Carla Bozulich is NOT playing at the Cobalt (but her new album is really good!)

Bad news: I just heard back from Carla Bozulich that the Cobalt Evangelista show, planned for April 6th, "had to be canceled because of problems at the border... We have replaced it with a 2nd Seattle show -- this one a matinee at the Rendezvous." It's unfortunate, because Carla is someone I'd truly like to see in concert again. First off, her last appearance in this town, opening for Thee Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band at Richards on Richards in 2006, was somewhat tainted by a too-loud, inattentive audience, who made it kind of difficult to enter the music. More generally, tho', the former leader of the Geraldine Fibbers and Ethyl Meatplow, Bozulich fills a niche that sorely needs filling. There are plenty of American women with tough personae in rock music - the entire riot grrl thing, for instance - but for those of us who aren't exactly into the more brutish, "got-so-much-clit-they-don't-need-no-balls" approach of L7 or Betty Blowtorch or whatnot, who want passionate and powerful music that also stands up as art, as high culture, as something other than kitsch culture or "just fun," the list gets a lot shorter. Leaving aside anyone with an acoustic guitar and the Laurie Anderson contingent (as not being really "rock music"), I can think of a half-dozen names, tops, of female singer/songwriter types who are making High Art that Kicks Ass - such as Patti Smith, Kim Gordon, Diamanda Galas, Lydia Lunch, and mayyyybe Kathleen Hanna (whose work seems of variable merit) and Exene Cervenka (who doesn't seem that active lately, or maybe I'm just not paying attention). Beyond a doubt, Carla Bozulich belongs on that shortlist. Maybe I reveal my own limitations with this list, and y'all can fill in my blanks with as many other names as you like: the point stands that there AREN'T MANY women doing this sort of thing here, compared to men. (And yes, I put Courtney Love on the kitsch list. It's not a bad thing, and I've spun Hole albums and enjoyed them; it's just that the best Hole song is a trifle, a confection, compared to "Piss Factory," for instance - or any track off Bozulich's last couple of albums).


I interviewed Carla prior to her last show in Vancouver. I probably would have been totally fucking intimidated to be speaking to her, except that back then, I didn’t really know her music all that well. I knew that the Geraldine Fibbers had featured Nels Cline for awhile and that there was a lot of critical acclaim behind Bozulich’s work; and I knew that Evangelista had been produced by Efrim Menuck of A Silver Mount Zion, and featured members of the band - with whom, in the summer of 2006, Bozulich was touring. That was about it. Since then, I've picked up the entire Fibbers back catalogue and a few of Carla's solo projects. Evangelista, her new band, takes their name from her last album, and continues in much the same vein. Hello, Voyager - again featuring various Mount Zion people, Shazad Ismaily, Jessica Moss, and Nels on one track - is a little heavier, I think, and more varied than the last, but it's "Radio Ethiopia"-powerful at times, and is PROBABLY not going to get the recognition it deserves. So even though she won't be playing here this time through, here's my 2006 interview with Carla, including material that never saw print before. Buy the album. Drive to Seattle. Check this shit out.

Allan: Are you playing with the same band as is on the recording?

Carla: I have a full band, you know, it’s likely I guess that we’ll probably play together since they’re on the album but we haven’t really even talked about it, it’s just up in the air right now. I’m touring with this really incredible band including the members of the Dead Science, which is a Seattle band that you might know about. And they’re really great, and also this woman Annie Rosse, is touring with the band, she’s a violist. Have you heard the Dead Science? They’re so fucking good… It’s just a trio, they play this really intense and really beautiful rock music that’s very unusual and very pretty, it’s kind of almost like Antony from Antony and the Johnstons meets like, something a lot more intense, I don’t know how exactly to explain. Anne Rosse and a woman named Tara Barnes – she’s from a band called Business Lady and a band called Dutchesses – she’s a phenomenal bassist and singer and, um, she’s my right hand man, actually, she’s with me all the time, all the tours that are coming up, which is quite a lot, we’re going to be touring through the year and into next year.

Allan: There’s a surprising diversity of music that you’ve done - from an album of Willie Nelson covers to Evanglista, that’s a big step.

Carla: Red Headed Stranger is like the most accessible album I ever made, easily, so it’s not a super-good jumping off point, but this album (Evangelista) is my most raw, heart- on-your-sleeve sort of thing – and I have done a lot of that, but also musically I feel like it’s really tuned-in, in a way that, at other times I haven’t been quite as focused. But this is a kind of a thematic piece which has to do with sound and love and mainly those two things – a celebration of those things. And it’s funny, because I’ve read a few reviews of the record where they listen to the record, they listen to the title track, the first track, "Evangelista," and they say it’s, you know, torment and an attack on the senses, and all this, and it’s kinda funny… I mean, I don’t deny that that’s the way it comes off if that’s the way it comes off, but what I MEANT by it was more of like a thing to appeal to people’s sense of desperation and maybe loneliness and offer this alternative, which is this exaltation achieved through sound and love. But I guess it comes off as witchy…

Allan: The Constellation site describes it as "an exorcism."

Carla: I never said it was an exorcism. I never meant it as an exorcism. Someone else said it, then… Y’know, people tend to do their own interpretations of things.

Allan: We media folk are bad people. We put words in other people’s mouths. I will try not to do that.

Carla: We! (laughs). It’s hard especially if you’re quoting something from my own record company! I don’t blame you.

Allan: There’s something of old-time, raw gospel music to Evangelista - something that suggests religious experience.

Carla: The gospel thing is totally a part of it. We’re playing in a church tonight in Philadelphia (July 13th, 2006). It’s a tiny little church, it’s all wood, there’s pews, there’s an altar - and that to me is the ideal place to perform Evangelista, but in terms of religion, like I said, there is a religion I suppose, but it’s all about sound and love. (laughs) That’s it. It’s not about God, it’s about a different kind of God, it’s about the kind of God for people who really really respond to music and sound and noise, who fill themselves up that way and lift themselves up that way - for people that can respond to sound and love the way other people respond to God, and people can take it and use it to lift themselves up and rise up above things that might normally kick their ass. Just the way people do with religion, where they reach out and they say I can’t make it on my own, I need this to help me. For me, and my life, that’s what I’ve always found, that’s what always has saved my ass, it’s sound, it’s music music music, every time. Every time, at the lowest points of my life, it’s sound and love. You find even the little tiniest spark of it, it will lift you up, and that’s what this is about. It’s not an album for people that are just cruising along and have never had any major grief or loss or anger or anything like that, it’s much more of an album for people who can relate to kind of having a little bit of a warrior side to themselves, rising above that stuff, hopefully without hurting a fuck of a lot of people in the process. So you know, that’s it. It’s not about God, because, you know, God, for me… the word doesn’t mean anything.

Allan: Do you see it more as connecting with personal pain, or is there a political dimension to it, trying to engage with the state of the world?

Carla: Well, certainly it was meant to reach out in a way… I mean, the voice of the person that is singing the first cut, or preaching, or whatever you want to call it: it’s almost a sermon, it was certainly meant to reach out to people the way you do in church, the way the preacher does. There’s no limit to who you’re reaching out to; I mean, only a finite number of people are going to hear it, but there really isn’t any limit to who you’re calling out to, you know… I mean, the album to me is something that is very personal to me, but I don’t think I’m unique in my feelings – do you understand what I mean? …Anybody who’s had these feelings, and I try to kind of find common ground, I do find common ground all the time. And I like to nurture that in my writing in general, because my writing’s very very very personal. I respond directly to what’s happening in my life, but I also am keenly aware of the fact that I’m not the only person that has these feelings, these are the feelings of human beings and, um, I feel a little bit lucky that maybe I can put some of them into words, maybe in ways that some people haven’t been able to formulate before for themselves, and so I think it’s nice for them to have that, you know, as a present. I to try to give my music away, as a present.


Allan: Does the marketplace interfere at all with that?

Carla: What marketplace? (Laughs)

Allan: Well - how do you feel about your stuff being sold in corporate chain stores, for instance?

Carla: Stuff like that doesn’t bug me at all. I’m not at all like that at all, no no no…

Allan: Constellation are a bit like that, no?

Carla: That’s their business, and if that’s the way they wanna handle my album I trust them implicitly, but my own personal feelings are that I have confidence in myself that I’m the genuine article. I appreciate the fact I can reach anybody that I can. And I need the money. That was a separate sentence, by the way. (laughs) I appreciate the fact I can reach anyone that I can. Period. And I need the money… I was talking to someone recently and they were like, you know, you shouldn’t send your CD to Spin because they’re just assholes and stupid and everything and I was like, “Yeah, they are assholes, and they are stupid and the music that they have in there is lame, there’s no doubt, and the chance of them putting a CD of mine in their right now are, you know, less than zero, pretty much, but on their behalf, I still have to say that I still get people writing to me telling me that when they were 13 or 14 years old and they saw a full page picture of me in Spin smiling and holding a butcher’s knife, that, they stopped shaving their armpits and got a guitar and started a band. I mean, like, where is the problem there, I mean, we’re talking people who are in South Dakota, where are they supposed to get their shit? I mean, it’s different now with the internet, obviously people can find stuff a lot easier, so…

Allan: What was the connection between A Silver Mt Zion and Constellation and you?

Carla: Jessica Moss, who plays violin in A Silver Mount Zion, was in the Geraldine Fibbers for a short time and that’s how I met all of them. We just hit it off. The last time I played in Montreal I played just a little bit of the material that ended up being on the new album, and Efrim said he would like to record it at the Hotel2Tango; then the people who played on it said they would like to play on it, and it really just blew my mind, and I just followed kind of the direction that it took to make it happen. It’s really the easiest thing I ever did, and it’s a good thing that it was, because I was sort of not that organized in my mind at that time, but really, Efrim and Shazad Ismaily and Jessica and everybody that played on it, they just kind of made it happen. All I really had to do was just show up and bring the songs and sing and share some of my ideas, and everybody produced the album – it was really kind of phenomenal experience. Efrim, I dunno, he was just so tuned into it – he was just sort of on fire with the project. It could never be the album it is without what he did. He was tireless, he was working on other things at the same time and he just, he spent every minute that he had to spare on it and just made it into this incredible thing and mixed all these cuts without anybody else even being there, which has like, never happened to me, I’ve never not been there for that, but they ended up being perfect, and I dunno, and Shazad, too, didn’t ask any money, came all the way up from NY, cancelled a bunch of shit... Everybody worked really hard at it. I think they just liked the music.

Allan: I don’t really know Shazad Ismaily’s music, I confess.

Carla: He’s a beautiful wonderful guy who plays in the Secret Chiefs 3 and 2 Foot Yard. He plays with Marc Ribot. Literally, if you google him you’ll see he plays with so many great players and he’s an amazing multi-instrumentalist…

Allan: If I can ask, are you currently making a living on your music?

Carla: No. I’ve been lucky in the respect, for the past few years I’ve been living off of a decision I made financially several years ago that paid my way for a little while, but it’s coming to the point now where things have changed, and the next year is gonna be kinda more difficult scenario.

Allan: The low ticket price for the show with A Silver Mount Zion is a surprise. How is anyone gonna get paid, at $13 a ticket, with two big bands?

Carla: Well, it’s just the way it is.

Allan: Do you think you’ll be able to make a living from music in the future?

Carla: I mean, I did for years. I would hope so, I mean that’s what I’m pushing for so hard right now, I’m really really really working hard, I’m touring non-stop, my tour schedule is like 12 weeks right now, which ends at the end of August, and them I’m going to Europe for six weeks after that, and then I’m coming home and I’m hoping to do the United States again in the spring, so that’s like… pushing as hard as you can, you know what I mean, you can’t push any harder than that, and I’m doing the strongest music of my life, and I just don’t know really what else to do, you know what I mean? I was talking to my Mom and she was like, “honey, I love your new album but don’t you think maybe you could just do a couple of little songs that might be a little easier for a bigger audience, to get maybe some more cuter songs? It’s a totally acceptable question, but I was like, you know, it’s too late for that, I do what I genuinely feel, and that’s me, and, I mean, I dunno… it’s kind of funny, don’t you think? Sometimes if you look at an artist that’s been performing as long as me or a little longer even, you can kinda see the point in their career where they were like, “I’m not making enough money, I’m going to make an album that’s going to make some money, and I’m going to compromise a little,” and you can kind of put your finger on the album, like there it is, like the one with Neil Young in the pink tuxedo and a Cadillac or whatever?

Allan: I dunno if it made him any money, but yeah…

Carla: Well, exactly, because it never works, people are like, “What the hell is he doing? You can really pinpoint those albums, if you really sit there and look at people’s like, body of work, like “this is the one where they were trying to make more money!” There’s really no point in me going there right now.

Allan: Was Red Headed Stranger at all an attempt to connect with a wider listening base?

Carla: No, it was totally driven by my heart’s desire, everything I’ve done has been. I’ve never given a thought to that and actually I’ve turned down opportunities where I would have been set up for life but I just am not that kind of a person. I’m kind of a street doggie. It’s really just not that hard on me to WORK. Hard.

Allan: I was talking about this with the members of Fe-mail, from Norway - about how there’s a lot of state support for the arts, as opposed to the United States.

Carla: Yeah, we don’t have any… (laughs) We have basically the opposite where it’s like, if you’re an artist you’re frisked and stripped searched everywhere (laughs).


Allan: Okay never mind… I know you’ve been vocal in your support of the queer community in your music. Any things to say to the queer community in Vancouver?

Carla: Uh. Let’s see here. Oh gosh, you’re really for putting me on the spot, aren’t you…? What can I say? I love you I love you I love you, and I do, but the truth is - I wanna say something funny, but it’s really, it’s… (she takes a step back): This is a lot of what kind of drives me musically, and has for a long time. I mean, I’m not a teenager, I lived through the 80s and 90s, and, I mean, you know, what the fuck can I say to the queer community? I’m really glad that there are better medications for AIDS now and I’m just really glad there aren’t as many people dying and that’s a terrible way to end an interview, it’s like the worst possible way, but like, a lot of my music and the things that I’ve written, a lot of the motivations behind it including Evangelista, you’ll hear a lot of grief in there, and it’s grief, you know, from people that have died of AIDS, and just the fact that it’s still going on and it’s still going on in the world and the people that I’ve known personally - it’s ripped my life apart. I don’t mean that in a selfish way, because I know it’s not me really; I’m not the one that lost my life, and I wish I could say something happy and jolly and all, like “To the Queer Community, like, rock on,” or whatever, but really… I’m just glad that people are staying alive longer.

Allan: Actually, that reminds me - some critics have compared Evangelista to the recordings of Diamanda Galas (who wrote a Plague Mass for AIDS victims, and so forth). Do you feel any affinities there?

Carla: Yeah, I do, I feel a power inside of myself that’s immense in that I have gift for throwing out of my body into the atmosphere and into the audience and I recognize that in her, too, and I feel really lucky that I can manifest that.

111 year old tuatara finally mates

How's this for heartwarming?

I've actually visited a wildlife preserve in New Zealand (where most of the more unique local species, like the tuatara and the kiwi, have been decimated by rodents and such introduced by colonists; you're more likely to see such animals in a protected enclosure than in the wild). I must admit that the tuatara were a tad anticlimactic; seeing them fulfilled a childhood dream, since, when I was a dinosaur-obsessed young man, they really captured my imagination, as a bit of an evolutionary throwback, distinct from lizards in many ways. But they were also amazingly dull animals: they just sat there, doing nothing, in utter stolid lethargy, barely even seeming to breathe. Given this, I imagine it would have been very, very exciting for the tuatara's keepers to stumble upon them copulating. A story for the grandkids...

Mummified dinosaur found

A most unusual specimen...

Hail The Rise of The Skinny - and come celebrate

Anyone remember the Nerve Magazine? You know they're kaput, right? (At least for now, but everyone assumes that means now and forever; I suspect given the sudden, shy, weird end to things, which I won't go into much detail about because, like most people, I was kept nearly'n'totally in the dark, it's gonna be a pretty hard trick to resurrect it, if anyone tries). Abuse them as you will, the Nerve a) ran articles about some damned interesting bands, b) housed a number of true believers, c) had more balls and a more distinct style than most other local free rags, and d) published a whole lot of my articles and showed me perhaps even MORE respect than I was due (at least when Adrian or Devon were my editors). And whatever they coulda shoulda oughta mighta done better, and whomever they shoulda tried harder not to piss off, there is a sizeable void left in the city where the Nerve was - if not for you, then for a couple of dozen music journalist types who now have no other way of getting into gigs free.

So a bunch of us have sashayed over to The Skinny, which I assume hits the streets next month, and has no link for a website as yet. I actually don't know a WHOLE lot about the paper at the moment, mostly because I haven't been paying attention, but Vancouver's biggest Budgie fan, Ferdy Belland, and my longtime gigmate, photographer Femke van Delft, are involved (more'n me - I contributed a mere single gig review to the first issue)... as are Bev Davies and a buncha other local noteworthies: some of whom will doubtlessly be at the Thursday launch party for the paper. I have as many questions as you about what the end result will be like: will the Skinny rock? Will the Skinny suck? Will the Skinny float? Will the Skinny sink? Will the Skinny alienate me by introducing bizarre grammatical errors into my prose? I know not, but whatever is in th' cards, THE SKINNY WILL RISE IN APRIL, to greet the season of regeneration and animal fucking, and those of us who haven't been on a guestlist since last November will BE THERE ON THURSDAY TO CELEBRATE.

Join us, but, like, pay the cover.


Post-script:

You just KNOW someone is going to buy a cute stuffed dog for a mascot (and maybe die it black and give it Big Hair). Bwah ha ha. It's so obvious, it might've already been done.

Acid Mothers Temple play Pat's Pub April 4th

Wild that the Acid Mothers are going to play Pat's Pub on April 4th. Given how relatively safe and orderly Japanese society is, I always feel a tad nervous when bands from Japan end up in the downtown eastside, but this IS their "Recurring Dream And Apocalypse Of Darkness Tour," so I guess a bit of social disorder is appropriate. I actually like their quieter, trippier, more subtle stuff than their rockin' out, Electric Heavyland side, which seems to take precedence when these guys play live, but there is no question that these guys rock...

In the interests of promoting the gig, here's the long version of an interview I did for the Nerve Magazine last year when Kawabata and co. were in town. Thanks to Alan Cummings for the translation!

The Acid Mothers Temple and the Melting Paraiso UFO:
Gone Beyond Beyond (Hail the Goer!)

Founded in 1995, the Acid Mothers Temple have replaced the Boredoms as the number one ambassadors of J-weird to foreign shores, but their fame abroad is not replicated at home. In my three years (1999-2001) of seeking out the unusual in Japan, I never once heard of them. I never saw a poster for their records at the to-drool-for Japanese chain store, Disk Union, never overheard their music at a headshop - nada. You might assume this indicates nothing more than a flaw in my hunting, but dig: the Acid Mothers Temple and Melting Paraiso UFO are a bunch of Japanese freaks (in the Mothers of Invention sense) who appear on their album covers dressed like medieval troubadours from space re-enacting a Trout Mask Replica photo shoot, occasionally holding staffs with skulls or posing like longhaired monks in prayer. They have album titles like Absolutely Freak Out (Zap Your Mind!!) and Hypnotic Liquid Machine from the Golden Utopia, with acid-drenched, 60's-retro cover art, sometimes featuring naked Japanese hippie girls posed as icons of unencumbered freedom. Their stated goal is to make "trip music" designed to attune the listener to the "cosmic vibration," and they abundantly look the part. For a guy with an eye to the weird, if the Acid Mothers Temple were at ALL on the radar in Japan, stuff like this would STAND OUT.

I spoke to AMT founder and leader Makoto Kawabata via email, with invaluable help from Alan Cummings of the UK, who translated (thanks!). AMT neophytes are directed to www.acidmothers.com, the official site, and in particular the FAQ section, “Kawabata's Words,” if you want to learn more about, say, the UFO summoning ceremony the band held, the philosophy of their "soul collective," or where the self-taught guitarist gets his ideas for song titles; since Kawabata doesn’t like to answer questions already in the FAQ, I’ve endeavoured to cover new territory below.

Me: First off, a friend of mine really wants to know about the band and the Moomintrolls. What was the genesis of "The Hattifatteners Song?"

Kawabata Makoto: In Japan the Moomins were shown on television between 1969 and 1972, and it was very popular. I grew up watching it and later I bought all the books and devoured them too. The Hattifatteners are my favourite characters, though the song title itself has no particular meaning. Iguess that sense of movement just popped into my head. It's funny that you should ask me about cartoon characters because when I was a child I had a conception of Christian, Buddhist and Hindu (etc) art as being like cartoons and I used to copy them. Even today I still collect popular religious artefacts.

Me: Do you have kids?

Kawabata Makoto: I have no children and I don't think I'll ever get married. Perpetuating my DNA would probably have a bad effect on future society! People as useless as me should be prevented fromreproducing. Not having kids will be my contribution to society.

Me: I absolutely love the quote on the FAQ, "I think that it was maybe because I had music that I never became a terrorist." Were you an angry young man?

Kawabata Makoto: When I was around six or seven and I first started reading manga, my mother bought me a set of books about the lives of famous people in history. I read them from cover to cover, and I felt a lot of sympathy for the lives of Napoleon and Nobunaga Oda. After that I started to read historical novels and books about war. I got obsessed with revolutionaries on the Imperial side in the lead up to the 19th century Meiji Restoration in Japan, and with the lifestyles of dictators like Hitler. When I was about ten, I had this vague idea that I'd like to become someone who changes the world, and this eventually escalated into dreams of causing a worldwide revolution (not in the Marxist sense) and controlling the world. I don't think I was especially angry at the world - I just had this longing for the idea of revolution. I remember saying that if I had power I would start a guerrilla movement to depose myself and seize power. I must have been interested in the process by which revolutions fail or succeed, and particularly in the plots and mindgames that go along with this process - I saw the whole thing as a kind of game in which it would be worth gambling your life.

In school, I was the kind of kid who always loved to annoy the teacher by asking difficult questions. I loved getting the rest of the kids to back me up in debates with the teacher about politics. I loved the psychological aspects of politics, and I used to enjoy manipulating groups within the extra-curricular clubs to fight against each other. This was probably because I have a real loathing of group activities, so I would manipulate things to create situations more amenable to me personally. However once I discovered music, my early dreams of becoming a politician or a philosopher disappeared entirely.

Me: Do you have any desire to influence young people through your music? Is there a "political meaning" to your songs?

Kawabata Makoto: To begin with, my music has no message. Music is simply music, no more and no less. If you wanted to find some message in it, perhaps it would be that I want people to find some sense of the secret of music through it. That's all. I have no idea and no interest in whether my music exerts any influence on the young. It is as much as I can do to create my music to the fullness of my abilities, and I have no time to consider its effect on others. Neither have I ever wanted to influence anyone else. Of course, I do have personal political beliefs, but I have never tried to express those beliefs through music and I do not think that music should be used for such a purpose. Of course I am aware that such music exists, and putting the message aside, there is some of that type of music that I enjoy. But if I do enjoy it, it is purely on musical terms, not because I agree with the message it is trying to express. If I ever wanted to express a political message, I would find some means other than music.

Me: Are you often hassled by the police in Japan?

Kawabata Makoto: When I was young I was often suspected of being involved with drugs, but I've always tried to avoid contact with the police as much as I can. They're always going to have power and the law on their side, no matter how irrational, and I'm always going to come off worse. So I try to avoid contact with them, try to avoid being suspected of anything criminal. I had various run ins when I was younger, but now I need to apply for work visas to go the US so keeping my nose cleanhas become a matter of life and death.

Me: Have you ever sampled the weed here?

Kawabata Makoto: Vancouver marijuana? I've never tried it, and to be honest now I have zero interest in drugs. Drugs provided a hint for me at one time, but I don't think they can ever provide an answer. I'm not anti-drugs and I would never object to anything to that anyone else wanted to do, but for me drugs are no longer necessary. When I was younger I tried everything I could get my hands on, but it was out of curiosity to find out what they could show me. Now I'm able to enter into thosekinds of states through strength of will alone so I no longer need the help of drugs. In fact, I have a feeling that if you want to keep on searching for answers then drugs will eventually become more of a hindrance than a help.


Me: What do you admire about Japanese society? What irritates you the most?

Kawabata Makoto: In answer to the first question, the need to try and do everything as efficiently as possible. Sometimes this can take capitalism to an extreme, but I don't necessarily think this is a bad thing. The value placed on the effort and the process of trying to find the most efficient solution is something that I think the Japanese can be proud of. The stance of seeing yourself as not worthy, or “the culture of shame,” are also two of the virtues of Japanese culture. Of course, there is much that has been lost due to the Westernization of our lifestyles and efforts to increase the standard of living. Probably the thing that annoys me the most is the ceaseless yearning after Western culture. It is so sad to see ancient and wonderful traditions being wilfully discarded, but of course I am also conscious that I am a part of the problem. I am disappointed by young Japanese who have become stupid through growing up in an era that provides for all their needs.

Me: Do you feel alienated from the mainstream of Japanese society?

Kawabata Makoto: Once I started travelling abroad, I rediscovered many things about Japan. I read once (in a book written by a non-Japanese, I hasten to add!) that there are two kinds of people, Japanese and everyone else. I lot of what I have seen leads to feel that this is perhaps true. I believe that the Japanese are innately communist. There's a Japanese proverb that says that the nail that sticks out should be hammered down - and Japanese love uniforms, and there is a current of thought in Japan that admires you the less individuality you show. Accordingly, what 'individuality' that is allowed to exist in Japan must always align itself to some kind of group identity. Truly unique and visible individuality is not recognized and is treated as 'alien'. But on the other hand, it is this kind of thinking that has created Japan as it is now. It is this system of values that sees the individual as one part of the whole that creates in Japan words like 'corporate warrior'. And it is these people and their devotion of their lives to their work that has created the idea of 'family service' (the time that they give to their families at the weekend). However, I do not hate the values of these kinds of Japanese – they are the ones who sustain Japanese society and for that I thank and even admire them. I, on the other hand, have no qualifications to become one part of their society. But it's because of their hard work that I am able to drop out of that society and live in comfort while devoting my life to music.

In the past I once worked as a designer in a large company. But when I realised that if I were to struggle for the next 30 years and rise above all my colleagues and rivals, the seat that I would finally get to sit in would be the same one occupied by my boss today, I handed in my resignation. I realised that I could never live in a world where I could so clearly imagine what kind of person I would be in 30 years time. But at the same time there is a part of me that cannot accept the European idea of individuality. I'm a hedonist, a revolutionary and I live for the moment, but I'm also quite driven. I can't just sit and enjoy life or relax. Perhaps that says something about the Japanese blood that must run through the veins even of this dropout.

Me: How do you feel about touring?

Kawabata Makoto: In recent years I've spent six months out of every twelve on the road. It's great to be able to meet all kinds of people, but touring really does wear you down both mentally and physically. When I'm on the road I get loads of new ideas that make me want to rush home and start recording. But when I'm recording every day, I get this desire to get back on the road. Wherever I go people ask me about which countries or cities I enjoy the most and I always give the same reply - "there's good things and bad things about everywhere, things I love and things I hate. Wherever you go there's people, cities and nature, and it's all pretty much the same. And besides we get to see very little of the places we visit apart from clubs, record shops and wherever we're crashing that night.

If there's one thing that really gets me down on the road, it's the food. I prefer to stick to a pure Japanese diet and trying to change that is really hard for me. I don't like bread, cheese, ham and other processed meats, pasta, pizza or fruit, so often it is hard for me to find anything that I can order. Recently I've been drinking nothing but shochu (a Japanese alcohol, stronger than sake), and I can't really drink much beer any more. But everywhere we go, we always get given beer. I try vodka instead, but what I really want is shochu! In February I went on a solo tour of Europe and this time I didn't bring any food with me from Japan and tried to get by on what I get locally. That's was tough and my healthsuffered. On the road it's important to look after your health, so the change in diet is the most difficult thing for me.

Me: At your last Vancouver show, there were almost no Japanese in the audience.

Kawabata Makoto: AMT have refused to be covered by the Japanese mass media for the past ten years. Apart from our first three albums, almost everything we have released has been on overseas labels which are of course poorly distributed within Japan. We only play once or twice a year in Japan, so until recently virtually no one had heard of us. Which might explain why there are hardly ever any Japanese fans at our concerts abroad. Sometimes we do get Japanese who come to our concerts abroad, but almost always they tell us that they first heard of us after they left Japan.

Me: I was struck by how more respectful and attentive Japanese audiences were, compared to audiences here. When I saw Keiji Haino play, the audience didn't make a sound for the whole forty minutes of his performance, only applauding when he was finished. How would you explain this difference?

Kawabata Makoto: If there is a difference, it's that Japanese audiences come to hear the music and that American or European audiences come to enjoy themselves. In addition, tickets are expensive in Japanese clubs so most people will only be able to afford to buy one drink. But in the US and Europe people will drink while listening to the music and they'll go to the bar even during the performance. Japanese audiences will also watch all the bands on the bill - firstly because they've paid a lot to get to in, but also because they're simply curious about the bands even if they've never heard of them before. I don't know which attitude is better. If you've paid your money to get in, then you should have the right to enjoy the music in whichever way you like. You can listen quietly or if you're bored you can chat with your friends, it's up to you. Maybe it's more important for the musicians to try and play in such a way that people won't feel like chatting?

Sometimes in Japan you'll see people sitting down criticizing those who get up to dance, and I'm not too sure about that. If it's rock then of course I think it's natural for people to want to move their bodies. Because Japanese audiences are so restrained in their reactions, sometimes Japanese bands that play overseas get overly surprised by the reaction they get there. But that's just stupid. Sometimes there'll be some really tedious band on the bill and they'll get just as big a round of applause as us. At times like that I wonder how much you can trust the audience. But the audience are there to enjoy themselves, so that's their prerogative – but musicians need to be wary of getting too carried away by audience reaction...

Me: When people from one culture adopt the forms of another, they are often selective about it, and sometimes get certain things wrong, or leave certain things out (I’m thinking of the way many westerners have adopted aspects of martial arts or Buddhism here). Did you ever feel like you were consciously adopting foreign forms, by emulating the rock of the 1960’s?

Kawabata Makoto: For me, and for those Japanese of my generation or older, rock was an imported culture. For this reason, many Japanese expended time and energy in creating exact copies of it or in 'deliberately' trying to create original forms of rock. My take on rock is that it is a form of popular music that began in the US and was brought to a peak of completion in the UK. But at the same time it is equally true that since rock is not just a surface style but a 'spirit' or attitude, it absorbed influence from many other sources and thus transformed itself in innumerable ways. This is its great difference to jazz. And it is this that meant that many countries or regions gave birth to their own forms of rock, Krautrock in Germany being a good example. At this point then rock ceased to be a US or British monopoly and changed into a kind of music of the world. When we first thought about covering the Occitanian trad folk song "La Novia" we worried that because we ourselves were not Occitanian, trying to cover their traditional music would be a sterile exercise or a kind of fakery. But fortunately what we play is rock not trad, and rock possesses a power like that of a black hole, capable of sucking in and absorbing every other form of music. We realised that this power could transform even Occitanian trad into rock, and that was why we went ahead with the cover. And now does anyone who hears the AMT version of “La Novia” think that it sounds fake?

For better or worse rock has the power to absorb and fuse together every form of music. Has there ever been another music as mutant and freakish in nature? I believe that rock has now completely severed its connections with its roots and its original socio-political contexts, and has become something unique of itself. Rock has become something that anyone can play, regardless of musical training or technique. Its style now exists only in its absence. For me, this is why rock has become something that I only judge on its coolness or uncoolness. No matter what form it takes, if it is cool, then that is enough.

In which Peter Stampfel turns me on to Jeffrey Lewis, and I enthuse about it

During my longish interview with Peter Stampfel of the Holy Modal Rounders, Mr. Stampfel spoke very highly of a young NY musician and cartoonist named Jeffrey Lewis, of whom I had not heard before (this was in the portion of the interview that did not make it into - nay, was not even transcribed for - my Nerve Magazine interview with Stampfel. It will appear in full form, along with a brief chat with Antonia, in Bixobal #3, if all goes according to schedule).

Stampfel tells the following story: "I met Lewis at Ed Sanders’ birthday party, and there’s two kids onstage, and one of them says, 'We’re going to do a history of punk rock on the Lower East Side which is a history of punk rock, 1959 to 1975,' and I thought, 'Yeah, kid - yeah, right. This is gonna be good.' And he proceeded to do this twelve minute thing starting with Harry Smith, going to the Holy Modal Rounders, and then the Fugs, and basically namechecking every single punkish influence, and then in 1975 the Ramones get to England and people believe that punk rock is invented. And he would sing a little snippet of every single group he was going through, and he nailed it! I mean, he did a brilliant job of exposition - he remembers things that I’d forgotten, you know? And I went up to the guy - 'Man, that was fucking great - you nailed it!'
And subsequently he asked me to record on an album behind him called City and Eastern Songs, that Kramer recorded..."

So in addition to being grateful to Peter Stampfel for more or less, through his music, turning me onto the joys of oldtimey some 20 years ago, I now owe him a debt of gratitude for introducing me to the music and art of Jeffrey Lewis. I mean, dig, anyone who does an anti-folk album of slightly more "accessible" versions of Crass songs, that I can play my non-punk friends without them making me turn it off, is doing, if nothin' else, something extremely socially useful for, well, anyone like me... but Lewis is doing a LOT else, and has some of the flat-out funniest/smartest songs I've heard in years. Check this interview with him, or this one, or this neat little film for "The Last Time I Did Acid I Went Insane," for instance. Or "The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song," or his dark, hilarious meditation on Will Oldham and indy rock - there's a whole delightful afternoon to be spent listening to Jeffrey Lewis stuff online. I wish I'd gotten around to transcribing the part of the Stampfel tape where he talks about Jeffrey just a little earlier, because the GUY WAS JUST IN VANCOUVER! (Feb. 22 - he played Richards on Richards). And will be playing Seattle March 31st, for those of you who are mobile.

Actually, he says he's lookin' for a pick-up gig on April 1st, but I'm guessing crossing the border will be too complex to swing at short notice... Will keep y'all posted on that.

Straight to Hell

I've always retained a fondness for Alex Cox's much-maligned spaghetti western sendup, Straight to Hell, starring Sy Richardson and Dick Rude (from Repo Man), Joe Strummer of the Clash, and Hole's Courtney Love - I believe from before she was in Hole. I hadn't seen the film in years, and had my doubts about how well it would hold up, but I was happy, when I stumbled on a cheap used DVD, to pick it up. Watching it, I discovered there's a sequence that has permanently secured its place in mah book of love and fondness: in minute 43, there's an ironic quote from Pasolini's Salo: The 120 Days of Sodom (a character is looking through binoculars as two men hold a third down and brand him, as he writhes in the dust). Anyone who realizes that he can score a laugh from a certain cinephelic subset by dropping a reference to Salo is ALL RIGHT BY ME. (Zander Schloss' "Salsa y Ketchup" was pretty fun to rediscover, too).

As for Clash-related items and news, note that Mikey Dread just died, at age 54, of a brain tumour.

Busy Me, plus Cassavetes Petition

Not much time to blog lately. Preoccupied and will remain so for a short while...

By the way, if any film buffs reading this haven't signed the petition to have Cassavetes' Husbands released online, its here. I'm pleased to see that it's gathered a bit of steam - over 400 signatures at the moment (I'm #51, and I signed it a couple of years ago, to my recollection, so it's a slow crawl to glory).

Cassavetes fans might also find this note from Ray Carney, about the shortening of Husbands, to be of interest, and this post about the "censoring" (?) of a recent print of Love Streams. Professor Carney still has not spilled the beans about his so-called "lost Cassavetes film" - his promise to do so "in a few months" appeared on his "about me" page well over a year ago, and remains undelivered upon, which is irritating to say the least. Though he did upload a new photo of himself recently.

Bush says YES to waterboarding

Sigh.

Japanese Land Leeches

When I was a kid, I used to catch tadpoles and treefrogs in a frog pond near my house in Maple Ridge. I was delighted, as I recall, to find leeches therein. My friends and I would actually put the leeches on our skin and let them start to feed, then experiment with the best ways of removing them. The easiest, most surefire leech-repellent was fire. Hold a flame near them, or touch them with the hot metal edge of your lighter, and they would curl up and drop off, eager to get away.

The leeches were nowhere near as big as the ones in the picture accompanying this article, but they were still pretty cool.

Too bad the pond was paved over and turned into condos - it's been gone for around 25 years. I wonder where the decendents of those frogs mate now (assuming any are still alive?).

On Turning 40

How it all looks to me now (can I trust my own memory, and what it makes of the past?)...

My early 20s were spent mostly strangled in confusion, not knowing what the hell to do with myself: frightened of women, terrified (until I dropped out) of how well I was playing what seemed largely like a bunch of bullshit games in academia, overly dependent on (but not at all respectful of) my parents, unable to imagine myself actually having a career or living on my own... Mostly, I was quite depressed. Cinema, Nietzsche, acidhead philosophy, and the society-blaming anger of punk rock (or, later, the chaos of free jazz) were my guiding points and cultural references, and while they perhaps kept me alive and inspired and usually well-entertained, they didn't do much to help me face the things I was eager to avoid, which is what I had to do in order to feel better about myself. I remember many evenings sitting alone on a pier at Pitt Lake, smoking cigarettes, feeling depressed and powerless and sorry for myself, wondering if I'd ever get up the courage to kill myself. I felt like my life was over, like there was no way into the world for me, and that I might as well just reconcile myself to it. I felt that way for a long time.

All that changed in my late 20s. I bottomed out: I remember one day where I'd overeaten too many pot cookies at a friend's house and was slumped against her chilly kitchen wall, a bowl of puke in my lap, immobile but able to hear background conversations that my friends were having, to the effect of, "It would be bad if he died." (I think I can safely say that remains my low point). I'd walk through the streets of the suburbs and feel like I was on an alien planet, each identical suburban dream-home seeming a lie built on a lie, promising cookie-cutter versions of freedom and independence and individuality, while looking more or less identical to the faux-dream-home nextdoor. Harsh words people had said - friends I'd walked away from, or who had walked away from me - would echo in my ears and I'd wonder if people were right about me. So much for early potential: death of a teacher's pet.

And then a series of things happened that helped me get my shit together. In short order, I lost my virginity (in a pathetic but now kind of amusing collision with someone I met on a dating line; it all left me uncomfortable enough with myself that it prompted changes); I met a remarkable and unique Native American guy who kicked my ass all over the place for my cowardice and laziness and pushed me to get stuff done; I met a girl who I thought for a long time I was in love with; and, having started to put my shit a little closer together, in nice little piles, I got my own apartment, went back to school, finished a degree - tailoring it for ESL, as the shortest route to a paying job. I reinforced it all with a therapeutic but haywire Life Skills Coaches' Training course in the now defunct Stellar College, and in 1999, at age 31, found myself in Japan, where I stayed, in my first sorta professional position, until 2002.

My 30s have been rather different. I've been busy -- relative to my 20's, anyhow, I've worked damned hard and had a relatively good time of things. I could issue a litany of whines if I wanted to: my sex life is sporadic at best; my academic career appears to be over; I've got mounds of debt (mostly from student loans); and my current job, while relatively entertaining and easy and definitely decent-paying, is a bit of a waste relative to what I could do. I have various disturbing health problems: I'm losing hearing in my left ear, I have sleep apnea, and I'm overweight, and wondering when the various ailments my parents have had will manifest in me. (Both my folks are still alive, but between them, they've had two different cancers, heart problems, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypoglycemia, epilepsy-like seizures, carpal tunnel syndrome, eye surgery, and a host of stomach and sleep problems). I could find stuff to bitch about if I wanted to: but mostly I'm just grateful that the awful feeling of complete powerlessness and alienation that dominated my 20's appears to have dissipated for good. I'm glad to have some feeling of independence, and to have repaired, to some extent, my troubled relationship with my parents; and I'm delighted, most of all, that I'm getting published. To date and more-or-less in order, I've appeared in Terminal City, Discorder, the Nerve Magazine, Razorcake, This Magazine, Trust Fanzine, Ox Fanzine, Skyscraper, Punk Planet, Xtra West, the Georgia Straight, Bixobal, CineAction, and... well, there's news about another publication I'm excited about being in, coming in May, but I don't want to mention it until it's actually out. I've gotten to talk to dozens of my heroes from my 20s - people whose art sustained me: John Lurie (a piece I still need to find a home for, if anyone is interested), Peter Stampfel, Eugene Chadbourne, Terry Riley, the Subhumans, DOA, the Pointed Sticks, Phil Minton, Efrim Menuck, Carla Bozulich, Nels Cline... it's too long a list for me to go into. And I've gotten to meet and talk with some great current bands - like Vancouver's The Rebel Spell, or the now relocated Winks - as well as various filmpeople (Reg Harkema, Charles Mudede, even Joe Dante, forgodsake). It's an exciting "hobby," if you want to call it that, and someday might lead me somewhere else. No doubt there's a book in it somewhere down the line. I've got it very, very good - better than I would have imagined, staring into the dark waters of Pitt Lake - and I'm grateful. Even if I still worry that I'm less than I could be or should be, I've got something like a life, and there's no argument about the fact that my 30's kick my 20's ass.

And now another counter is turning over, and we enter the middle-stretch of my life... I wonder what the next ten years are going to look like? (Probably not much like those of the exuberant, desparate men in Cassavetes' Husbands, pictured above, but what other image could better mark my entry into middle age?). I must say, I feel more anticipation than dread, overall: I seriously doubt that it can be worse than my past.

Anyone interested in joining me to cautiously celebrate (on March 15th, a week after my actual birthday) is invited to email me at ammacinn - at - telus - dot - n et, for an invite and details... it involves a film...

Alcohol Sucks

Jeezus, what a primitive drug. THIS is what we legalize?

Drank a total of five beer(s? - it's odd to me, as an ESL teacher, how beer seems to have entered a netherworld of countability, really having become a count noun, along with Coke and coffee - an exception in the world of liquids) and one large hot sake yesterday, over the course of several hours, climaxing in a two-fister with bottles of Pacific at the Cobalt as the Rebel Spell played. Ask Chris Walter, ask Erin - I talked to both of'em - and they will say, I'm sure-ish, that I was in no way drunk.

Am I hungover today, though? Yes, I am. I am indeed.

Bleeeeccchh.

Chris Walter and the Rebel Spell Friday

Well, my apologies to the Her Jazz Noise Collective - fond as I am of them, I just couldn't make it to the Cobalt for Fake Jazz Wednesday last night. What can I say? I was home, warm, and comfy; I gotta work tomorrow; and I didn't have enough cash on hand for a bus trip home, so I woulda had to have walked. There's more of a chance I'll go see the Rebel Spell on Friday, with Chris Walter reading; I haven't seen them play since my Razorcake thing on them came out (now on the stands at, like, Chapters and shit - it's in the one with a Bev Davies pic of the Tranzmitors on the cover, with, by pleasing coincidence, a Chris Walter interview with them).

Now the BIG question on my mind is if I want to go see the New York Dolls on Saturday. It's one of those dangerous gigs, where the questions of "how lame could it be" and "how great could it be" equally provide compelling arguments for staying or going...

HP Lovecraft goes to Russia

Anyone know about the Dyatlov Pass Accident? It's fairly creepy stuff...

"Stuff White People Like"

An amusing blog to peruse.

The Tracey Fragments

Liked this film, Bruce McDonald's new one, based on local writer/ UBC prof Maureen Medved's novel. Formally adventurous, in the best way; unlike van Sant's unnecessarily tricked-up Paranoid Park, it uses it's various "gimmicks" - a shifting kaleidoscope of multiple screens, fragmented images, layered soundtrack, and non-sequential time signature - to richly illustrate the inner life of its unhappy 15-year old female narrator, Tracey Berkowitz (van Sant's film, by contrast, seems to be disguising an absence of any real feeling with its overly aestheticized approach; it doesn't know how to depict its character's inner life, so it tries to dazzle us with images of his outer life, to an ultimately deadening effect). Not quite a feature's length worth of story here, and various "bits" in the film (the psychiatrist - a cross-dressing Bucky Haight - and Lance from Toronto, shown above) don't amount to as much as they could, but the moments that work work beautifully, the film is ALWAYS compelling to watch, and the world needs more emotionally honest movies for fucked up, suffering adolescents, since they generally are left to fend for themselves and can use the reassurance that they aren't alone. Plays again tomorrow at the Cinematheque. I haven't seen a Bruce McDonald movie since Hard Core Logo, which I love; it's nice to see that he's continuing in a sort of punk spirit (even sharing the rights to his work, with Creative Commons licensing). Yay team.

Teacher Gives 9th Grade Student Child of God; Could Face Charges

Photo: the good old days, when I still had my Cormac McCarthy collection (all now sold; the above was taken when I listed them on eBay).

Holy shit, is this funny. A 9th grade teacher is possibly facing charges for giving one of his "Advanced Placement" English students Cormac McCarthy's Child of God to read.

Child of God, my favourite of McCarthy's novels and an excellent starting point for entering his work, is about a displaced, somewhat slow hillbilly, pushed off his land and neglected by the community, who gradually goes quasi-feral, living in a cave and, at first, gratifying his sexual urges by sneaking around lover's lanes, masturbating as he peers in car windows. When he encounters a couple who have accidentally asphyxiated in their vehicle while making out, he has a chance to actually have sex with a female, if dead; after he comes, he leaves, and then thinks again and decides she still might be useful, carrying her body with him back to his hiding place. Having developed a fondness for sex, even if it's with dead people -- certainly the only kind of sex he can get, given his poverty, dim wit, unkempt appearance, and reputation as a misfit (all of which leave their mark on his self-esteem and opinion of "society") -- he progresses to actually killing women so as to become intimate with their corpses, storing up their bodies in his cave. The marvellous thing about the book is that this character - Lester Ballard - is McCarthy's protagonist, and he is consistently rendered as recognizable and human, whether we like it or not - "a child of God, much like yourself," I believe McCarthy describes him as. It's actually a very funny book, in very unsettling ways, and an essential piece of American literature.

The idea of giving it to a 9th grader, though - what was this guy THINKING? Either this is an extremely naive human being, unaware just how STOOOOOOOOOOPID the vast mainstream of Americans are - how illiterate, and how blissfully ignorant of the interests and appetites of their youth -- or else he has a whole lot more faith than I do in the justice of the universe, the security of his position, and the wisdom of his employers. I would have LOVED this book in Grade 9, myself - I think that was the year I read Richard Matheson's Hell House four times consecutively - so it's not like the kid can't take it; if he's a normal teenaged boy, he's probably sought out far more perverse, salacious, and unwholesome materials to sate his curiosity about life, doubtlessly with far less literary merit than the McCarthy novel. From where I sit, tho', the teacher, Kaleb Tierce, probably needs a harsh reality check; if nothing else, it'll sharpen his survival instincts, which appear to be somewhat deficient.

I wonder if Cormac McCarthy has heard about this case?

Heh: I wonder if Oprah knows?

Heh heh heh heh heh. This little tidbit made my night.

Bev Davies: Never Too Late for a Punk Rock Calendar!

If you’re like me, two months into 2008, you still have a 2007 calendar tacked somewhere up on the wall. Perhaps it is on the page for November or December. You’re aware that time has moved on – you just haven’t gotten around to turning the page, or replacing the thing. Maybe you’ve completely forgotten it.

There’s no shame in it, really: calendars are more of a decorative phenomenon than a functional one these days. It’s an age where you can check the date anytime you want by clicking on your desktop, where every email arrives dated and where a goodly number of people carry around electronic gadgets that remind them of the time and date as a matter of course. My 2007 Bev Davies-meets-Nardwuar Punk Rock Calendar put out by Mint Records (awarded to me as a trivia prize by Nardwuar at a Pointed Sticks show last year!) is a case in point: not only was it hanging on my wall on the page after December until this very morning – showing a photo of Duff McKeegan, when he was in the Fastbacks, without even an accompanying month to go along with it – but it’s not even in my “office area.” I’ve hung it in my kitchen, where I needed some more decoration, and where, in fact, I don’t have any other electronic gadgets to tell me the date (my microwave is only set to tell me the time, if I could just figure out how to program it). This way, if I’m in my kitchen, and realize I need to know what day it is, I don’t actually have to walk over to the computer, I just have to flip ahead to the correct month. Is it my fault if that only happens about five times a year?

Besides, the calendar looks cool, and that’s the whole point.

Given all the above, I hope y’all will forgive my posting my interview with Bev Davies (Flickr page here) about her 2008 Vancouver Punk Rock Calendar – as originally done for the (now defunct, or at least in long-term hibernation) Nerve Magazine – in mid-February. Bev recently sent out a Myspace reminder that calendars are still available, so take heart and heed, and contact the Jem Gallery ASAP to get yours! The calendars are limited-edition, signed, and very much more DIY-feelin’ than the Mint catalogs; and the pics are glossy detachables, that you can save long after 2008 is a memory. February’s image is of No Exit – a semi-forgotten Vancouver punk band whose membership once, I’m told, included Julie Belmas.

Before we commence, a brief testimonial from Susanne Tabata – currently making a feature documentary about the early Vancouver scene, focusing on “music, politics, innocence, rebellion, life and lessons.:” “Bev was a brunette, quiet, never tawdry. We saw each other at a lot of shows and interviews. Wore the Perryscope backstage pass. Bev was not a member of the mainstream press and was never acknowledged outside a core group. She persisted in recording a narrative photographic document of part of an era. Dare I mention she raised her son at the same time. Our public relationship revolves around work. We're also friends...a lot of it can't get ink but I can say we share ideas, pickles, a cook, and the relevant Keith, RIP.” (Keith Kristmanson, a mutual friend who took this photo of Bev baking tarts shortly before his death in 2007).

Photo by Keith Kristmanson

Commence interview.

Allan: So how long have you known Carola of the Jem Gallery?

Bev: We were young, I don’t know. She was one of the first people I met, when I first started going to shows – so probably since 1979. There were large parts of both of our lives where we didn’t see each other for just ever.

Allan: It was a working relationship then?

Bev: Nope – we were just friends!

Allan: When did work with her start?
Bev: I guess when she opened this gallery. She used to work at a store, but I never saw her there, but I used to see her on the bus sometimes. I don’t know – I don’t remember!

Allan: Do your photographs still run in papers like the Vancouver Sun?

Bev: I’ve had some stuff in there this year – Dominic is very kind to me at the Vancouver Sun. He ran some Police photos – old photos; when the Police were here in town, when they opened that whole tour, he ran some of my photographs in there which was really nice. He also ran some Clash photos, of Paul Simenon, when he was doing an article about the Clash. But in context, like, when the article includes something about previous times, or something like that, he thinks often of me. He ran some photos from this current show, a week ago Saturday – he had a little article about it.

Allan: Are many of your images widely shown outside Vancouver? (I know you do work for Razorcake).

Bev: A lot of stuff, when I was doing stuff with Nardwuar. Let’s see – Chunklet, Joe’s book... Buck’s book, Guilty of Everything, has my photos in it. Magazines, no. It’s sort of hard to get it together with a lot of magazines.

Allan: Are you going to be in Susanne Tabata’s film?

Bev: I inspired it! She came to my show at Carola’s gallery the opening night, and she kind of started listening to people talking, and talking to people. She was here much longer ago – she was a student at UBC, and she was at CiTR. She did a lot of interviews – I have photographs of her interviewing the Ramones and – I can’t remember who else, but definitely the Ramones. Oh – Los Popularos, a band from here. She’d done a lot of that, and a lot of work with John Tanner and Night Dreams, that original video show...

Allan: I don’t know that –

Bev: It was this idea that John Tanner and Raoul Casablanca had, of just showing videos of bands, way before Much Music ever happened. They had this late night show on Rogers up on Oak Street at 41st, in the basement there, and it went on live. They’d have guests come in – like, the Specials came on live when they were in town opening for the Police. It was on late night. And then David and Buzzy did that from the North Shore.

Allan: Soundproof. I knew Soundproof, out in Maple Ridge.

Bev: And it kind of splits along those lines. People who didn’t have Rogers Cable didn’t get the one show, and people that had Shaw – Surrey and places like that – got the North Shore, got Buzzy and David. But Buzzy and David were a bit later. Not trememdously, but it was after that. So she’d worked with that. And so she was at the opening of my show of 144 punk rock photographs, and that whole thing started to gel in her mind that she wanted to do this.

Allan: When was that?

Bev: This year – January 5th it opened, 2007. The photographs are still to be seen in albums at the JEM gallery. There’s a few missing ones that have sold, that I haven’t reprinted. I haven’t gotten around to it.

Allan: Was there going to be a book coming out?

Bev: I was hoping that. No news at the moment.

Allan: Anyhow, going back to participation in Susanne’s film -

Bev: She interviewed me. I don’t know a lot about what my content will be in there, but with me that part doesn’t really matter. There’s going to be some of the photographs – photographs that I’ve shot that I’ve given her – Velvet Revolver with Duff who used to be in Guns and Roses, and then was in Seattle bands that came up here, like, the Fastbacks. He was in the 2007 calendar, there’s a picture of him when he was about 15. She interviewed him and I shot the whole show when they were here, so there were a couple of shots where I’ve given her the rights to use them. I didn’t publish them anywhere else, for the movie, if that’s what she wants to do with them.

Allan: If I can ask about money –

Bev: Money, what’s that?

Allan: Heh. No, but seriously. Did you make any from your photography?

Bev: No, of course not. What is that saying about the farmer that’s out in the field? If he won a million dollars, he’d just keep farming til it was all gone? Well, that’s kind of it with photography. If I had an independent source of income, I’d just keep doing photography until the money was all gone. There’s nothing coming in. It all goes out, in supplies. There’s a little bit less of the supply end of it now that I shoot more digital. There really isn’t the same cost incurred in doing the work that there was, shooting film.

Allan: How often did you let your work run for free? You’re somewhat of a celebrity, so do papers that don’t normally pay, pay you?

Bev: No. When they don’t pay, they don’t pay anybody. And I mean, that’s always – you have to sort of weigh it out, sit on your stuff and demand that you get paid (which is a valid way of looking at things), or, what I tend to think is that these photographs, though they’re mine, they actually really belong to a time in history and the music that they went with, and I would hate to think that I would sit on all of these photographs until I pass away, and someone just throws them away, and people never get to see them. Not that that’s going to happen, but you know what I mean – you’re waiting and waiting and waiting, and then the time passes by and the interest wanes. I think it’s more important to me, anyways, that people get to see the photographs and talk about that time and maybe listen to some of the music. I don’t think it’s an accident that a lot of this is happening at the same time – with Carola putting out the records now – the Dishrags coming out with a record on JEM, the Furies... Just a lot of interest in that kind of music. Carola and I just went to see the Black Lips three nights ago now, at Richards on Richards, and their sound, though incredibly contemporary, is based in a whole root of music that they weren’t even there for, earlier punk. They call themselves “flower punk,” psychedelic flower punk... In some ways for Green Day to come up with the music that they came up with, it came out of somewhere. They didn’t just pop out and, you know, go, “Wow, we just invented this.” It all just comes out of one type of music, and it evolves into something else. It seems to go in circles, and it seems like the interest is back, in punk again.

Allan: Okay, so there’s no money in it – did you have any cool perks?

Bev: Oh, like all of them. There’s weird stuff. Years ago, when I worked at the Straight, I remember going to some concert on the bus at the PNE – not when the PNE was open, maybe, but sometime through the year – and sitting not too far away from a bunch of young people who were going, “That’s Bev Davies!” And they weren’t talking to me, they were talking about me, and it was a really strange sensation. And I thought, “Jeez, this is what happens to people all the time,” y’know? Because I’d seen it happen to other people at the Commodore, where they’d be standing on the stairs talking to Drew and there’d be a whole mob of people going, “Look, there they are, standing there!” And not really talking to them, like it was a photograph or whatever... And that was really strange. Yeah, I don’t know...

Photo by Bev Davies

Allan: Let me ask about the Subhumans shot. It looks like there was nearly a riot in the audience.

Bev: Yeah, I’ve always called that photograph “...And the Entire Crowd Tries to Drag Wimpy Off the Stage,” ‘coz it looks like everybody in the audience, except Mike Normal, who is just standing there, looking so calm. But every other person in that audience is trying to drag Wimpy off the stage!

Allan: It’s been fun seeing you at recent DOA and Subhumans shows. The old rivalry between the two bands amuses me... Do you have any stories? As I’ve heard it, it all started as a conflict between the managers, David Spaner and Ken Lester.

Bev: Well, I don’t know that they didn’t like each other, but they were two of the most competitive people on the face of the earth, so they dragged their own sensibility of competitiveness into the arena of the bands they were managing, in a kind of fun sort of way I think. Oh, I remember – after the Subhumans broke up – I don’t think DOA ever broke up, ever –

Allan: They retired for a short period.

Bev: But – the Subhumans stopped playing, and I remember having difficulty getting into some DOA gig, and then mentioning to – I imagine it was Joe – that the Subhumans had put me on the “lifetime guestlist,” and DOA had never done that. And the person – probably Joe, though I keep thinking it was Randy for some reason or other – or maybe even Dave Gregg – turned and said, “Yes, but they broke up, didn’t they!” It was like, “Ahh! What’s good being on the guestlist for a band if they broke up?” That’s quite true.

Allan: What about – I could ask you to go on record and say which gig you preferred.... I thought the Subhumans at Pub 340 were a lot fresher!

Bev: They may have been fresher, but the venue was not! The air was foul and hot! Like, I was late getting there, and so I arrived halfway through their set, and I had driven down there, I had been outdoors for awhile with my camera – it was damp and cold, it was fall in Vancouver – and I walked in there, pulled the camera out of my case, and everything fogged on it. All the mirrors, all the lenses – everything. I looked through it and it was, like, white, and the place was not white, the place was very black-looking. The photographs that I’ve seen, I prefer the Subhumans photographs from that show, because they’re all sort of wild and unpredictable, but I’ve seen one photo Carola has in the current show at the gallery of Randy that’s just unbelievable, from the DOA thing, and also one that Femke has of Randy with his guitar over top of his head. I think there were incredibly good photographs to be taken at the DOA show, I just don’t seem to have gotten any of them. But I enjoyed that show. I enjoyed both shows.

Photo by Bev Davies

Allan: How many times have you seen DOA?

Bev: Couple.

Allan: (laughs).

Bev: I don’t know. It’s like the proverbial question of “how many concerts have you gone to?” Phh! I don’t know – this week, last week? I don’t know. I mean, I’ve seen them in England, I’ve seen them in Los Angeles, I’ve seen them in Chicago, I’ve seen them here - I’ve seen them in Surrey at Bumpers! Seen them in New West, seen them on the North Show – I saw them at Kits high in a noon hour concert. The Subhumans did a tour once of Vancouver high schools. Instead of touring the west coast or Canada or whatever – they toured the high schools. It’s called their high school tour.

Allan: Did you follow them on that?

Bev: No, I only went to a few. I don’t think I ever figured out that it was actually a tour. I just was surprised they were playing various high schools.

Allan: A friend of mine at work has a great story about seeing Art Bergmann playing “Hawaii” to a high school gym – I don’t know if it was as the Young Canadians, or the K-tels, but

Bev (softening the profanity): “Let’s go to frigging Hawaii!” (laughs)

Allan: And the vice principal was rushing the stage, saying no, no, no, stop! Art was giving him the finger and singing louder.

Bev: I want to go to frigging Hawaii...

Allan: Let me ask you about Los Popularos. You have a real knack for catching bands seeming not-posed. Do you do anything special?

Bev: Yeah, I just shoot and talk to them at the same time. And they don’t think I’m really shooting (laughs)! I mean, they were aware they were posing, but I don’t make them stop doing what they’re doing. And another example would be the DOA shot that’s in the calendar. That’s from one roll of film... They came out the back door of the Smilin’ Buddha – they all got cigarettes, they all got a light, they all talked to each other while they were doing that; meanwhile I was photographing the whole thing. And then they said, “Okay, we’re ready now,” and I said, “That’s okay, I’ve finished,” and left. Los Pops’ picture is kind of from the same vein. Of course they know they were being photographed, but they weren’t posing in that kind of sense where you go – stop talking, look at me, whatever. I just don’t do that with people.

Allan: But... are the results fairly unpredictable, then?

Bev: Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. I really like the feel of that photograph of Los Pops. I looked especially for it. I wanted to put them in the calendar and I wanted that to be the picture, that particular picture. It wasn’t a particularly easy roll of film to find, for me, ‘coz I didn’t have a date when I was sure that it had happened. And I really like the shapes that they make, the dark clothing that they have on, and the outdoor-ness of it – the bright day. And things like that. So I had a hard time. ‘Coz all of the pictures on the calendar have my name on it somewhere, and that one I kept trying it across the bottom of the picture. In varying degrees of greys and blacks and whites and things, and it didn’t work. I had to run it up the side, because it started to interfere with the shapes and things, when I put it across the bottom. Where a lot of other ones look fine with it across the bottom . Some didn’t – I ran it up the side. That’s not the only one I ran up the side. It just didn’t work to have it across the bottom.

Allan: The Buddy Selfish one, too.

Bev: Yeah.

Allan: What’s your history with (current Pointed Sticks drummer) Ian Tiles?

Bev: Uhm, known him since, like, 79. Now of course you have to explain that Ian Tiles IS Buddy Selfish. Or Buddy Selfish IS Ian Tiles.

Ian Tiles as Ian Tiles, in Japan. Photo provided by the Pointed Sticks, photographer uncertain (Gord?)

Allan: I never actually heard them. What were they like?

Bev: Buddy? Oh, excellent – he did all that old rock and roll/ rockabilly kinda stuff.

Allan: He was singing.

Bev: Yeah. He was really a band. I think Colin would be in it, and various other people. That would be a question to ask Ian. We’re trying to get him to resurrect Buddy at sometime, but he says, “Buddy’s retired.”

Allan: I’m curious... you’ve deliberately focused on all-Vancouver bands in this calendar, whereas you had photos of Motorhead and whatnot in the last one.

Bev: Right. I think it was the size of the run that Mint was going to do... Nardwuar and I had done a lot of interviews, prior to that, that had ended up in various magazines and things, and they covered a wider scope than just Vancouver music, and so it was a logical thing when looking at the calendar to include some of those interviews that had already happened, and pictures of bands that were not from the local scene. And if you’re looking at the size of the run that they did, and where they were sending calendars, the local scene would not have been exactly what they wanted. They went everywhere. 17 of them went to Rolling Stone magazine, all to individual people – they sent those calendars to everyone that they would normally send CDs to.
Allan: Okay.

Bev: Oh, I’ve got to tell you this. I got this email from Nardwuar one day, forwarded from Cynthia Plaster Caster! She had emailed Nardwuar had told him how much she’d enjoyed the calendar, and how it was up in her kitchen and all her castees when they came in really liked it too! So I got home from work at lunchtime and checked my email and here’s an email from Cynthia Plaster Caster! I was like, “Oh my God!” ...The calendar just went everywhere.

Allan: Nardwuar has a reputation for coming up with really obscure details. Was there anything that really amazed you, that he came up with during the interviews?

Bev: The thing that amazes me about Nardwuar is the fact that every now and again, you have to go – “Whoa: he wasn’t there.” Because you’re talking to this person that you feel – it’s not research, it’s actual stuff that he knows, and it’s not! It’s research, and it’s hard to remember that sometimes! Every now and then you get jarred into it. Sometimes it’s by errors. Other times it’s by questions where he goes, “Of course you know, I wasn’t there...” But I sent him some photos for an article he was doing, and he wanted some of Skinny Puppy; and he said, “That was the first concert I ever went to.” And it was like, “Woo, really? How could that be possible? You must have been at the Buddha...”

Photo of Nardwuar and Thor by Femke van Delft

Allan: How many copies of the calendar have sold thus far?

Bev: I don’t know. They take over half an hour to assemble the photographs on them, so we’re plugging away at them. I’m heading over to the gallery today with the anticipation of getting more than three done, which is all I got done yesterday. They take at least half an hour to put the pictures in.

Allan: And they’re 20 bucks each.

Bev: 20 plus tax. For the people who are IN the calendar, we’re waiving the tax, or if they want to think of it, as a 13% discount. I tend to like the 13 percent discount, because I like that number.

Allan: Do you have any favourite images?

Bev: Rude Norton – I love that picture of Rude Norton. That’s Wimpy with the glasses on. Whether he needed those glasses or not... Allan: Where have I seen that shot before?


Bev: The Rude Norton record – the famous little 7 inch. And... The one of Carola and I. That was taken by Sid Sick. That’s the other person in the picture of Rude Norton. Carola and I were at the house where Carola lives now. She lived there then, cos her parents owned that house, and she invited a whole bunch of us back to her house after something at the Buddha, and I lived in the neighbourhood near her house, so I headed off to there. And we were drinking – it was back in the day when I actually drank. We were drinking vodka in that picture; now – the process of – we were drinking vodka and orange juice, and then we ran out of orange juice, and Carola suggested that we could use Tang, and we were about to mix up the Tang with that water, and I stupidly suggested that there was absolutely no reason to add the water to the Tang, let’s just put the Tang into the vodka. So we were like, drinking straight vodka, with a bit of orange colouring in it, which was a really bad choice. So I walked home at four in the morning, a few blocks from her house, and I never did make it the house that night. I was afraid to go inside, if the ceilings would all swim around too much and doing all that kind of crap. So I sat for a long time on the front veranda, and I fell asleep, passed out in the front veranda in the chair.

Allan: Was this your place, or were you living with your parents?

Bev: No, no – it was my place. A friend found me in the morning. “What are you doing out here?” “Shh! Don’t yell at me.”

Allan: (laughs).

Bev (laughing): If there’s any children reading this, don’t do this! ...I don’t even think they make Tang anymore, but, you know...

Allan: So is the paper for the calendar handmade? It’s really nice.

Bev: It’s parchment, actually. I kind of thought that was cool – there’s a religious overtone to the type of paper. We’re trying not to have it be the same in any way to the Mint Records calendar. That was an awesome calendar with Nardwuar this year. This is the fourth calendar that I’ve done – I did a calendar in 1980, in 1981. I remember getting a list the first year from Ken Lester of all the places where DOA played and the radio stations that played DOA and any clubs that he knew of. He gave me his entire list, and I just sent calendars to all of them. Then there were many many years with no calendar, and Nardwuar, of course, who had seen the other two, kept saying, “Randy at Mint wants to republish one of your calendars!” And it just didn’t make sense to me. I thought, “Oh, that’s nice – why would Randy want to do that?” But it worked out very nicely.

Allan: Are any of the pictures in this year’s from the 1980 or ’81 calendars?

Bev: Probably the Rude Norton one. I would think. I’m not sure, I’ve never compared them. You’d have to look at the years, because anything would have to be 1979-80 to get into those. The thing that’s different between those two calendars and this one was that there were several pages at the back with photographs of all kinds of people from the scene, sort of as a collage. And that was done purposely by me to include everyone; even though they didn’t get a month in the calendar, they got their photo in. There’s pages of it on the Punk History Canada website – someone, it wasn’t me, was scanning and sending them in.

Allan: Are you going to do another one next year?

Bev: I want to do a book. I don’t know about a calendar. I don’t want to get to the point where it feels like I’m trying to flog this stuff. I want there to be a spontaneous desire for people to want it, as opposed to me out there with a little booth on the corner selling punk rock postcards... I really don’t want to get into that!


Limited edition calendars are available via the JEM Gallery; mail to thejemgallery – at – yahoo – dot – com, with “punk rock calendar” in the subject line. Shipping is $6 Cdn within Canada, and $15 Cdn, international. “We also have Smiling Buddha t shirts and magnets available. Please contact the gallery for more info.”



Photo by Keith Kristmanson

Two-Headed Creature slideshow

Like it says.

Steve Gerber of Howard the Duck fame dead at age 60

Before there was avant-garde music, before I knew anything about cinema, before punk rock had even arrived in the suburbs, I was a comics fan. I'd go to the convenience stores at the corner of 216th and Dewdney in Maple Ridge, or to Haney Books, and look through their racks, mostly for horror comics - Warren magazines, DC EC-ripoffs like House of Mystery, and so forth - which I would collect and horde and share. Even earlier, I remember liking the Spiderman-Stegron conflict -- Stegron was the talking half-stegosaurus, half-human that was leading dinosaurs in a war against humankind -- or the adventures of Turok, Son of Stone (who bears no resemblance to the video game character now named after him, though he was also a dinosaur hunter). And somewhere in all that, at about age 9, I stumbled across Howard the Duck, when it was still being published new (note: the original, Gerber-penned comics are a wholly other creature from the bad 80's movie that was made after control of the comic was taken from Gerber in a lawsuit with Marvel Comics). Young as I was, the ironic, faux-hardboiled language and cynical, alienated worldview - of a duck, for Chrissakes, "trapped in a world he never made" - somehow really appealed to me. There were jokes I didn't get - in the "Quack Up" series which the issue pictured is part of, Timothy Leary appears to give the institutionalized Howard some LSD, setting off a series of destructive hallucinations, and I remember asking my father to explain what was going on -- but I really liked it, and I still actually have a couple issues from my childhood. It was well ahead of its time, and probably did a great deal to corrupt and confuse me, for which I am forever in Steve Gerber's debt; for better or worse, he and Howard were formative influences, and I would probably be a far more well-adapted human being if it weren't for his encouragement. Steve Gerber died on February 10th, waiting for a lung transplant.

Howard, however, will live on.

SNFU, asSNFU, and Mr. Chi Pig

I was surprised by how good the Red Room SNFU show - or asSNFU, or whatever - was. I had no expectation Chi could still pull off a show that powerful - in his prime, he must have been an incredible performer. Though it would have been great to see SNFU with one or both of the Belkes, and tho' I can understand why Marc Belke doesn't want the band to be calling themselves SNFU now, the new guitarist was pretty damned good, too. I've been considering writing a story on Chi, but I think I'm giving it up, because:

A) I'm a fairly comfortable middleclass guy, pretty sheltered and in many ways naive, and I don't know that my questions wouldn't seem stupid or offensive, embarrassing to either him or me. It'd be awkward as hell -- thinking about a song like "Cockatoo Quill" and what it means given Chi's life now, I almost want to cry.

B) I don't think the new version of SNFU is together anymore, anyhow. The February 8th show at the Cobalt fell apart. I heard a few different stories about the reasons, but I'd be very surprised if that lineup plays again. If Chi can get a band together again, then at least there's the possibility of a story about how he's still performing - some slight angle of hope. I told Chi on Friday that if he gets something together again, we'll talk then.

C) Besides, I don't have enough in the way of pictures. Femke was there on the 8th, camera ready, but...

Anyhow, I'm posting this because I ran into a video of Chi performing "Hurt" and talking on camera on Youtube. It says more than I can.

Dating Despair: Someone Just Shoot Me

My god... I just encountered a woman whose profile on Plenty of Fish identifies her as a "Nursing Collage student." (I guess she makes fine art out of used syringes, bits of bandage, cotton swabs and surgical gloves?). She further informs us that she is a "single green eye" woman; of course, green eyes are fine by me, but I prefer my women to have two of them.

I need to stay away from these sites, their lameness might infect me...

Anyone Remember Tad?

Ah, Tad. Looks like there's a new movie about 'em - so sayeth the Stranger, in this here interview with Tad Doyle. I'd wondered what he'd been up to - Tad were always my favourite part of the Seattle scene, and I was quite a fan: had the LP of God's Balls, had the censored 8-Way Santa cover (on cassette!), even saw them a couple of times at the Cruel Elephant back in the day. Liked 'em better than Nirvana or Mudhoney or Soundgarden or any of the rest of that stuff, and even now, the only so-called grunge album I have a copy of is Salt Lick. Beware of the behemoth, motherfucker...