focus more energy and time on. It’s really about knowing what you want to do and then being able to apply the time, effort and energy to those things, and it’s kind of hard to do that when you’re spending so much time and energy on something else. If I really wanted to focus on those other things, I just needed to cut out the thing that was draining most of my energy.

You spend a lot of time on tour. How much time out of the year would you say is road time?
Greg: It’s a lot. I would guess that it’s probably about half the year, maybe a little more. [to Alex:] Is it half the year?
Alex: I think I figured it out. Yeah, it’s about half a year. Because, when it was our two-year anniversary, I figured out that it’s probably only been about one year total.
Greg: I thought that was our three-year anniversary.
Alex: [Laughing] It was right here at this table, we were having dinner before he left on tour again – he’s always on tour – and he was like ‘happy three years.’

When touring, do you find that you keep returning to the same places?
Greg: Sometimes. I’ve definitely played a lot of the same places in the US and in Europe at least twice, and I like that.

What’s a recent tour experience that was super positive?
Greg: The tour recently with Dubknowdub and Fuckton was a lot of fun. It was the first time in a while that I was playing house shows. We booked all the shows ourselves. It had been a while since I’d done anything like that, unfortunately, so it was really nice to do it again. Then, I got to tour in Europe with Oneida, which was a total fluke. I was on the same plane as some of the guys in Oneida when we were flying over, and my little brother happened to be in Berlin, so I was flying into Berlin, and I wanted to hang out with him. Oneida was playing three shows to get to the show in Poland where Liturgy was opening for Oneida, and Liturgy was just going to get in the van and drive straight to Poland. So I was like, I’ll just hang out with the Oneida guys, hang out with my brother, then I’ll meet you guys in Poland. Then Oneida asked me if I wanted to drum with them. So I ended up playing three shows with them. We played this festival an hour outside of Berlin, in the middle of the woods. It was all these German families with babies, and everyone was making food, and everything was super chill. I feel like I noticed about five people who were actually working for the festival. It felt like I was at the park. We ended up playing at night. Just hanging out with the Oneida guys and touring with them was a really awesome experience. They’ve been doing it for a long time, and they know how to kick back and relax on tour. After touring in situations that were way more stressful, it was just nice to hang out with folks who were chill. And not to mention, Oneida’s awesome. Playing with them was such an honor. That was a pretty awesome surprise.

Do you find that stressful times on tour are due to other people in bands, or do they come from venues as well?
Greg: All stress comes from individuals. Some people are nervous. All people get anxious, but some people really let that anxiety lead, and it can totally color a situation for a whole group of people. One person’s anxiety can stress out 20 people if they don’t know how to keep it in check. It’s hard on tour sometimes, but you learn after you do it for a while that the best thing to do is to take it as easy as possible, and trust in the fact that things generally tend to work out. If you’ve been doing it for so long, it’s not all of a sudden going to go up your faces. I’ll put it this way: when I’ve done solo touring, it’s been the least stressful touring situations I’ve been in. I think touring as a member of Oneida was a close second. When I used to be in Teeth Mountain, it was stressful for a different reason. I love that band and I miss that band a lot. But there were times when I was on tour with them when I was convinced that everybody else in the band was totally batshit insane. I was like, ‘I’m out on the West Coast with a bunch of total weirdo insane people, I don’t know what I’m doing here. What is going to happen? Are we going to get arrested?’ All these crazy situations would come up, and I would get stressed out. We did a two-month tour where we were in my car, which is a four-cylinder small car. We had six people in the car and we were running a trailer off the back, and it was a shitty old trailer that would fishtail off the back of the van. So we’re in my car, I can feel the back of the car getting pulled, and… yeah, I’ll just leave it at that. It wasn’t wired up legally, the lights on the back of the trailer didn’t work, and you could feel the thing move, and I’d be like ‘Guys, I think something’s wrong with the trailer,’ and they’d be like ‘What are you talking about?’ And then a cop would pull up behind us and trail the car.

Did you guys end up getting pulled over?
Greg: Not once on that tour. It was amazing. It was amazing we made it back, I gotta say. It was a serious life experience. I felt like I got dragged through the dirt of the road pretty hard. It definitely whetted me for future touring, so I’m thankful for it. Some people are better at touring than others, and I don’t think I’m particularly awesome at it, I just think I have a lot of experience with it in a short period of time. You don’t want to be on the road with people you wouldn’t want to be stuck in the middle of the woods with. It’s a survival thing, like, ‘I may not like you at all, but if we get hit by the apocalypse at this very moment, will I be happy that I’m with you?’ And it’s not easy. You have to get used to not having the regular creature comforts that people have. When I started touring, I would shower almost every day and try to be clean shaven, and it’s because of touring that I stopped.

[Our food comes. Greg adds very little spice to his pho.]

Eli: I’m glad there’s documentation of you having a cold sore.
Greg: It’s not a cold sore. It’s a canker sore. I read online this morning that canker sores can be caused by a weakened immune system and emotional stress. And I was sick when were on tour, and then quitting this band was super fucking stressful.
Eli: Oh, cuz you had to spend so much time combating things in comment threads.
Greg: Actually, I didn’t do that, but that comment thread was pretty amazing.
Eli: Really weird. I wanna know who this person is who goes on Brooklyn Vegan and just writes ‘hipster problems.’
Greg: Ugh, ‘first world problems.’

Comment threads like that are the bottom of the internet.
Greg: Yeah, just murky.

[We get into our food.]

Greg: Yeah, I’d usually go super spicy, but I’m just a lame-o now.
Eli: You’re not in a metal band anymore.
Greg: Yeah, I’m not hard anymore.

I saw three main things going on in the album. There’s an abrasive, arrhythmic aspect, there’s an ambient or trance-like aspect, and then there’s a pretty heavy, steady driving beat. Do you see those as different types of songs that you can make, or all part of the same thing?
Greg: I recorded a lot of that stuff a relatively long time ago, basically the beginning of 2010. I remember at one point being told that Impose wanted stuff that could be given to people to make remixes of. They were thinking about it along those lines. Also, I was spending a lot of time making video game music.

Do you think that the act of making music for a game is a continuation of your solo work as GDFX?
Greg: Not really, I think it’s the other way around. When I started making electronic music, it was definitely like video game music, and the more I was doing it the more I learned how to use the tools that I was using. I do it all with hardware. I don’t really use computers to make music. It’s all stuff like synthesizers, samplers and drum machines. The more I got to learn how to use those instruments, the more I started playing that kind of music. Being in Teeth Mountain was a big aspect of the influence too. I started trying to apply that kind of thing to making electronic music. It just started getting weirder. I find a sweet spot where it’s weirder and less straightforward but at the same time it hits that point where its like you’re not in the room anymore. That’s kind of what I’m going for. I’ve recorded a ton of stuff since the solo album that I’m much more into as far as the way it sounds, and is much more representative of what I’m doing when I’m making music. But because I have this album out, I feel like there’s some pressure to actually play the songs on the record, so I’ve been doing that a little bit. Up until the point that I started doing that, the live show was totally improvised. Now I’m actually kind of playing songs.

Do you prefer improvising?
Greg: I’m actually kind of into what I’m doing now, because I figured out a setup that allows me to play things that I recorded, but actively be playing them, not just playing them off a recording. It’s good because I record a lot and I can take things that I record and just use them in the live show, so its till feels really fresh to me. There’s no lag time. So now I’m doing stuff that’s more what I’m into doing and closer to what my sound is. I feel like it’s just gotten a lot better. My recording setup has evolved and the live show has evolved. Also, It’s a matter of being able to put more time into it. I spend tons of time at home, fooling around and recording stuff, but I have not spent a lot of time developing the live show. Now that I have the time to do that, I think it’ll flourish a lot more than it has been able to. I’ve been doing GDFX, whether it was called that or not, for almost ten years. It started out as sort of a hobby, but it could be more than that when I let it be.

Do you think you used live performance as an outlet for improvisation, and felt like on a recording you weren’t as free to improvise?
Greg: The recordings all come from improvisations. I record for five hours at a time, then I go back and listen to what I’ve recorded and I make a new recording out of that raw recording. I don’t get everything ready to go, press record, and do it, then stop and do it over again if it’s not perfect. It’s more free. In a live setting, it’s not like I’m alone at 4 a.m. in my room finding things. The pressure’s on to do something that people will enjoy. It’s just been about finding a really good balance between doing things that I set up in advance and leaving room for improvisation, for things to develop and find themselves. That’s just a matter of time. The first time I went on a solo tour, it got so much better from the first show to the last. It’s just about repetition. I need to spend more time doing it as a regular thing, and not as a side thing that falls between the cracks of other projects that I’m doing. Otherwise, it’s just going to be a side thing, and it doesn’t need to be. It’s never been a specific side project of anything. It’s just sort of fallen that way. So I’m trying to shift it back into the front.

You said video game music was something you’d been interested in forever. Did you grow up playing video games all the time?
Greg: Yeah, totally. Going to the arcade was the greatest treat. I’d occasionally visit my grandparents in New Jersey and they’d take me to the arcade and it would be the best day. I have really strong sense memories of standing on a milk crate and playing “Altered Beast” in an arcade in New Jersey. That game used to be the coolest thing to me. The music, the way it looked, everything. I was so drawn into video games as a young kid. For my third birthday, my grandfather got me a Nintendo, and I don’t think I opened any other presents. I just opened it up, plugged it in, and just was not in the room anymore.

What was your favorite stuff to play on Nintendo?
Greg: Zelda. Straight up. Totally inspiring.

Has your interest in video games continued? Do you play newer video games?
Greg: I do a little bit. There’s something about a lot of new video games that I tend to not like. There’s some that I really like. I’ve been playing Minecraft. I think that’s a really cool game. I played Portal and Portal 2, and I thought those were really good. I definitely still love video games, but I don’t spend a whole lot of time on them anymore. I think I talk about playing them more than I actually play them. In truth, when I play video games, I feel guilty because I feel like I should be doing something else. I don’t feel like I’ve gotten to a point where I should be playing video games instead of being productive. So, that makes me not play them as much. But I wholeheartedly appreciate them. They’re cooler than movies. I think there’s a lot of potential in them as far as an emerging form of media, and as an art form. Like, what if political revolution was game-ified? What if people treated direct action as a role-playing game, where you’d level up if you glued the locks of some company? Video games really entered people’s consciousness in the ’80s. It’s a pretty new thing as far as a mass media goes, and I think that it still hasn’t really informed the way that people think yet. And as younger people get older and have more influence over the world, things will be more like video games. For better and for worse.

A theme that I see emerging, in your interest in video games and on the record, is the induction of a trance-like state. A zoning-in. Is that what interests you most about making music?
Greg: Lately, it’s been something that I’ve been drawn to when I’m making music. Going for making a sick RZA- or J Dilla-style beat and having it end up making you trance out and realize 30 minutes later that you’ve been listening to the same thing over and over again is pretty cool. A lot of trance music and techno is all about totally trancing out and leaving your body. I’m into that as a thing that music can do. I don’t think it’s what music is solely about. It’s an aspect of it, but some music is about being super present. Lately, when making music, I feel like I’m dong something good when I realize after things have been set it motion that ‘Oh, this sounds cool.’ I disassociate completely then realize ‘Oh, wait a minute, this is good. I’ll save this.’

So do you think it’s something that grabs your reptillian brain? Like, something instinctual?
Greg: I think of it as being higher rather than lower. I think of music that people listen to while jogging as more reptilian than music that makes you forget you’re sitting and listening to music.

Is the expansive, trancelike nature reflective of your interest in Eastern religion?
Greg: I’ve been reading the Tao for a long time. I’ve been studying the I Ching for a long time. But I wouldn’t say ‘Eastern religion,’ because I wouldn’t consider myself a Buddhist. But I would think of myself as a Taoist, and my personal realization and understanding of the Tao is about an inherent oneness in everything. A source and an end. When I’m making music and it feels like I’m going into that zone where I’m not in the room anymore, the boundaries are dissolving. I’m not thinking words anymore, and I go the place before words exist. Things stop being separate from each other, and to me, that’s a very Taoist thing. It’s something that I’ve drawn a lot of inspiration from, and it’s definitely affected my music. There’s one track on the album where I just read the Tao, and that’s pretty overt, but it’s every passage playing at the same time, so it sounds like bees buzzing. It’s kind of a hard thing to talk about because it’s not even something that words should be brought to.

Is there something you think you can get from drums that you can’t from electronic instruments?
Greg: It’s just tangible. For me, drumming is the ultimate music-making thing. Electronic music is a lot of fun, and there’s a lot I can do with it that I can’t do otherwise, but I’ve also been doing it for a while, and they are just instruments that I can play. Drums, on the other hand, are real. There’s an urge to connect with the earth, and you can’t really do that with electronic music. It’s more ethereal with electronic music, but with drums, you can affect people’s heartbeats, you can make people sweat, and you sweat too, and you get tired, and you pull yourself into it. It’s a real spiritual thing for me. If I could play drums all the time, on every recording I do, I would. It’s more a matter of, right now, not having a facility to record drums properly, living in a house where I can’t play them, and not having a practice space, but drumming would be a part of everything I do musically if it was possible. Again, it’s just about having time, giving the project the time and effort and energy that it deserves to let it develop. I planted this seed called GDFX, and I’ve been watering it a little, nourishing it a little, but I haven’t really taken care of it. I don’t know how it’s going to look when it’s full grown, but I need to feed it, otherwise it’s not going to grow. I just have to get a big bag of manure and throw it on top.
Eli: What a great metaphor. Just throw shit all over it.
Greg: Everything takes time, effort and energy. It’s just a collaboration between you and whatever’s out there.

I have one more, unfocused, expansive question: I was wondering if you could talk about your interest in aliens.
Greg: That’s a big question.

Well, let’s start with this: do you think that aliens are here among us?
Greg: I don’t even really know how to answer that question. I’ve had personal experiences that were super weird and that I can’t explain. I had an experience about two years ago, where a bunch of inanimate objects started moving in the house and I was being communicated with. I don’t know how to explain that. Maybe my left and right brain were talking to each other, or maybe a ship landed on the roof. I was definitely trying to make contact. I sat down with the intention to make contact, and really crazy shit started happening.

Do you think they speak to anyone who makes the effort, or to specific people that they’ve chosen?
Greg: You’re much more apt to see or experience something if you’re open to that kind of experience or if you believe that it’s possible. Maybe this question should be opened up to the table.
Alex: [to Greg] You forgot to mention my favorite part of your experience story, the vision you had of a guy opening up the top of his head and pointing at his pineal gland. I love that image.
Greg: There have been times on tour when I’ve woken up with weird markings on my body. And a lot of people say that’s a sign of alien abduction. I don’t know. I think that kind of stuff belongs to the realm of altered state of consciousness. Maybe it’s tangible, maybe it exists in the third dimension, with little grey guys who walk around—
Eli: That was me, I gave you the implant.
Greg: You’re one of them? Fuck! I used to be way more into the idea that there are aliens in big spaceships who land on earth and interact with people and are flesh and blood to some degree. Now I think it falls into the realm of faeries and ghosts and all kinds of other weird stuff. Things that could exist in the maybe-world. A lot of stuff exists in the maybe-world. Sometimes it manifests itself to people. Also, maybe the government and aliens have been conspiring to enslave the human race for the last 50 years. I think that’s possible, but I don’t believe in it because it’s a pretty shitty scenario. I would rather not believe that. Also, maybe we are aliens. There’s a thing called the “Terra Papers” that tells the story of a Native American guy who helped rescue a being from a crashed ship on a reservation. It told him the true history of the galaxy, that life on earth was seeded by people from the Orion Constellation. It talks about the reptilians and the dog people, and how we were originally a slave race, but one of the people who wasn’t into the whole slave thing taught us how to make love, and that taught us about all the possibilities of being alive on this planet. I definitely believe something about that, or everything about that. Everything is true.
Alex: I think that the belief in aliens is just the embrace of mystery itself. It’s actually not belief. Belief is the end of intelligence. As soon as you are focused in one direction, you form blinders and you forget to see this infinity that exists where everything is possible. And you realize how much you really don’t know. Humans don’t like to admit that they don’t know, but when you do admit that you don’t know, that’s when everything is opened up.
Greg: Everything is there, it’s just a matter of whether it’s next to you as an observer or not. And, if everything is one thing, you can’t really make the differentiation between yourself and everything else anyway. So, yes, everything is one alien.
Eli: There is only one thing.
Greg: And it’s an alien.

We all met outside his apartment in SoHo around 2 p.m. Sic Alps’ guitarist, Mike Donovan, and multi-instrumentalist, Noel Von Harmonsen, arrived first, both squinting in the sun. Matthew Hartman, drummer, the third member of the trio, was in a cab on his way. Photographer Ari Marcopoulos and his assistant leaned against a wall not far away. We stood on the street corner together, shooting the shit, as various SoHo denizens shouted “Whatup!” to Thurston as they walked by.

When Matthew arrived, Thurston led everyone slowly through a small alley, to a shop he said was “Julia Cayfritz from Pussy Galore’s ex-husband’s furniture store”, a slick spot full of brightly colored new modern called Artifact 20th Century. Sic Alps are not the kind of band you would expect to find in a modern furniture store. Their sound is a grindingly fast amalgam of psychedelia pushed through the cheese grater of modern garage. They are legitimate veterans of the venerable San Francisco dirt scene, down to the army green jackets they all wore to the interview. I always tell people that their favorite garage band is probably ripping off Sic Alps to a certain extent. Their latest album, Napa Asylum (Drag City, 2011), came out two years after their last recording, a split EP with Magik Markers on Yik Yak.

So there sat Matthew, Noel, Mike, and Thurston, in the furniture store, happily chit-chatting away, and that’s the story of how ’SUP got the best present of all time. — ’SUP

Who came up with the name Sic Alps?

Matt: I did.

You did? And what’s its genesis?

Matt: Well I was with this fella Andreas Bouches, a friend of mine, a German fella. I was in Chicago hanging out, where my parents are, and he was playing me a selection from Killed by Death [Ed note: a European record label], all these bands, like: ‘Check this out check this out check this out check this out!’ All weekend long. And the next morning, I was sitting on his front porch and it just popped into my head.

It just popped into your head?

Matt: But it was influenced by all those things.

Where did the name of the new album come from?

Mike: My friend John has this pencil drawing, an architectural drawing of the Napa Asylum, a big mental institution in Napa that got torn down in 1949. He just found it at a yard sale. It’s this amazing pencil drawing.

Matt: It’s just a pencil drawing that’s been shellacked to a piece of wood.

Mike: It’s totally cool because there’s not very many pictures of it. Because they tore it down in ’49. It’s this beautiful drawing of it, and that actual drawing of it is the poster.

Would you say this LP is your Zen Arcade [Hüsker Dü, 1984]?

Noel: Woah.

Mike: Wow.

Noel: Cool. You came with it.

Mike: Maybe.

Are you going to do a double album next? Double albums always have this ambition towards legend status.

Noel: Well my thinking was that we had enough tunes. We certainly shaved a few down, but it was also kind of like a fuck you to that, you know what I mean? It’s like ‘Yeah, a double LP is really bloated and ridiculous but let’s go for it, because all of our songs are two minutes long, at best.’ So it’s kind of fun to play with that.

It has a real seamless quality to it, which I really liked. It never flags.

Mike: Elisa [Ambrogio of the Magik Markers] did a review of it and said, ‘You wanna flip to the next song? Sic Alps just did it for you.’

Noel: That really sums it up in a way.

Is there a lyric sheet with the record?

Matt: The gatefold is all the lyrics.

That’s classic.

Matt: You can read the lyrics while you crumple your buds for your next—

Mike: And the lyrics are hard to hear a little bit, but the typing is also hard to read.

Are you touring in your Volkswagen?

Matt: No.

Mike: We do locally.

I’ve been privy to it, the Volkswagen.

Mike: We pulled up to the Filmore, to play with Yo La Tengo. The crew was like, ‘Oh no way!’ All these old townie guys who had been working there for 20 years were like, ‘Come on, look at this!’

Exactly!

Matt: It was as if there was a poof of smoke, a time warp and then out we got, you know?

It’s too bad you can’t just drive it on stage and unload it with the audience looking at you. What was the first record you ever bought, starting with Noel. First vinyl record you ever bought. With your own money.

Noel: Uh… PJ Harvey’s Dry (Indigo/Too Pure, 1992).

Really?

Noel: Yeah.

That was like, six months ago.

Noel: Pretty much.

Really?

Noel: I’m not really into music (laughs). I think it was because that was around the time I dug out my parents’ old record player and receiver from the garage, up in the rafters I was like, ‘This plugs into that and I don’t know, I can figure this out.’

Was it influential to you?

Noel: Oh no, I was buying cassettes and CDs before that. But it was at a time I was like, ‘records are cool.’ You know? And I found a box of records in the garage and the same time I was doing that pilfering.

So you’re of a generation where CDs predated vinyl for you as a consumer, obviously.

Noel: Yes. Absolutely.

And how old are you? 43, 44 (laughs)?

Mike: He’s the young one, he’s seven years older than that.

Noel: 19.

Mike: 32, he’s 32.

19, forever 19. PJ Harvey. Was that a significant listen for you?

Noel: It was, yeah. Well that White Chalk (Island, 2007) record was brilliant, you know?

You really liked that one?

Noel: That’s the only thing I’ve ever really connected with. Vivid memories of being like, ‘I just bought a record. I’m gonna take it home, I’m gonna open the plastic and I’m gonna put it on the turntable. I hope I don’t scratch it!’

Do you still rock the oscillator?

Noel: Nah, I kinda put it to bed a little bit. But I still play around. I’ll be honest. I haven’t played around with the tape delay and the oscillators so much.

Was that your first axe?

Noel: No, my first axe was discovering my dad’s acoustic guitar while snooping around in his bedroom when I was 13. I found it and was like, ‘Well, I’ll check this thing out.’
I immediately figured out a Creedence song.

“Sinister Purpose”?

Noel: I wish. “I Heard it Through the Grapevine”. And I thought, ‘I want to do this.’ And from there it was on.

Was your dad in bands?

Noel: No. I think he dabbled in music a little bit. I remember later on unraveling some of the paperwork that was in his guitar case and it was some music written out on a staff and some lyrics. Which was really weird.

What was the first record you bought?

Matt: First record I bought was at Labelle’s department store in Albuquerque, 1977 or maybe ‘78. It was KISS’ Love Gun.

Nice.

Matt: That was the first rock record I bought. Prior to that I had bought a sound effects record that was called Sounds Of Terror. I was into cartoons and horror. You’re six years old, this kind of stuff tickles your fancy. I was flipping through the record bin and I saw what I thought had to have been another sound effects record, because it was these sort of super heroes in kabuki makeup and leather, with a gaggle of females at their feet, and the wild costumes. And I thought: ‘This is going to be an interesting sound effects record.’ My mom was somehow like, ‘Yeah, you can buy that.’ Moms didn’t know any better. I get home and I put it on and track one is “I Stole Your Love”. I was just kind of like, ‘Wait a minute. what is this? This isn’t— When’s the sound effect going to happen? When’s the guy going to come on to start talking about the giant crab that attacks the thing, and then you just hear the click-click-click-click and AAAAAAAH!’

What was your first record, Mike?

Mike: I don’t remember my first record, but it might have been a Grateful Dead record, like Wake of the Flood (Arista, 1973). I remember buying that record. That was about freshman year so probably ’85 or ’86.

Did you have ambitions towards maybe wanting to be a Deadhead?

Mike: I saw the Grateful Dead. I didn’t want to really travel with them.I remember taking too much acid and walking around at Rosemont Horizon over and over again and at some point there was a woman crying at 12 o’clock. That’s as much touring as I did with them.

What about the first live concert you’ve ever been to? The first live concert that blew your mind and you said to yourself, ‘I gotta do this.’

Noel: Still hasn’t happened. Just kidding, we played with you! Oh! I don’t know. That’s too open ended.

Do you remember the first time you played live?

Noel: Yes. Borrowed drum kit, house in Santa Cruz. I played with this band the Lowdown that I had just joined. I saw them play at a party and it was just the most destructive Casio keyboard and guitar irreverent setup that I’d ever seen. I had just moved there and I was like, ‘Wow, these guys are cool. And they’re super un-cool.’ We kind of met. I was working at the record store in town at the time. I basically tried to mimic the Casio keyboard beats and play on top of them, very robotically. That was kinda how things got started with me. We did that for a few years.

Did your parents come see you?

Noel: No.

What was the first live gig you ever saw Matt?

Matt: Well, oddly enough it was KISS. Dynasty tour, ‘79. I think it was December eighth.

Did you bring Love Gun with you to get signed?

Matt: No, I didn’t have that much going on. My mom bribed the babysitter and bought two tickets. One for me, and one for the babysitter.

Wow.

Matt: It was rad because it was post-Love Gun. It was nothing but KISS. You couldn’t tell me about another band. A kid down the block said ‘You should check out this band Blondie.’ I was like, ‘Fuck Blondie.’ ‘You should check out Led Zeppelin.’ I was like, ‘Fuck Led Zeppelin! I don’t want to know.’ I missed out on a lot of great music simply because I had nothing but KISS on my mind.

Did you join the KISS Army?

Matt: Immediately. There was a TV ad for KISS and I lost my mind. Back then those guys would be in 16 Magazine. Maybe they were in Creem, but it was mostly Tiger Beat and 16. I was so obsessed with them visually but so frustrated with the fact that they’re not on TV. There’s no Internet, there’s no way to see it. I skipped Halloween in ’78 to watch the KISS Meet the Phantom of the Park movie. So this commercial comes on and I’m like, ‘Oh my god! I gotta go to this.’ I went home, eight years old, saying, ‘Mom mom mom mom mom! KISS KISS KISS KISS!’ and she says, ‘You’re not going to any concert.’ And she strung me along. ‘You’re not going, you’re not going.’

Oh wow.

Matt: And then maybe two weeks before the gig, just to mitigate my bouncing off the walls, she says, ‘Why don’t you take out the trash, feed the dog, and when you’re done, look in my purse.’ She used to get me little presents every now and then, a little Han Solo figure or something. And I look and it’s two KISS tickets and I just – I shat myself. It was amazing.

It was a good gig?

Matt: It was in a rodeo barn on the New Mexico State Fairgrounds called Tingley Coliseum. Probably the worst acoustics known to man. Nonetheless, they put every metal show there that would seat more than 10,000. My distinct memory of the show was that you couldn’t understand what was happening. It was all visual. But it was garbled. It could have been Throbbing Gristle for all I knew and all you could tell, until you got to the chorus. It would just be like [noises] and blood and explosions and the lights are going and Ace Frehley’s falling over all the time and then it would be like ‘I stole your love’ and then you would know. ‘Oh! They’re playing “I Stole Your Love”! or whatever the song was. That’s my memory of it.

I was really intrigued by KISS when I first heard about them like in the early ’70s,’73 maybe. I remember reading a New York rock report in Creem. And in the letters section of the following issue somebody wrote in saying, ‘That was a pretty good report, but you didn’t write about the only New York band that has any balls, a band called KISS.’ And I thought, ‘Wow! What’s that? What a good name!’ And I started hearing a little something about CBGB and I remember seeing in the daily newspaper in New York ‘KISS Breaks Attendance Record at CBGB’ and I was just like, ‘Wow!’ And then their first album came out. I was kind of aware of it and they were on Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert immediately. I remember watching that, and they came out in full KISS action and Paul Stanley just said, ‘Hi, we’re KISS from New York City!’ And they did “Deuce”. I remember thinking, ‘This is amazing!’ One of my friends in high school’s older brother got tickets to see them and we went with them to Springfield, MA. This must have been ’75.

Matt: A good year for KISS. Maybe the best.

Oh my god. We parked the car and saw like six million kids waiting in line to get into this arena. We were walking towards the line and we noticed that they opened up some other doors to the arena, and you saw all these kids booking down this hill towards these open doors, which
were literally 20 feet away from us. So we just walked over and we were the first ones in.

Matt: Oh, nice.

We were right in the front. Smashed against the barricades.

Mike: You sussed out your spot.

During the opening band, whoever they were, we were just getting killed, smashed against this barricade. When KISS came out, it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen, rock band wise – to this day. I mean, it was just huge glitter wheels and fire and smoke and it was just amazing.

Matt: And it was all done on a DIY aesthetic. That’s the one defense I have for KISS. I don’t expect anyone to like KISS, you know? Historically or otherwise. Musically, I think it’s something you have to have gotten into at an early age or you don’t understand the beauty of their sloppy take on The Stones. But the fact that it was all put together from day one with ramshackle budgets – in my mind, in a way, they were the first DIY band.

Gene Simmons came to see us play once in L.A. at the Santa Monica Civic [Auditorium]. And the gig was us, Dinosaur Jr., and Screaming Trees (laughs).

Noel: Big time.

I don’t think we ever played as big a gig in L.A. again. Gene Simmons came because he was very sort-of interested in what was going on with these new kind of alternative rock bands or whatever. We’re hanging out backstage. It’s Dinosaur and us and Mike Watt and his crew were there. We just looked like a bunch of slobs. [Gene] came back and introduced himself and he said, ‘So, uh, what do you guys – do you play like this? I mean, do you change?’ ‘What do you mean change? Into what?’ And he goes, ‘Well, you don’t go out like that do you, on stage? You can’t.’ And I was just like, ‘Well, yeah we do.’ He was very confused by us. Then he said, ‘Well, where’s all the girls? How come there’s no women back here? You know, hanging out?’
And I said,‘There’s women here. My wife’s in the band.’ It was ridiculous. And Mike Watt, who kind of learned how to play bass by playing KISS 8-tracks and Blue Oyster 8-tracks, kind of lost it when we introduced him to Gene Simmons. He couldn’t talk. He couldn’t process the reality of meeting Gene Simmons. And it was right around the time Gene Simmons was giving the bass guitar symposium at the Guitar Center or something. We were trying to figure out what that was. ‘Here’s the intro to “Deuce”!’

Matt: It’s not like he’s Jaco Pastorius or anything.

Mike: The first concert I saw was Taste of Chicago or Chicagofest and that was 1982. A blues guy named Eddie Clearwater. I remember call and response. I got my mojo working. I was pretty into it and my whole family was there, my brother and sister and my parents. But I was more interested in disco. They had a disco, which was this big warehouse room. Very Saturday Night Fever.

Did you live in Chicago?

Mike: I grew up outside Chicago, a town called Hinsdale.

Did you see a lot of Big Black gigs?

Mike: Not really. Basically I was 18 when I heard the Fall and Can and I thought it was super cool to be into Elvis Costello and the Clash and the Specials.

What about the Chicago hardcore scene, like the Effigies?

Mike: Not really. I didn’t know about any cool music until the Fall when I was 18.

What gets played most in the… do you have a van?

Mike: Yeah we’ve got a minivan now.

[All in unison]: Kinks.

Kinks?

Mike: We play a lot of Kinks. A lot of Rolling Stones. John Coltrane.

Matt: I like listening to Coltrane’s avant-garde period. Weird mp3 CDs.

Matt: Yeah it’s kind of a variety pack. I made an mp3 disc with six hours of material on it and it just jumps around you know? From Motörhead, to old Scorpions, to some Andrew Segovia to—

But metal still reins.

Matt: It looms large—

Noel: For Matt.

Matt: For me. I don’t know about the other dudes.I mean, everyone’s got their own flavor castle.

Mike: I have the pop. I was thinking that yesterday as I was doing my iPod.

Pop, metal, noise. Is that what we’re looking at here?

Matt: It’s a lot of obscure ’70s psych jams.

You’re kind of a noise guy but you’re not a noise guy.

Noel: I am, but I don’t want to put that on for the driver. You know it’s like, ‘Dude check this out. [Wolf Eyes’] Burned Mind, again.’

Matt: Yeah I’ve been waiting to put The Olatunji Concert (John Coltrane, 2001) on, for fear that it’s going to drive everyone else insane.

Noel: Naw, it won’t man! If you’re driving. But my fascination has just been in international appropriations of rock music in the ’60s and ’70s. Whatever culture appropriates it and how. I don’t know how to say this right, but I like how they kind of get it wrong a little bit. That’s the beauty of it. I like how it’s off.

Of course.

Mike: And Bill Fay.

Noel: And Bill Fay, of course. I guess I had a depressed day.

Did you really only use two microphones in the basement with an 8-track [to record the songs on the new album]?

Mike: One.

Mike: Well, there’s this studio mic called a Behringer C-1 which is this large diaphragm microphone our friend Eric Bower gave us.

Matt: Technically there are three mics on this album. The majority of it is just a wide diaphragm condenser.

Mike: And a lot of the vocals through a ball and biscuit microphone [Ed. Note: “ball and biscuit” is the nickname given to the old school 1935 STC 4021 microphone because of its shape].

It’s amazing sounds on the record. There’s one song that the cymbals just flood the mic. There’s one song that just starts out with this crunching feedback and it goes into this really cool tune.

Mike: “Trip Train”. That’s the oldest recording on the record.

There’s some killer cymbal overload that happens and it just sounds amazing.

Matt: It’s odd. It’s all mic placement. The drums are recorded on their own with nothing else going on, in a small room. You place the mic just so. It’s funny because it comes back to misinterpretation. No matter what it ends up sounding like, I’m basically always trying to get a good Rudy Van Geldern drum sound but I don’t have the gear to do it [Ed Note: Rudy Van Geldern is one of the most important American jazz recording sound engineers]. So it’s the best I can do. Even though it’s a rock record, I want it to sound like The White Album. But I can’t make it sound like The White Album.

Did you read the Keith Richards book, Life?

Matt: I’m in line at the library.

It’s really good because he talks about the progression of recording technology, which he’s lived through, as a musician. He talks about recording in the ’80s, ’90s, and now, as far as mic-ing drums. He says it’s gotten progressively worse sounding for him. But the industry supports ultra sophisticated measures, and it still gets worse. He says this really funny line, ‘Nowadays, they’re putting 15 mics on all these drums and barricading the drums in a room. When we first started, you would throw one mic over on top of the drums, and it would be in the room live with us, and it sounded amazing.’

Noel: And that’s the drum mic.

Yeah. They figured out pretty early how to get a really cool drum sound. And now, with all these mics on the drums, it sounds like an old drunk dropping a turd on a tin roof (laughs).

Matt: Is that what he says? That’s awesome.

Mike: No way.

Noel: I would add falling down the stairs.

Mike: We have that battle when we do it live.

Mike: And it would sound great because his kit’s totally resonant, you know? ‘BOOOM. BOOOM.’

Matt: The key is to tune the drum set. That’s an art. It’s totally lost on a lot of modern musicians ever since the ’70s, when people started taking the bottom skins off of everything. I think the stage volume got increasingly crazy. You weren’t a band unless you had 19 Ampeg stacks on stage. You can’t resonantly microphone a drum set that way. You have to get up close. And you have to limit the amount of ring that the drum will have.

Mike: It’s like a reverse engineer. That’s the sound of a resonant drum kit, so let’s destroy that and then build it back up.

Matt: And then rebuild it in the PA or in the amps.

I love photos of old live stuff from the late ’60s where it’s these really big speaker cabs onstage, and then the PA is dinky, Radio Shack, like two stalks on each side. So to get compensating for that PA – which is probably only vocals going through it – it was all about stage sound.

Noel: That’s what we’re trying to do now, traveling with our own PA is like trying to contain ourselves, but it also limits whatever PA the club has.

Mike: To neutralize their own aesthetic.

Noel: It’s like dude, we got it man. Just put a mic on a speaker and we’re done.

That’s what Black Flag used to do. They had their own PA and would just set it up in front of the house PA.

Matt: We’re just doing it on a small scale. But it’s funny, it’s interesting because we run into a lot of people who are reticent at first. You know? The sound guy will be like: ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa, what? You got your own? Wait a minute. You’ve got a PA? Hold the phone. We’ve got a PA. What do you need a PA for?’

Mike: ‘You can’t do that.’

Matt: There was a guy that came on stage and he was just like, ‘Wow, I thought it was going to be just totally inappropriately loud, and it’s not that loud, and it sounds good. and you know it all coheres with the drums and—”

Noel: And we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah. High five, goodnight.’

Matt: Right? The image of a small umbrella or a dome comes to mind. And if you’re within this circle, it sounds like a Sic Alps record. And all you gotta do, Mr. Soundguy, is tap into that, and feed our sound into your house, and make it louder so that everyone else can hear what we’re hearing.

Noel: If you choose to. Sometimes we’re louder.

Matt: Invariably it’s like, ‘Well you know, I’m going to make your drums sounds like Lars Ulrich and we’re going to make your vocals sound like Mariah Carey and we’re going to make your guitars sound like Guitar Center.’

Simon: We were trying to work this out yesterday. He [points to Ximon] thinks he’s Generation X. How old are you?

I’m 32.
Ximon: I’m 31. Doesn’t that make us Generation X?

I thought that made us Generation Y?
Ximon: Aaaaaaah.

I dunno where the cut off point is between X and Y is though?
Veronica: I think 36/37-year-olds are Generation X.

I’d rather be Generation X than Y.
Veronica: Is it as in ‘Why are we here?’
Ximon: What are we in now?

We’re in Generation LOL now.
Ximon: Generation LOL is totally right.
Veronica: A big LOL of nothingness.
Ximon. Generation F. [long pause] for Fail.

[Then we had to take some pictures as Ximon had to run to Heathrow to get a plane. And the rest of us chatted about going on holiday.]

Veronica [Speaking to Simon]: What did you say when you went to America and they wanted to know why you were visiting?
Simon: I told them I was there for the food. The guy was like, ‘Huh?’ And I said I’d never had a biscuit before. The guy couldn’t believe it and got his friend over. They were like ‘What?! Never had a biscuit?’
Veronica: I love biscuits and gravy. You just can’t get it here.

I was in America for three months. I didn’t have it once. I’m not a breakfast person.
Simon [incredulously]: You’re not a breakfast person?

I have a cup of tea for breakfast.
Veronica: Are you a cereal person?

I hate cereal.
Veronica: WHOOOOAAAAAH.

People who eat cereal always have really bad breath. Didn’t you have teachers at school who’d breathe over you with that cerealy, coffee breath?
Veronica: That’s the milk!

If you eat cereal for breakfast, clean your fucking teeth afterwards.
Veronica: Are you, in any way, lactose intolerant?

No, I just don’t think I’m very hungry in the morning.
Simon: I threw up on the way to school once after having a bowl of Coco-Pops. But it wasn’t because of the Coco-Pops. I can’t remember what it was in particular that made me throw up, but I have a very strong memory of it. I could take you to Milton Keynes [town in England] and I could point out at the spot on the floor where I threw up.

What did it taste like?
Veronica: Sometimes I think there’s too much sugar and then it’s all milky and then, like, you’re just waking up. Maybe cereal’s not such a good thing to eat first thing.

Orange juice is meant to be pretty bad for your digestion first thing in the morning. Especially for girls for some reason. My sister’s a nutritionist and she told me that. It’s the acid or something on an empty stomach.
Veronica: I am not going to do that any more. I had two cups of orange juice for breakfast. What are we supposed to eat?

Porridge I guess. But eating porridge to me is like reverse vomiting.
Veronica: It is! It so is.
Simon: I like breakfast. It’s the most important meal of the day. My t-shirt even says how much I like breakfast.

[We check. It does]

Veronica: I must say I like savory stuff in the morning. Hong Kong people like to have ramen and eggs and that kind of thing. It’s tasty. I’m kinda hungry now.

This is a food-based interview. We should ask about you guys. Do you worry about being pigeonholed as Dalston band? Is that even a genre or scene?
Simon: It’s kind of waning a little bit now.
Veronica: I think it’s just a way of geographically tying something to the music. But if you think about it, that whole scene isn’t really around any more. People can’t really reference it any more and it being relevant. All the people we used to play with aren’t here any more. The only reason we were even called a Dalston band was because we practiced in a squat on Dalston Lane, where we could always practice for free. It had a great community there. The stuff we were all doing was called Dalston DIY, but you can’t call it DIY when we’ve all now pretty much turned professional.
Simon: If you think about what DIY means. DIY is what middle class people do when they don’t want to pay someone. DIY doesn’t make sense to us really – we had no other option than to do it ourselves, as we had no money.
Veronica: Plus, we were all doing it for fun. I guess DIY is a funny way of describing us doing it in a free way.

What do you think of Dalston with this mad regeneration?
Simon: It’s all been gentrified. I think that it will always have a tiny bit of the blade left. But it’s swept through London in waves.
Veronica: It’s weird. You know that Suzuki motorcycle shop round the corner from here? They’ve just opened a motorcycle cafe there. Like, who’s going to that? Are they rockers? Who wants to hang out there?
Simon: I don’t know where it’s moved to now. Somewhere in South London? It used to be in Manor House, with all those warehouse parties. But now I don’t know if they still happen. If they do I don’t know anyone who goes to them.
Veronica: Are we getting old?

Maybe. I had to ask to leave a lock in at a bar the other day.
Simon: I can’t tell you the joy of putting my ear plugs in after I finish playing on the last tour and just hearing a dull buzz.
Veronica: And we ended up giving our rider out to people because it hadn’t been touched! It’s weird, I think of Pens who were around when we were starting out – Steph had to quit the band because her parents told her to get serious about life and stuff. And I’m getting that kind of pressure from my ends. You start thinking ‘What am I going to do?’ You start this band as a kind of joke and it becomes kind of, somewhat serious and you’re not quite Male Bonding because they’ve been in so many bands and they seem to know how it all works. We’re in this band that’s started off as an experiment and we have a single and we don’t have quite enough money to quit your job properly.
Simon: And now you’ve got this team that are asking what we’re going to do next.
Veronica: And we say we have to go to work to earn some money to live!

Do you prefer to be in London or the US to be a band? You’re from San Francisco, Veronica, and you’ve played everywhere, and Ximon’s away.
Veronica: Now that Ximon’s not here so much it’s kind of weird. It’s a funny thing. The industry here and the industry in America are completely different. We’re currently riding this Moshi Moshi’s great in the UK wave. And we’re from Dalston and all that hype. Going over to America would be starting all over again. And they’d respect you because you’re an English band and not an American band. We’d have a whole different team over there
Simon: We’d have the same manager though. We’ve just got a new manager who manages Mike Skinner. He’s called Ted Mayhem.

What is more important to you guys – the performance or the music? Would you prefer to be known as live art performers rather than a band?
Veronica: Me and Ximon use to do this thing called Little Paper Squares and that was totally experimental. We came off a tour thinking that what we’d just done was a little bit crazy, and we thought we’d try doing something a little bit more serious. TEETH does have two different sides though. The recorded music is very different from the live experience. We still have that thing where people will want to pay to see us live.
Simon: We may play our record in order live, but it won’t be the same record that you can listen to on Spotify. Especially when Babes’ [Ximon] computer just dies live on stage. That happened in Amsterdam. We were taking around his PC tower and right at the start of ‘Care Bear’, which was the last song, it just shut down. Then there was an awkward silence. There are only two of us playing on stage so if one doesn’t play the other sounds weird and empty and lame. I got my laptop out as a back up and in the middle of the song he just lifted it above his head and threw it down into the middle of the crowd and everyone just kicked the shit out of it. And that has all our new music on it. So if the hard drive’s fucked then you’ll have to wait another year for a second album.
Veronica: That’s the thing. What I’ve noticed and as we’ve never been in a proper band before, so we’re just learning this stuff, is that the stuff that makes money is the recorded stuff. You’re never going to make money playing live. I know that sounds kind of at odds from what people say.
Simon: Everyone says that we will.
Veronica: But you don’t.
Simon: All of it is nothing compared to what you’ll get paid if someone wants to associate their brand with you. That’s where the money is.
Veronica: I wonder if it’s possible to be a band that just records and records and gets syncs all the time.
Simon: And just play the odd show. We were watching this program with Michael Stipe who was telling us it’s all about the album and not necessarily touring but doing a show that you can get everyone to come to. I find it hard to tell people about our shows. Especially when we’re on tour – without the Internet I’m powerless. For the album launch, we had three months to build towards it. But with touring there are so many shows we just have to let people figure it our for themselves. You can’t keep writing lists of where you’re playing.
Veronica: What it comes down to is that it’s impossible for a band to promote where they’re playing while they’re on tour. Because we’re so prolific online, promoters just presume that people will turn up. But that doesn’t always happen.
Simon: 3,500 people claim to like us on Facebook. Where are they all?

Tell us about the album? Did it really take three years?
Simon: Was our first song Pill Program?
Veronica: It was Dead Boys.

That’s my second favorite one.
Veronica: It was originally called Sippy and we made it on a computer after a tour with Little Paper Squares. We really liked dance punk from Detroit. I think it was when Gossip were blowing up and we were like ‘Ah they’ve been touring for nine years and now they’re famous.’
Simon [laughing]: ‘We wanna be famous too!’ We wanted to cut out the nine years and just do the last bit.
Veronica: We decided to write a song about politics and stuff. At the time it was all about Bush and Dead Boys was all about soldiers and stuff. No one fucking knows that all TEETH lyrics seem dumb but they’re like super whatever. The album’s just a mixture of songs that we’ve done that we can remember how to play. We have a lot of demos that we’ve released for free on the internet. Whatever is a collection of the songs that stuck and didn’t get destroyed on our laptop. That’s why we called it Whatever.
Simon: People have asked us how we sat down and started writing the album. As if we’d decided to do that. It’s not an album. It’s a big EP.
Veronica: The next album will definitely be more purposeful.
Simon: I think we want to make a small EP next. Just a small collection of songs. Our manager basically said to us, ‘I dare you to do better.’
Veronica: A lot of people seem to prefer the new stuff, like ‘Flowers’ or ‘See Spaces’, which is more commercial and more sophisticated and blah blah.

You shouldn’t listen to ‘Totally In My Way’ at 8.30am with a hangover. It made me feel weird. That’s what I had for breakfast.
Veronica: It made you feel weird? Cool.
Simon: That track is pure jam. We’d never played it before and we’ve never played it again. We recorded it on our laptop and that’s it.
Veronica: Something about it makes me want to do more of that.
Simon: That’s the problem with Babes being away is that we’re not so close to do stuff together.

Finally, the Care Bear video? What’s going on here?
Veronica: We were like how are we gonna do this video without us being in it? We basically assigned homework to all our internet friends to record themselves singing along to it. They’re just friends of friends. A lot of those guys aren’t gay either.
Simon: We got like two submissions of people trickling in per day and then I edited them all together. I separated them into ‘good lip syncing’, ‘fierce moves’ and ‘miscellaneous’. One guy sent in a whole narrative plot. He started it with a suitcase and was really misogynistic guy and then it cut to him in a bustier and the suitcase had turned into a Care Bear lunch box. He doesn’t even lip-sync in it. That was impressive.

(TEETH’s new single U R 1 (Moshi Moshi is out on 28th Nov)

This story comes from back in the day, circa 1973.

“My lovely Dominican girlfriend, Ligia, and I were running around Gettysburg, VA, taking in the sights of some Civil War re-enactments. We were on my old BMW 500CC Black Beauty, coming down a mountain road on a fairly steep decline, the straightness of which ended in a sharp, highly banked curve. Just as we reached the middle of that curve, a big old Ford Fairlane, 25 feet long, zoomed up onto our road from a hidden single-lane road below us and to the right. Driven by a chubby middle-aged woman who had no respect for that invention called an accelerator, the Fairlane came upon us! There was no way to avoid her.

“The big chrome-monster front bumper hit the side of Ligia’s right boot and continued on, gashing the BMW’s protruding engine head and then blasting the right crash bar, driving us around the corner and down the next curve. In the heat of battle, thinking we were both going to die, I strained with all my force, and I was a pretty strong guy in those days. The tendons in my neck and arms grasped wildly to hold the bike up, and she was a heavy girl, 550 lbs dry, with an extra load of an over-sized six-gallon tank. I was fearful that we were going down on some nasty gravel, traveling at about 50 miles per hour, even without the lady’s Fairlane giving us a shot of extra horsepower.

“I did it! The bike didn’t go down. We stopped, dazed, straightening the bike to a standing position, waving the clucking lady’s apologies off. Then we headed back down the mountain. We reached the main highway and decided to stop at a 7-11 and get a beer to chill out and thank god for our good fortune.

“It was the end of May, Memorial Day weekend, hot and sunny. Sweating, still trembling, we dragged ourselves inside, parking the machine on its sturdy center-stand. We had the beer and came out to find – yup! – the hot macadam of the parking lot melted unevenly under the center-stand, and the bike fell over. On its right side, ironically.

“It seems as if the bike had had it in its mind that day to fall – but not with us on it. We got married the next month and moved to the Dominican Republic after selling that Black Beauty. Bye, motorcycles…”

These are my father’s words, and that’s my father’s story, not mine, but this story (repeated several times during my childhood at dinner around a large wooden table) became my subconscious lighthouse, guiding me toward the perfect and dangerous machine. The motorcycle.

At some point I began to wonder if the story was true. Could my father be this cool, cruising to Civil War re-enactments in the mountains with Mom on the back? Or was my father simply planting a cautious seed in my young mind, so that I would choose a safer hobby and steer clear of motorcycle culture altogether?

It wasn’t long before I discovered some photographs from a different life. There it was, the proof to back the story. A photograph of my father and his first son sitting on top of Black Beauty, my old man in a tank top and jean shorts, I think. He also sported the same thick mustache that I wear, and wouldn’t shave it off to save the world. The photo looked about as chill as anything I had ever seen. It could have been enough to hook me for life, and nothing anyone could say would sway me.

I had to have one. But being nine years old, at least six years before I could drive a motorcycle legally, I let life take me through its little distractions.

With the help of music, and by seeing how much attention I got singing Boyz II Men tunes in the hallways at school, I almost forgot about motorcycles altogether. Long gone were the days I would spend looking through the motorcycle encyclopedia at the library and drawing bikes all over my book covers. I had moved on to music, and much like the love of the unattainable motorcycle, I spent my time staring at guitar magazines drooling over any and every guitar that I could never afford.

But I believe the idea was always present, subliminally, and when I was around 10 years old or so, I had discovered one of the greatest programs in the world. Somehow I started to be able to sneak from my room, at about 11:30 p.m., into the living room. On Channel 19, waiting for me, was a blonde white lady with the biggest breasts I had ever seen and a black name, or sometimes this small man from god-knows-where with a grating voice and a strange name that fit him perfectly, and they would play films.

USA Up All Night showed movies I had never seen before, starring kids and grown-ups I thought might even live on my block. And if you know USA Up All Night, you know you couldn’t get through many of these movies without seeing some kind of motorcycle scene. A particular scene that rang out was a big black woman riding in Surf Nazis Must Die. That was cool.

Mickey Rourke made a movie that I think was also on this program. The movie was called Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man, and I am sure the world has forgotten it. I remember the opening scene so well: Fourth of July, my man Mickey staring out the window, lonesome looking, smoking in the doorway. He turns toward the bed, there’s a beautiful naked Italian woman with blue eyes, he says nothing, blows smoke in her direction and gets on his bike and your hear, “I’m a cowboy/On a steel horse I ride!” Bon Jovi and motorcycles, the steel horse! Damn.

Now, shame on me for loving this, but there is something these images do to me that I can’t explain. I somehow turn into a full-on believer when exposed to these films: the bad acting, the bad music, the uncomfortable beauty that comes while watching someone trying to be something so hard – so committed to doing so – and it’s failing and it’s working. It seemed like many of the USA Up All Night movies had the same backdrop. Normal people, mediocre actors, extraordinary situations, with fast cars and faster motorcycles.

Then you have the good biker movies. The Wild One, with Brando, for instance. My father made me watch that after I was talking about how much I loved the remake of The Island of Dr. Moreaux. “That’s not a Brando movie – this is a Brando movie!” I had never seen someone look so hard and soft at the same time. It reminded me of myself, always doing my best to prove something, while inside just wanting to lay down my guns. Always soft on some girl while my friends made trouble or had other things on their minds.

And now what I saw on the screen was an older, cleaner, simpler motorcycle. Somehow it translated as even more tough. It was more eye-catching than crotch rockets – fast, aerodynamic, usually Japanese bikes – or ridiculous macho Harleys and sports bikes I had seen in early ’90s B movies. What I was looking at was a TRIUMPH THUNDERBIRD, the perfect and dangerous machine.

Nothing I had seen after that had piqued my interest as much, but I still sought out biker flicks. My drummer when I was 19, Joe, pointed out that I would love Easy Rider and all the films that surround it, like The Wild Angels and Race with the Devil. Though none of them were nearly as good as The Wild One, I watched with the same excitement. I heard the term Motorpsycho and looked it up, and found a film by a guy named Russ Meyer. That movie really freaked me out, as did watching The Wild Angels. I was shocked to see the recklessness of a young life. I started to think about how my friends and I were similar, smashing things up with no regard for anyone else.

The more I got into biker films, the more I realized the themes of my own life. A group of young people who have no place, no culture, no nothing – except an overwhelming sense of boredom. The need to be called something, so you, they, we get together and call ourselves a gang, call ourselves a band, and do our best to have our own world that just bumper cars up against any other world in its path.

More than this, I saw the main theme. Somehow, the leader of the pack, the guy who fought the hardest, was the smartest, the fastest, the best looking one, the one closest to the rest of the world, the guy who could almost mix in with the other side with all his talents and old knowledge, was the most removed of them all. He still struggled to be something, even after shutting out his past and building his grim utopia up around him. And didn’t I feel exactly like that? Didn’t I, deep inside, feel bad for turning on old friends? Wasn’t I at one time the happy kid, the class clown, the one you could talk to? Then, at some point, without understanding or even seeing it, I found myself seething with restlessness that I couldn’t explain, or maybe didn’t notice, building my gang around me to convince myself that I was a part of something. I began to really identify with these characters, and I began to understand perhaps the true appeal behind motorcycling.

I made a strange friend my first year in Boston when I was 19. Let’s call him Doug. Doug was a weirdo who pretty much lived in the dark. I mean, he literally had no lights on in his house at all times, and lived in a basement apartment (as did I). He was in college, and at some point his girlfriend had left him (as had mine). Not knowing what to do with his spare time when he came home from school, he slipped into a bit of depression, which came with a pretty decent suicide attempt. I was the first call from the hospital. I rushed over to his house and he tossed the keys through the window in the back alley like he always did. I swung through the front door, and found him in bandages on the couch in the dark living room.

Doug wasn’t a person who would cry out. He was a true loner. He loved quiet and dark, but it seemed that without knowing, he had developed a chip on his shoulder, and after his girl left that chip became a huge crack in his heart. He looked around and thought, “I have nothing better to do than die.” I had to come up with something. How do you tell someone who doesn’t give a fuck to start giving a fuck? You convince them to do something stupid or crazy, and you pull the famous “You’ve got nothing to lose, it seems, so why not do this ridiculous thing?”

What I actually said was, “Doug, tomorrow I want you to do three things. You are gonna quit your job because now that the fire department had to break you out of your house to take you to the hospital because your boss heard your goodbye message to the world on your answering machine when you didn’t show up to work, they will treat you like a crazy person, and secretly hope you don’t bring a gun to work. You are going to go directly across the street and start bartending at the gay club because you are a cute skinny white boy with blue eyes, and you are gonna make so much bread. Third, and most important, with the money you get in your first week you are gonna buy a motorcycle!” He said yes to all three, and if I recall correctly, he got the motorcycle not six days later.

In a way, this was my first motorcycle. Doug was daring enough to just jump on Craigslist, find a cheap bike, and ride it home, never having ridden in his life. I can’t say I would have been that brave, but I was brave enough to ask Doug if we could take the bike to a pond where he would let me get on and practice. Finally, I was borrowing the bike while he was away for the summer. I think I had it for a fantastic three months. I promised never to ride with someone on the back, which I did a few times anyways, but mostly it was just me. I took the bike all over Boston and out of town, riding late at night, taking time to be alone.

When Doug returned, the weather started to change and the bike’s cover was stolen. I joined a new band and practice was eating my time. Living in the Northeast and having a bike and no money to store it seemed like a bad situation. I moved to NYC and was coming back to Boston for shows. Doug’s bike started to sit around and gather problems, and Doug wasn’t as generous with it. I needed my own, but I had no job, and I was stuck on a girl, so I had no life. An opportunity came in, a chance to make music for a theater company in Europe with the noise band of some friends. The money for the job was $10,000. All I could think about was that TRIUMPH THUNDERBIRD. For $8,000 I could get a half-decent Bonneville, a less expensive model, and work on it myself.

I signed on with pretty much only that in mind, and for some unprofessional and stupid reason I wasn’t shy about telling my employers. I’m pretty sure my bio in the program for the show read only “George Lewis Jr.: I would rather be riding a motorcycle through the States.” But love and a good time finds its way through your pockets like a gerbil finds its way into every mention of Richard Gere. I met a girl and suddenly wanted to buy expensive clothing and to go out to eat nice dinners. I somehow squandered $8,000 in 12 weeks. The dream was crushed a bit, but I was in love and any motorcycle would do.

The day after I got home, I found a 1978 Yamaha Special 750, black, on Craigslist, for $1,000. It was in Boston. Doug had sold his bike to prepare for a move to New York where he and I would get a place of our own together. I decided I would haggle the price of the bike down from the owner to 800 bucks and spend the rest of my money on a security deposit and first month’s rent for the new place. I was so excited, and I still feel it, even now. I can’t even remember how I got out to this guy’s house in the ’burbs. I just remember the moment he opened the garage door and my very own Black Beauty stood, strikingly, with dark black leather saddle bags on the sides and back. “Can I take it for a spin?” “Sure, just don’t go to far. Yer not gonna run away with my bike, are you?”

I took the bike down the street and I got so lost in it, I really did almost forget to come back. I must have been gone for 45 minutes or so, seeing how fast I could get it to go on a long straight street, zipping around corners, and honking the large horns that ran parallel to the front forks. I brought it back and talked the guy down to $750 somehow. I think his wife really wanted that thing gone. I noticed some new babies in the house and that’s usually a sign of someone being forced to give it up.

I rode it home in the freezing cold – I am resisting the urge to say “I rode her home” – since it must have been the middle of November. The leaves of fall had changed and they all seemed to fall at once. I stared directly at the sky instead of the road, wincing, the cold breeze cutting into my face, the leaves forming a cloud of flapping orange above me, my gloveless hands gripping hard on the handlebars. My right hand was gripping so tightly that I was pulling back the throttle as far as it could go without noticing. I pushed towards Boston at a speed no unlicensed biker should go on an old machine that you hardly know. I remember thinking that the sky had never been this pale, and noticed that it still carried a rich blue. I remember looking into car windows and watching people stare as I overtook them. I remember feeling so perfectly alone.

I took a moment to study the ground directly under me, the white lines blurring as two guiding strips pointed me toward the city, where I was sure that things had changed. I pulled into Boston and saw the same scenes. I rode to meet an old friend who sat around bored, rode to a show and found that my favorite band had no new songs and realized that I had no new music to give the world. But the important thing was that I had found the way out.

I had a week before moving Doug’s entire life to NYC in one trip, the both of us on the motorcycle – a story for another time. I spent the time getting lost on my bike, filling the tank, driving, tapping to see when I was close to empty, and then heading home. Doug and I once rode to a poetry reading where we got drunk and took a pretty girl for a ride – all three of us on the bike. Young, reckless souls in the snow, under the shadow of Boston’s plainness, trying desperately to excite someone or something.

Once I was in New York, I felt the real freedoms of the bike – not needing the subways, parking almost anywhere. My love from Copenhagen visited and we took the bike to Coney Island, her helmet silver, mine black. I did wreck once, and got lucky like my father, but I never took the girl to Virginia to see a Civil War re-enactment. I bet she’d like that.

HAIR BY ROZ AT BUMBLE & BUMBLE
GROOMING BY JESSI BUTTERFIELD
GEORGE WEARS SHOES BY RACHEL COMEY
THANKS TO ALOHA RAG, ASSEMBLY NEW YORK, AND MARLON GOBEL
PRODUCTION ASSISTANCE BY KOREY VINCENT

I was a casual listener for years until I chronologically dove into his discography, which expands to 15 albums over more than 20 years. But you don’t just wake up next to someone after a handful of passionate sessions and dedicate your time to truly understanding them. They must touch you profoundly, and “Horses” got me really hot. The song goes, “soon that warmth turned to an itch/turned to a scratch/turned to a gash”. It penetrated deep inside of me. I’ll be the first to admit that I can be pretty easy to get off. Callahan is probably a great lover; he famously had romances with Joanna Newsom and Chan Marshall, a.k.a. Cat Power. I suppose I was initially attracted to Smog for the reason many romances start: mystery.

Callahan may be the most enigmatic voice I’ll hear in my lifetime. An expert storyteller who started making noise and later developed his sound in a country/roots direction, Callahan says a lot while saying very little. Drawing from a body of reoccurring motifs like rivers, horses, birds, and getting drunk, his body of work appeared to me like a present wrapped with hundreds of ribbons, all waiting to be untied. Determined to solve the riddle of this man, I kept a notebook that documented repeated themes in an attempt to unlock his secrets. Even more disorienting is the stark juxtaposition between his dense, profound lyrics and his humorous, seemingly absurd album titles (Dongs of Sevotion, The Manta Rays of Time, Drag City and Spunk Records respectively, both 2000) and arbitrary album covers, the most famous, Knock Knock (Drag City), featuring a fat cat photo-shopped to a stormy sky with a massive bolt of lightning (keep in mind this was 1999 and predates the countless feline-themed internet memes). In “Riding for the Feeling” on his latest album, Apocalypse, Callahan himself pops the question that everyone’s had from the beginning: “Who do you think you are?”

Knowing that Callahan is a fan of the written word and playing to his strengths, I opted to interview him in an old school Internet chat way to foster a living, breathing conversation under conditions where he could show off his skills as a wordsmith. The resulting conversation reaches topics ranging from strip clubs to gambling, from creation to the apocalypse. Also, apparently Bill Callahan uses emoticons?

Where are you right now?

I’m in a woodshed behind my house that I work in, in Austin, TX.

What kind of work do you do in the shed? Recording? Songwriting?

Writing songs and playing music, no recording.

Where did you record the last album?

I bought a TEAC reel to reel, the same kind Lee “Scratch” Perry used in the Black Ark, that I hope to use in here some day. I recorded the LP at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX, a tiny border town. The studio is on a pecan grove with a hacienda to stay in. Then mixed it at Public Hi-Fi in Austin a month later.

Do you think you’ll ever leave Austin?

It’s quite likely. I like coasts, oceans. The Gulf Coast of Texas is just nasty. It’s mostly for entertaining the off-shore oil workers who have had an ass-full of the ocean, so when they come ashore they want strip joints and gambling.

Never been to a strip club, or a casino. You?

Of course. I’m a man of the world. I don’t like strip joints though. I don’t understand the role of me and the woman and sex in that situation. There are some joints in ’70s movies that look appealing, where the woman is just dancing in a corner and you can look if you want. I like burlesque stuff. I saw the Suicide Girls Burlesque show and that was nice. Casinos, I don’t get off on gambling in those losing situations.

What about betting man to man? You and me at a card table?

I like one-on-one bets. Bets of veracity. Things that come up in normal interaction. Like, ‘France gets all it’s electricity from the Monkees on treadmills.’ No way, man, want to bet?

I would have thought you were a man who might like the excitement of chance. Of not knowing.

Not when some millionaire is running the casino. Although, I do enjoy experiencing the unknown.

Are we talking literal millionaire or abstract millionaire? A force of nature?

Both are not worth going up against by choice. Although, if you consider a mountain a millionaire, like Mt. Everest, I can see going up against that.

Have you ever tamed a tall mountain?

No.

Ever tried?

I’ve enjoyed many books about the topic but I don’t have that particular drive, to scale rock faces on a rope.

What does drive you?

It’s the emptiness of things. The fact that nothing exists. You have to create to see that.

Do you consider yourself a creator, or another facet of the emptiness?

I am thinking about that lately. If that is true or not, that I am a creator. You know when something is good that is created, you know it’s good when it feels like it didn’t come from you, when it bears no mark of effort or being created. But that’s the barometer – does this song feel like something outside of myself?

Is there something you’ve made recently that feels like it has come from outside yourself? A song? A letter?

My whole last album. I have to make the songs be something outside of myself so that I can see them as songs. If something felt from within me, it wouldn’t feel worth sharing.

Why wouldn’t it be worth sharing?

There wouldn’t be anything for other people in it. I’m an observer of my own work, as if it were somebody else’s work.

So you feel that a man isn’t always tethered to himself? Is it something to strive towards, maybe knowing that you may never achieve it? Or is it actually possible to remove one’s self from the work?

That is the devine [sic] nature of creating. Creating is getting out of yourself, making this other thing that isn’t you. I am completely removed from it. That is how I can perform it again and again, because I feel like, ‘Hey, check this song out, what’s the deal with it?’ There may be human faults in my work, but that’s why you keep working, to get them out someday. So, in that way, yes, you are tethered to it, but I’m always trying to saw through that chain. (Pause) Devine is a shitty name for a wine bar.

What would you name your wine bar?

I would call my wine bar, ‘It’s just a fucking glass of wine.’ (Pause) Feel free to hit me up with a smiley face emoticon anytime.

Just look at that little guy. He’s winking at me.

He’s beckoning!

Can I keep him? I’ll take real good care of him, honest!

You can borrow him, but only if you give him a name.

I’ll call him Pip.

He’s all yours.

I’m tired of him already. That incessant smiling…

Maybe if he were more sadlike?

Poor little Pip. Forgive me.

Beyond Pip, do you have pets?

Got a cat.

Name?

Yinnie.

When did you get her?

Maybe six months ago.

What made you decide to get a cat?

Trying to cheer Pip up.

When you aren’t feeling well, how do you cheer yourself up? How do you find catharsis?

I see what you did there! I declare it an anything goes day. I can go see two movies or drink as much as I want or go jump in the river.

Do you ever go movie hopping? Like pay for one movie and see two, or even three?

I did it a little when I was younger. Now I feel better paying for all things people labored over.

Do you have any vices?

Drinking can be fun but it also feels amazing not to drink.

What’s your drink?

Lately I’m into what I call Hobbit beers. Such as beers made by the Stone Brewery in San Diego.

What do you look for in a good drink?

High alcohol content so I don’t have to go stand at the bar every 10 minutes like a nebbish. Good taste. High quality so you don’t get hung over. I should probably wrap soon.

Okay, let’s go into rapid-fire, quick answer mode. How does that sound?

Go.

Favorite word?

Bong.

How do you look at your older material?

I don’t. It’s done.

What did your mother call you when you were little?

Willy Wombat.

What’s the worst, most depressing age to be?

19.

Would you rather be a bird or a colt?

Colt. Birds are always scared, can’t enjoy a good meal.

You’re jailed and about to get the electric chair. What would your last meal be?

I can’t imagine I’d have an appetite. With that diaper crinkling.

How do you like your meat? Rare?

Grass fed, grass finished. I only eat bison. Rare.

Will we see the apocalypse?

You and I? I don’t think so. We’ll see what China does.

Good to know, I feel much better now! Thanks for your time. Enjoy Pip

I will.