C O S M I K D E B R I S O C T O B E R , 1 9 9 7 - I S S U E # 2 9 ____________________________________________________________________________ - The Specialists - DJ Johnson.................Editor Shaun Dale.................Associate Editor Wayne Burke................HTML coLeSLaw...................Graphic Artist Lauren Marshall............Administrative Assistant Louise Johnson.............Administrative Assistant Sarah Sterley..............Research Assistant - The Cosmik Writers - Jeff Apter, Ann Arbor, coLeSLAw, Robert Cummings, Shaun Dale, Phil Dirt, DJ Johnson, Steven Leith, Steve Marshall, Rusty Pipes, Paul Remington, John Sekerka and David Walley. _____________________________________________________________________________ T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S EDITOR'S NOTES: Lots of stuff to talk about this month, from columns on hold to columns making an entrance to changes in the Cosmik system. LUX INTERIOR - ALL THE NEWS FROM BADSVILLE: This month we were lucky enough to get separate interviews with Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach of The Cramps. With Lux, the conversation covered a wide array of topics, including cars, records, Cramps, and outrage. Interview by DJ Johnson. POISON IVY - TALKIN' AXES & AMPS WITH THE QUEEN OF THE CRAMPS: Our interview with Poison Ivy, on the other hand, focused on a very specific topic: guitar! After twenty-some years of rockin', critics are finally starting to comment favorably on Ivy's nasty sound. See what she thinks of the whole thing. Interview by DJ Johnson. NO DAMAGE DONE - FICTION DAMAGE TURNS FICTION: San Diego's Fiction talks to Paul Remington about their unique approach to music and the differences between Fiction Damage and Fiction. The name and personnel changes haven't slowed this talented trio down a bit. Interview by Paul Remington. TAPE HISS INTERVIEWS: This month we present talks with Steve Wynn (Gutterball, Dream Syndicate) and Tortelvis (Dread Zeppelin). How's THAT for contrast? Hmmm? Hmmm? Interviews by John Sekerka. KACY CROWLEY - REBEL WITH A CLUE: From the street music culture of Austin to the world stage, Kacy Crowley's journey has led her down some bumpy roads. With the release of her major label debut, Rebellious, things are looking up. Article by Jeff Apter. IN THE BOOKS: Reviews of books about everything from country music to zine culture. RECORD REVIEWS: Almost 80 of 'em this month. What, are we crazy? Ya gotta ask? C'mon. CLASSIC EXAMPLE (Robert Cummings): This month, Mr. Cummings examines the music of his own favorite composer, Prokofiev. BETWEEN ZERO & ONE (Steven Leith): The war over encryption is previewed. PHIL'S GARAGE (Phil Dirt): For a Halloween feast, drop by the Beastro. FREE ASSOCIATIONS (Shaun Dale): Debut of our associate editor's information and observation column. This month: a band looking for a label, voter turnout, and Di -vs- Mother T. WALLEY AT WITZEND (David Walley): A love story. CLOSET PHILOSOPHY (Rusty Pipes): A face, a faith, and fictons. CONTACTS: How to send us hate mail and/or checks just for the hell of it. ___________________________________________________________________________ EDITOR'S NOTES By DJ Johnson Life is good. We just put the finishing touches on the October issue, as you know because you're here, and we're all very pleased with the way it came out. As usual, we didn't even know for sure who our interviews would be with until about two weeks ago. We just kinda float around looking at this band and that band until it feels just right, and then we boldly spring into action. Someone fires off a memo. From there, it quickly becomes an e-mail, and before you can figure out how much of your computer is deductible in the current tax year, two or three of us are discussing it openly. I mean hard-hitting action-speak, like "man, The Cramps would be a killer interview!" Then the drinking begins, and though it's not really central to the process, we cling to it for reasons of chemical dependency. Two weeks, fourteen cases of Michelob and two or three short naps later, Cosmik Debris hits the ol' invisible magazine rack. This month we did it up right. The Cramps were indeed a blast to interview, and we ended up with two separate conversations to present. Lux talked about collecting comics, cars, and records, and about music in general. Ivy's interview is a bit different. This is the first interview we've done specifically for the musicians that read Cosmik. We talked about guitar and sound, right down the colors generated by different chords. In the past we've often managed to get guitar questions in, and many of you have written to us asking for more. We'll do our best. We hope you enjoy the Poison Ivy interview. Be sure to send e-mail to moonbaby@serv.net to voice your opinion on this concept. Be sure to give the sound clips a listen, too. While those interviews were goin' on, Paul Remington was deep in conversation with an outstanding young band called Fiction. [Formerly known as Fiction Damage.] This is a band with so much skill and talent that they have attracted the attention, and earned the admiration, of Mike Keneally and Steve Vai. Be sure to give them a listen. There are sound clips at the end of the interview. John Sekerka's Tape Hiss Interviews are also quite noteworthy. Former Dream Syndicate member Steve Wynn and Dread Zeppelin's Tortelvis make an interesting contrast. We didn't have access to Wynn's latest, but there is a clip of Dread Zeppelin for your amusement. Finally, Jeff Apter profiles Atlantic Records' recording artist, Kacy Crowley, as she steps from the shadows of Austin to the world stage. Clip hunters will find two at the end of that article. And, of course, there are several clips in the review section. There... I promised one of our readers that I'd reveal the location of our sound clips in Editor's Notes. All done. Now I can tell you about a whole 'nuther sound clip. A big long clips. Beginning October 27th and running through November 1st, we'll have a special 2-hour Audible Debris episode called "The First Ever Official Cosmik Halloween Thingy!" The music will include everything from the traditional to the rare, from Screamin' Jay to The Rattles to Black Sabbath. Halloween party music right from your computer. Don't forget! Speaking of Audible Debris, we've had to temporarily cut it from weekly to bi-weekly for various reasons including time consumption/difficulty factors, technical difficulties, and angry little lawyers claiming we can't play just any song we feel like without paying the artist or getting written permission. In the words of the late great Pat Paulsen, "Picky, picky, picky." As a result, you'll probably hear more independent label music on future shows. Indie folk tend to understand that 8-bit mono RealAudio isn't a big medium with bootleggers. And they also understand that it's a great way to get people to hear and buy their records. Not a tough concept, unless you're a lawyer or somethin'. Other things that need to be announced? Yeah, our ascii (text) version is no longer e-mailed to subscribers. This wasn't part of the plan. The entire list of subscribers, which has grown to include far more people than I ever expected when I started this thing, was destroyed when hackers broke into our ISP's system and began deleting everything they could see. As it was an old fashioned Pine address book file, there was no backup. We had considered scrapping the subscriptions in recent months, but had decided against it. Some #%&#ing hacker reconsidered for us. It's still available for download every month on the website, and back issues can now be found at http://www.etext.org. One last thing... I haven't quit writing my column, Stuff I Noticed. I've simply been too busy with Cosmik and Audible Debris over the past few months. Thank you to those who sent me concerned e-mail. It'll be back. Meanwhile, Cosmik's Associate Editor, Shaun Dale, kicks off his new column, Free Associations. It's a mixture of information and commentary sure to enlighten or enrage you, and you know how much you love being enraged, so get t'readin'. HAPPY HALLOWEEN! See ya next month. Deej ____________________________________________________________________________ THE CRAMPS - All The News From Badsville Lux Interior interviewed by DJ Johnson It's a well known story by now. Lux Interior (not his real name) met Poison Ivy Rorschach (not her real name) in California as she was hitchhiking. Of course, there's an equally well known story where they met in a college class, but I like this one better because it holds that Ivy was wearing jeans with a big hole in the backside, through which Lux saw bright red panties and knew instantly that he'd found his true love. You've gotta admit, it's a better story. I didn't ask Lux which one was correct when I interviewed him one late September afternoon, partly because I was afraid the boring college story would turn out to be true. Instead, we talked about records, cars, soul, blues, records, collecting stuff (like records), sexploitation flicks, sex in general, and the music on Big Beat From Badsville, the latest LP/CD from The Cramps. Most everyone knows at least something about The Cramps, so we'll dispense with the intro and jump right in. * * * Cosmik: You have new digs since your last album. How did you end up with Epitaph, a label known for high-speed punk? Lux: Well, they put out our last album on vinyl because we were on Medicine Records, who is going through Warner Brothers, and they don't do vinyl because they think it's an ancient thing of the past. So Epitaph contacted them and said "you're not putting it out on vinyl, at least let US put it out on vinyl." So they let Epitaph put out Flame Job on vinyl. We met them at that time when that happened because they were bringing us test pressings, and we got to know them then and really dug them. They all seem like real people as opposed to some of the people we were dealing with at Warner Brothers. Then Medicine Records went out of business and we just went straight to them. Cosmik: What's your general opinion of that type of music, the stuff that's most commonly associated with Epitaph? Lux: I don't know, I'm not too familiar with it. I'm not too into what you'd think of when you say "punk rock." I mean, everybody's got a different idea of what punk rock is. I think of it as what was going on in the Bowery when we started playing, but the fast melodic punk rock that's coming out now... I think it's great, I think it's a good thing, and it's doing its job for a lot of people, but I don't listen to it too much. Although they've got quite a lot of good stuff on that label, and they've got another label called Fat Possum that's got an amazing record by T. Model Ford, which I really love. Cosmik: Yeah. I love the R.L. Burnside, too. That raw blues. Lux: Uh huh. I just like rock and roll, and that kind of punk rock stuff, it's more of a pop music. I could dig going to a club and being there, but I don't sit at home listening to it. Cosmik: Do you think the label "punk" ought to be retired at this point because it doesn't really mean any one thing? Lux: Yeah, cuz I don't really know what it is. Actually, I'd consider what Epitaph is doing to be punk rock. It's kinda like... we started that term "psychobilly" when we started in the spring of '76, we were advertising ourselves as that and saying that's what we did. To us, it was a mixture of garage punk from the 60s and rockabilly and all that, and all the things we do. Later on, it became... There is a thing called "psychobilly," which is real fast, 90 mile an hour rockabilly-flavored punk rock, and I don't think we're that. I think the same thing's happened to punk rock. It's become something different from what it was originally, and so what people think of as punk rock now is not the same thing as what I thought of as punk rock for years. Cosmik: Ask any three people what punk rock is and you'll get three different answers. Lux: Oh yeah. I like William Burroughs' definition the best. He said "I always thought that a punk was somebody that took it up the ass." (Laughs) Cosmik: {Laughs) Never heard that one, but it works. Have labels tried to change your sound in the past? Lux: No. Nobody has, that I can think of, outside of a casual remark or something about this or that. They've never really attempted to say "I want you guys to do this or that..." Cosmik: ...to make you more commercial. Lux: Yeah, you know, there've been some really timid attempts, but I think we just appear too crazy to try and even get started in that direction. Cosmik: So sometimes your scary personae will come in handy. Lux: It has! A lot of times people will come to see us, people from record companies, and they're supposed to come back later, and they don't. They'll say "I was too freaked out! I saw your show and I left." So that's good. It keeps away the evil spirits. Cosmik: The new album is just what we all expected: another batch of great Cramps tunes. I don't think there's another band that's been doing it as long as you that has stayed faithful to their original sound and vision. How have you been able to do that through all the personnel changes and with all the changes in the sounds around you? Lux: Well, you know it's just basically that me and Ivy have always written all the songs, and we had the idea for this band before we'd even HAD any bands, because we were going to see other people in bands. That really doesn't change. We still listen to a lot of the same old records that we listened to back then, so it seems perfectly natural to us. We just like rock and roll. It's no effort to keep doing this. It would be an effort to do something else cuz this just seems like the bullseye of what's fun and what gets us out to an exciting show in a town near you. Cosmik: Are you a soul music fan? Lux: Oh yeah. Cosmik: You know the old "answer records," like "Work With Me Annie," and then Etta James answered with "Roll With Me, Henry," and then somebody came up with "Annie Had A Baby..." I noticed you've continued the legend of Sheena. "Sheena's In A Goth Gang Now" is punk, but there's some R&B in your approach to some of your tunes. Lux: It's strange; no one ever comments on it. Everybody says we do garage punk and psychedelic and rockabilly, but there's all kinds of 60s and 70s soul in our songs, too, and definitely rhythm and blues, and blues. "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog," you know, that was just like a 60s soul song. Most of our albums have that influence, but it seems like nobody ever brings that up. We love soul music. Cosmik: Most bands make their influences obvious from song to song, but you seem to have distilled a lot of different influences into a very consistent single thing, so I wonder if maybe a lot of people can't actually hear the R&B or any of the other influences anymore, like they just hear "the Cramps' sound." Lux: Yeah, I think a record collector, somebody who just can't get enough music and buys all kinds of music and listens to it, would hear it, but most people wouldn't. Led Zeppelin was a band that came straight from the blues. You listen to what they did in the 70s, and most people would think that was totally original and didn't come from ANYWHERE... but it did. And it's the same with most other bands. Cosmik: I want to ask you about the imagery in some of your music. "Monkey With Your Tail," for instance, is another hot dose of animalism, which is one of the aspects of your music that fascinates me. What is it about that aspect of human nature that draws you? Lux: You know, I can't really give you an honest answer, cuz I ain't got one. It seems like that comes up a lot in the records we listen to. A real rock and roll song, I think, is about sex most of the time. So that leads you to "I Wanna Be Your Dog." That's one of the things that a lot of people would like to pretend, that human beings are above being like animals. We kind of enjoy that idea, but that that's what we are: one more animal. Cosmik: And the best sex is animalistic? Lux: Yeah, well, sex is pretty animalistic, I think. It can have more than that, but that was definitely part of the blues, kind of an attack on that idea that now we're cultured, civilized people and we're above that kind of thing. Seems like the blues has always been about "no, we're not above that kind of thing." Cosmik: The monkey sounds in that song are great. I have that song on a tape segued from "Wild Women Of Wongo" by The Tubes, by the way. Killer segue. Lux: I've seen The Tubes several times now, but I saw them before they had any records out. They were opening for The New York Dolls right as The Dolls' first record came out in San Francisco. We were not expecting anything. It was just a band named The Tubes, you know? It could have been anything. It could have been four guys with beards come out and and play violins, you know? And out came Fee Waybill with these two-foot high platforms. We weren't ready for it at all. They were amazing, and then The New York Dolls came out and they were amazing, too. Cosmik: Man, I don't know if I could stand a double header like that. I'd be too hyped. Lux: I remember that night David Johansen (NY Dolls singer) came out wearing a T-shirt that had a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the front... It was like a black and white picture, and he had painted her hair blonde and her face pink, and then he put lipstick on her lips. Then when he started sweatin' about the fourth or fifth song, her lips just ran down his stomach. (Laughs) Cosmik: What a cool thing to see! The Tubes, and maybe sometimes The Dolls, had a certain level of camp in their performances. Do you think there's an element of that in your show? Lux: I would say The Tubes were a more theatrical group. We don't do anything very theatrical except be ourselves. You wouldn't call The New York Dolls a theatrical kind of group. They were just an R&B band that came out and played as themselves, and that's kind of what we do. We don't have props, but it's definitely entertaining. Cosmik: Most of your sex songs are about danger in one way or another. The image of woman as predator. Does sex without danger bore you? Lux: Well, geez, I think just about any sex is exciting, but it's even more exciting if there's a little danger involved, I'm sure. Cosmik: Your music... the sound of it... is dangerous, too. Put the imagery with the sound and you're probably the most dangerous sounding band of all time. What kind of resistance have you seen from churches or parent groups over the years? Lux: Oh, some people are really upset by us and go to great lengths to try and do something about it, but it's never caused us too much of a problem. Except that we've missed out on opportunities because of it. We've had the cops come, like in Florida, cops come to watch and make sure we don't get out of hand. Florida's pretty back there, and always has been, for some reason. I don't know why that is. Cosmik: Aw, they're just still mad because Morrison died and got off the hook. Lux: Yeah, they're lookin' for somebody. Cosmik: Let me throw a quote at you, one you know well... "Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged." Of course, the quote goes on toward analyzing public attitude, but...what are YOUR limits? What are you outraged by? Lux: What outrages me is that people can be so satisfied and half asleep. I don't want to go back to the 50s or something, but I do remember a time when cars looked like rocket ships, and people wanted to have a wild time and dress sexy and dance sexy and try new, crazy things. It seems like these days there's an abundance of boringness and timidity, and that's the kind of thing that outrages me, you know? Boring people, that's nothing new, but the numbers are growing rather than going down. It's not a good sign. Cosmik: What is your life like? I mean when you're not recording or touring. What do you like to do when there's no claims on your time? Lux: We have a huge collection of old horror comics from the 50s... And I have 80-some old 3-D cameras; I do a lot of 3-D photography. That's a passion of mine. I watch Ivy prance around the house in fabulous sexy outfits... Cosmik: Not a bad life! Lux: No, it's great. I can't think of any way to improve upon it. We have a huge record collection of 78s and 45s, and we play that stuff all the time. We have a huge collection of sexploitation videotapes, like the stuff Something Weird is putting out. [Ed.Note: Something Weird is a Seattle-based video company. Call 206-361-3759 or visit their website at http://www.somethingweird.com/.] We're involved in the custom car thing that's happening here in LA, and we go to a lot of that stuff. We have a '56 Dodge. Cosmik: Wouldn't happen to have a flamejob on it, would it? Lux: Actually, it doesn't. We want to get some other cars, but we don't have anywhere to park them right now. I don't have the heart to put a flamejob on this one because when we bought it, it only had 38,000 miles on it and it was like brand new. We got it for like $1,500. I'd rather buy something that's a little bit more of a junker, because if it's junky you don't mind stripping the paint and customizing it and putting flames on it. But not this one. Cosmik: It would feel like sacrilege? Lux: Yeah. It's stock. Except that we put leopard-skin seat covers in. That's the only thing that's not stock. It's pretty amazing to have a completely stock car from 1956 that's so new. You don't wanna mess that up. Cosmik: Do you turn your own wrenches? Lux: Oh, it depends. I spent my life fixing cars, but lately I just don't have the time. When something goes wrong with it, unless it's something pretty easy to fix, I'd just as soon let someone else do it because I just don't have the time anymore. Cosmik: Trying to picture you working on an engine... Lux: Oh yeah, I've done that all my life. Cosmik: So you were into the car club scene? Lux: Yeah. Back when I first started buying cars, I'd always buy 'em, they wouldn't be running, and I'd have to put a new engine in 'em or something. I'm pretty much... I'm about a half-ass mechanic, I'd say. Course, I couldn't work on one of these cars today, but the old cars I can. You open up the hood on these cars today and it looks like a computer. Cosmik: It's not like anything you'd be proud to drive, anyway. I still dream of having a '57 T-Bird. Someday I'll have it. Lux: When I was a kid, I used to say "someday I'll have one," and I hate to say I still haven't got one, but maybe that'll happen before they throw me in the box. Cosmik: What, you mean a '57 Bird? You wanted one, too? Lux: Yeah, or a '55 or '56. Cosmik: Cool. Those were great cars. Let's shift gears a bit here and talk about your record collection, because I know that's one of your biggest passions. You've been at it a long time now. Lux: Yeah, actually my brother was a real juvenile delinquent in the 50s, and he had an amazing collection of 45s. At one point he decided he didn't want them anymore and he gave me this huge collection of his stuff. That was in the early 70s, and music was really boring at that time. When I met Ivy, we were discovering all these rockabilly records in junk stores in Sacramento. Ever since then we've been record collectors, and we've amassed quite a bunch. Cosmik: What kind of space does the collection require at this point? Lux: Oh, a bunch of rooms. More room than we've got, because they're stacked up in boxes all over the place instead of being easily accessible, but we've got some great stuff. We've got all the Sun Records 45s and 78s, except for a few. There are like maybe 6 or 8 of the early blues numbers that we don't have. Cosmik: Whoa, so you're saying you actually own almost everything ever put out by Sun? Lux: Yeah, we have over 200. When me and Ivy first met, we had an old '61 Chevy station wagon, and we heard that you could still buy Sun Records in Memphis, so we drove to Memphis from Sacramento. This was in 1972. You could buy Sun Records at six for a dollar at Selective Hits, which was the Sun warehouse. So you could buy "Flying Saucers Rock And Roll" by Billy Lee Riley for 18 cents. We went in and bought boxloads of them, kept one of each, and used the rest to trade for other stuff. When we lived in Ohio it was especially amazing because we'd just find unbelievably rare things. All the southerners would come to Ohio to work in the Steel Mill and the rubber companies in the 50s and 60s, and they brought their records with them that never made it out of the south, and they ended up in the junk stores around Akron and Cleveland. We went in there and got that stuff. We got stuff like the Teen Kings record... it's Roy Orbison's band, before he was on Sun, doing "Ooby Dooby." It's a different recording. There were only about 300 [pressed], and we found one of those. We found all these unbelievably obscure records. We've been doing that for 25 years or something, so we've amassed a lot of them. Cosmik: Did you ever go through the business of cataloging all that? Lux: We have them in alphabetical order, like we have all the rockabilly in one place, all the rock and roll instrumentals in one place, all the surf instrumentals in another place, R&B in another place, blues, you know... Cosmik: With all of that, it seems like you'd be overwhelmed by choices. How do you even decide what to listen to? Lux: Well, over the years you get to know them just like they're friends. Like friends you have on your mind, and you think "oh, I wanna listen to that," and you just go grab it. When you've got a LOT of records, it's more fun, because you can just go looking through them, and you always find something that you don't remember what it sounds like, and you rediscover something you haven't heard in ten years. Cosmik: So if you're in the mood for Little Walter, you might find yourself listening to Charlie Musselwhite? Lux: Uh huh. I think we've got a pretty good selection. When we first started out, it was collecting the vocal groups from the 50s, like The Orioles and the Castelles, and all these weird R&B vocal groups that would do the real slow stuff, you know, the stuff that's even slower than doo-wop. The slow, dreamy, druggy kind of stuff. As we were doing that, we just ran into rockabilly by accident. We'd buy some record, put the needle down, and we'd say "I wonder what THIS sounds like?" And it would be some guy going "HYAYAYAYAYAHH!!!" And we'd go "My GOD," you know? And that's when it first dawned on us, I think, because we were thinking we wanted to have a band. We'd go see all these bands and we'd be thinkin' to ourselves "boy, it would be cool if WE had a band," and then it dawned on us because of some record we brought home, "geez, we could play this stuff." There were all these bands, like The Rolling Stones and The New York Dolls, that took R&B and did something with it, but nobody had really done anything with rockabilly yet. We thought that would give us a real head start, that we'd have some resources to do something that came from the blues but hadn't been done yet. Cosmik: Hey, when you drove away from Selective Hits with all those Sun records, did you feel like you'd just robbed Fort Knox? Lux: Oh, yeah! Oh, man... And they not only had Sun records, but they had stuff from a lot of other labels that were there, too. It was just amazing. Then when we went to Ohio... We basically went there to get jobs to buy guitars, because we were on our way to New York, to CBGB's and everything, because we knew we wanted to have a band. When we got to Ohio we found there was a place THERE selling Sun records really cheap, too. They had done the same thing. They had bought a bunch of records earlier at Selective Hits in Memphis, and they were selling them for a dollar to five dollars, and the really rare ones were ten dollars. Cosmik: Which is still one hell of a buy. Lux: Yeah, oh... I can't even imagine what the really rare records are going for these days. But that's what's great. These days, you don't have to have it that way. You can buy reissues. Back then, there was only one way to get that stuff. You had to find it somewhere, in a junk store or something, you just had to discover it. Which was the more FUN way of doing it, but I'm really thrilled that all these reissues are out now so people can hear it all. We talked about it for a long time when we first had a band, you know, and people would say "50s music? You don't sound like 50s music!" People had no idea of the great music that had happened, rockabilly in particular, just because none of it had been re-released. Outside of Jerry Lee Lewis and Elvis, you know, there wasn't much that anybody had even heard. It was pretty obscure stuff. Then when all these reissues started happening, people became aware of this amazing heritage of great American music that nobody knew about. Which is really good. You know, it's just music. People shouldn't have to pay 100 dollars for a record. It's insane. Cosmik: Agreed. You know, I'd never heard Charlie Feathers until Charly Records put out some Sun compilation CDs. Hearing him was such a revelation. Lux: Oh, he's my all-time idol. He's just really amazing. Sun Records, in particular, you know just about anything you buy on Sun Records has gotta be pretty good. When we recorded at Phillips Records in Memphis, Sam Phillips came walking into the place, and that was a real amazing shock. He was covered with grease all over his hands. The hedges had grown up over the sign in the front, and he was out cutting them with electric hedge trimmers, and the thing just exploded all over him. So he was covered with grease, and we all grabbed him and we were shaking his hand, getting grease all over ourselves! (Laughs) Cosmik: "It's okay, it's Sam Phillips grease!" (Laughs) Lux: Yeah, boy, I said "we have almost every record that you ever made here. Almost every 45 and everything." And he looks up and he goes "Well, y'know what? You're lucky." (Laughs) Cosmik: Damn straight! What are some of the prizes of the collection, not necessarily in terms of market value, but in terms of how big a buzz it was to find them? Lux: Lemme see... We found Vern Pullens doin' "Bop Crazy Baby" on Spade Records, which there are probably only about a hundred of... There's one that we have by Hank Davis called "Women Train." He has a new CD out that's really great, and he left that one off. It was the only one he left off... probably because he thinks it's sexist these days. But that was a great rockabilly 45 that we found. We've got "Hot And Cold" by Marvin Rainwater, we've got all the Charlie Feathers singles... We've got quite a few things from Star-A-Day Records. Those are really great, all the Star-A-Day stuff... I dunno, I could go on and on about this. Cosmik: What are some of the records you always look for but never find? Lux: Well, I really would like "Indian Rock" by The Linn Twins. We've got one record by them, but this one is like... WAY out there. It's like "Love Me" by The Phantom, or something. I've seen one copy of it, and the guy wouldn't sell it. Cosmik: Is this a rockabilly? Lux: It's rockabilly, but it's way beyond that, even. It's rockabilly from outer space. Really archaic, wild, out of control thing. Cosmik: Is your record collecting habit and your affinity for collectors partly responsible for the number of singles and EPs you've put out for each album? Lux: Oh yeah. To us, the 45 RPM single is... We tend to think in terms of songs and not albums anyway, so when people say "this is your best album," or "I don't like this album as much as that album," I never even know what to think of it because we think in terms of songs. I'm sure if someone said "I don't like this song as much as that song," I could start to think about that. A single is usually the best thing on an album, anyway. Cosmik: Do you have any use for CDs, or see any hope for the format as a collector's item? Lux: I don't know about a collector's item, but I think it's really great that it happened. Because of that, a whole hell of a lot of music has been reissued that would not have been reissued otherwise. One of the first things that came out was that Robert Johnson box set, and it sold something like 300,000 copies. A Robert Johnson set! If somebody put out a Robert Johnson ALBUM, it would probably sell about 2,000 copies. But everybody had new CD players and everybody bought that. I think that's amazing. Anything that can make people buy a Robert Johnson record, well it's a good thing. Cosmik: Are you particularly fond of Halloween? Lux: Oh yeah, it's always a special night for us. Cosmik: Are you playing anywhere this Halloween? Lux: Yeah, in San Francisco. Played there last year, too. We like to play there on Halloween because they like to dress up insane and go all-out. Cosmik: When you do shows on Halloween, do you do anything different than usual, or is usual different ENOUGH? Lux: That's the one night we dress up... like I'll wear a dress or something. We're not just the "normal Cramps" that night. Last year our drummer went as Elizabeth Taylor. [Laughs] Cosmik: You've been doing this a long time. Do you ever get burned out on it and want to call it a day? Lux: Oh, no. It's the funnest thing we do. It gives us energy, it doesn't take energy. Cosmik: What's in the plans? What's next? Lux: Well, we're touring America in a couple weeks, and then we go to Europe and do a lot of touring... Then after that, we've got some ideas for things, but I don't wanna say anything because half the time you say something it doesn't happen, and you're left saying "How come THAT happened?" Cosmik: [Laughs] Hey, I understand. I'm a big believer in "the jinx" myself. Well, I've just got one more question here, but it's a long one... Your music reflects a different culture than most people have been exposed to: surreal art, trash novels, b-movies... If someone, let's say someone reading this interview and getting curious about The Cramps, was going to prepare to listen to your music for the first time, what would you suggest as a prep course? What would be the perfect films, books, paintings, etc, to absorb before turning up The Cramps? Lux: I'd get some 50s horror comics. The kind that were extremely gruesome and sexy. The kind that inspired them to write that book, The Seduction Of The Innocents, that talked about how our youth was being destroyed by comic books. That's one of the first things that happened in the 50s that led to the youth revolution of the 60s. I'd tell people to buy some reissues of old rockabilly records, or any kind of real great rock and roll records. Get some of the sexploitation movies that Something Weird Video is putting out on video. There's a huge wealth of these sexploitation movies that people don't even know about yet, and they should. It's a real important part of Americana. It's a whole world that exists that is still yet to be known. ____________________________________________________________________________ POISON IVY RORSCHACH - Talkin' Axes & Amps With The Queen Of The Cramps Interviewed by DJ Johnson "This is Ivy. Lux said you had guitar questions?" I was more than a little surprised, and anything but prepared. I had finished up my interview with Lux Interior only an hour or two before, and I was already transcribing from tape when the phone rang. Being the suspicious type, I had figured Ivy must have blown off the interview because she'd heard all the questions before anyway. Let's face it, The Cramps have been making great rock and roll records for two decades. That's probably several thousand interviews. Who could blame her for getting burned out on the whole process. But here she was, apparently anxious to talk about one of her favorite topics. Poison Ivy Rorschach once said she admired anyone who declared themselves king or queen of their own little world, or words to that effect. She never had to declare herself queen. It was an unspoken fact acknowledged by all who witnessed The Cramps in performance. As the Gretch-slinging, garter-wearing head mistress of rock and roll, Ivy has probably been lusted after more than any other woman in the biz, and it's unfortunate that the public perception often stops right there, because behind the sex goddess image there lurks a mighty fine guitarist. In recent years, Ivy's playing has finally been mentioned favorably in various guitar publications, but the press in general almost seems to be unaware that she even plays guitar at all. This is somewhat perplexing to Ivy, but then she's certainly no stranger to sexist attitudes, and that is most likely the root of the matter. We began with that subject. * * * Cosmik: Ivy, your playing on Badsville is hotter than ever, and I talk to players all the time who list you as an influence. Not bad for someone the critics said "couldn't play." Are you surprised to find yourself getting that kind of recognition? Poison Ivy: Yeah, it does seem like I'm getting it on this album, though I'm still surprised how little I... Like I've gotten recognition, like from Guitar Player [Magazine], and this and that, but like you mentioned that you thought I must get tired of answering guitar questions, and NOBODY ever talks to me about music or guitar. It's actually weird that they don't. They say stuff like..."Lux's sidekick." [Laughs] What am I, Igor going "Huhuhuh, Lux, let's play 'Surfin' Bird'" or something? Cosmik: Do you resent that a lot? Poison Ivy: Well, it's just kind of weird, because they'll also say we're sexist, but they won't even comment on my playing as being unique, which I find pretty sexist. Cosmik: It seems like there would be a paradox there, because the way you dress on stage would invite sexist attitudes, but the danger in your persona would make a lot of people afraid to approach you that way. Poison Ivy: It does. Yeah, it does. No, I don't have problems. Some other band, some female guitar player, said she got hassled, but I don't. I guess I look like I would dish it back. Cosmik: It just seems to me that you would scare them away from doing that. Poison Ivy: I think we even get the kind of fans that wanna BE scared by us. Cosmik: I can tell you really love the key of E... Poison Ivy: I do. Cosmik: Powerful chord, isn't it? Poison Ivy: It is. I also love D. I love the D to E thing a lot. Something about going back and forth from D to E. Isn't that strange how if you change key, it doesn't seem the same? Cuz I know that color... like in sound and color there's supposed to be different frequencies, like a higher octave of sound is supposed to manifest in colors like green or red. That must just be something that you hear in a different chord. Yeah, I love E. I also love E because I like doing a lot of open things. Cosmik: Like open string stuff, riffing and all that. Poison Ivy: Yeah. Cosmik: And you can obviously also kick ass in other keys, but it seems like even the songs in other keys touch on E somewhere in the meat of the riff. "Monkey With Your Tail," for instance, which is in F-sharp. Poison Ivy: Yeah, I don't know why, I just always feel it's like home. It's like headquarters or something. [Laughs] Cosmik: It's your anchor. Poison Ivy: It must be. Cuz you're right, that song starts in F-Sharp and then goes back and forth on E. It's also partly to do with the keys the singer sings in. Which I think a lot of bands don't bother to do that, to play in good keys for the singers, because with a lot of bands, it's the singer that keeps me from liking the band. We'll always try like 10 different keys until we find one that's just in the pocket for the singer. I wonder if some bands do that, and I think they should consider it, because with a lot of these bands I think the guy can't sing, but the band's just not finding his key. You know, it helps. Cosmik: On a lot of the indie punk records I get, the singers are just struggling. Poison Ivy: I think it's like every man for himself. They don't think "maybe we should move that or adjust that." That's one thing we always do. We always experiment. Lux has a pretty good range, and he can sing things in different keys, but sometimes a song just sounds more exciting if he sings it higher. Or just the opposite; depending on the nature of the song and the tempo, it might sound more sinister if he sings it low. So we'll rehearse it in like three different keys, and they'll all have different feels to them. Even if he can sing all of them, maybe one of 'em, he's straining his voice, and sometimes straining his voice makes it sound more exciting, so we'll go with it. So we experiment a lot. I think we work harder than some bands in that department. Doesn't sound like it. The way it comes off, they say we have simple boneheaded songs that don't evolve, but there's a lot of work there. Cosmik: Yeah, but they say it because it's not glossy. Poison Ivy: I think it's like a cultural slur. When someone is from outside a culture, they'll say "all that music sounds alike," or "all those people from that culture LOOK alike," because they're not tuned in to all those subtleties. To a lot of people blues all sounds alike. I'm not tuned into the subtleties of reggae. I know there's a lot of it there, but it's just not my world. Or hip-hop. It's just all different for different people, and they should at least acknowledge that maybe they just don't know instead of criticizing. Maybe it's better just to back off and say "I don't know that." Cosmik: I can't tell you how often I end up defending reggae to people who don't even know where Jamaica is. Poison Ivy: Yeah, and any kind of music, you have to really be into it, and you have to figure if you're NOT into something, it could be because you, the listener, haven't really jumped into that world or that culture. There are types of music I like that I won't attempt to play or be influenced by. I like music from India, but it wouldn't be authentic if... I mean, how could I begin to be influenced? It's so culturally different. So I'm going to play what I think I can play authentically. Cosmik: And would it even work in the context of The Cramps. Poison Ivy: Not right now. I mean... [laughs] that might take about 50 years to incorporate it into the music. Cosmik: Then again, The Cramps just might BE there in 50 years. [Laughs] So for now you continue to explore the power of the open chords and rockabilly and punk. I'm guessing that you're fond of Link Wray. Poison Ivy: Oh, I LOVE Link Wray. Still. He was initially my biggest influence, and he still is. I hear more and more. No matter how long I've been doing this, I hear something new when I listen to him. Maybe because I'm not the same person, maybe I know more from playing longer. It enables me to hear more now, so it seems like I'm always hearing something new and getting influenced by some new aspect of Link Wray. He's just so... it's like guitar at the end of the world. So austere. And so much drama. You know, he makes the most out of the least, for sure. Cosmik: So many guitar players follow the path of the intricate melody, which is fine, whereas it seems your focus has been the power you can get out of the open strings, and just finding the guts, the balls of an E chord, which is why I asked you about Link. Poison Ivy: Yeah, that's probably what made me aware of it or tuned me into it, because my favorite guitarist is Link Wray, and I guess the thing I like in what he does is what I wanna do, too. I just like hearing a lot of strings splashing all at once. And just the austerity and the starkness of how he plays, you know? The drama that's created by not overplaying. Cosmik: Exactly. Which is still the number one crime committed by the average guitarist, in my opinion. With all these songs in E and A, how do you manage to keep it fresh and dangerous sounding where so many other players can't? Poison Ivy: I don't know. And I appreciate you saying that, because some people would say that we just keep doing the same thing over and over, which I don't think we do. So that means you're tuned into the subtlety of it, which is great. I don't know... We collect a lot of records, and I just hear a variety of things done in that key on those records. It's kind of a weird form of meditation, I guess, because meditation means just focusing on one thing for a very long time and finding all the different layers of it and all the different things you can get out of it instead of flitting from here to there. It's like "what ELSE can I wring out of this chord? Is there another way to attack it?" But I have a lot of inspiration. There's just such great stuff on records, so there's always somebody to [listen to], and there's an infinite amount of ways to play even the most cliched rock and roll. There are just so many angles. If what I do is fresher than what others do, I don't know what it is, unless they're just not listening to enough records to get inspired. Cosmik: I think it goes back to not knowing when not to play, too. I listen to "Cramps Stomp," and there's so much power from chords just tailing off, just hitting a chord and letting it snarl and sneer. Poison Ivy: It's a real joy to play 'em that way. I think some guitarists get led into an ego thing where they want to perform in some technical way, which even if you can it's not always the best thing to choose to do. I still like the idea of playing for the pure euphoria. My favorite thing to play, still, is rhythm. It's just so euphoric that I really get high playing. Certain things I play don't even feel like it's me playing it, and that's my favorite kind of playing. I think guitarists can get caught up in trying to be recognized for something technical or intricate that they're doing, but they lose the whole world of getting high just from playing when they do that. Cosmik: Is "Haulass Hyena" in the key of A with the tape sped up? Poison Ivy: It's got shifting keys. It was really hard to learn it, in a way, to remember where to go, and now I've got to learn it again because we have to go on tour soon. So many songs, I've recorded them and never played them since. I remember I got out every guitar boogie record we had... there's like "Earthquake Boogie," "Guitar Boogie Shuffle," the Larry Collins/Joe Maphis "Hurricane" and... I think I got out like 10 different guitar boogie records and I thought "can I cram all this into one song?" [Laughs] Our poor drummer, he's so good on it, but boy, when we first wrote the song we were like "okay, when this part comes you do like this, and then you stop, and then you..." and he was just staring into space. But then they did it, and they learned it pretty quickly. Cosmik: They got it down. I was talking to Lux about the animal imagery tunes, like "Monkey With Your Tail" is my favorite track on the new album. Poison Ivy: It's mine, but I don't know why. It's something really juvenile about it that I like, or jungly, or primitive... I don't know what it is. Cosmik: The beast within... The wild thing. Poison Ivy: Yeah. I really love doo-wop R&B vocal group stuff. It kinda reminds me of that. Cosmik: Really? You're a doo-wop fan? Poison Ivy: Oh, that's how we got into the record collecting, initially. Vocal groups. Then we just discovered rockabilly and everything else while buying that. It's still an influence, but it's an influence that's not recognized because we don't sing harmony. I get guitar parts from vocal harmony parts. We don't get ideas from regular sources. We'll get ideas for guitar parts from the saxophone parts on a record. Things that aren't obvious. I love sax, you know? We've never had one in our band, but I love sax. I don't PLAY sax, but I like it as much as guitar to listen to, like 50s rock and roll, the really obnoxious kind of sax. Cosmik: The kind of sax with guts and balls. Poison Ivy: Yeah, and like that baritone sax that sounds really dirty. Cosmik: Tone that really vibrates ya. Poison Ivy: Big Jay McNeeley... He's not baritone, he's alto, but he's really wild. He's wicked. Cosmik: I was talking with Lux about the kinds of sounds you've absorbed into your music. With you guys it's all melted into a central sound so nobody would be apt to say "oh, check out the R&B influence in this one," but it's definitely there. There IS R&B. Like "Can Your Pussy Do The Dog." Poison Ivy: Yeah. Oh, that and... "Ultra Twist" was totally like the Ike-ettes and that kind of influence. I'm trying to remember which song on this album is kind of like a soul song... Well, "Super Goo" went past that. By the time we finished that, it got pretty schlocky. [Laughs] Cosmik: I loved your version of "Peter Gunn" on the Del-Fi Mancini tribute. (Shots In The Dark.) Poison Ivy: I love the song "Peter Gunn," and that was an opportunity to do it. I don't know if The Cramps would have had an excuse to do it. Aside from just collecting records in general, we collect certain songs, and "Peter Gunn" is one of them. With some songs, it's hard to find a bad version. They're all really fascinating, but different. There are all these cool but very different versions of "Peter Gunn," so I've just always wanted to do that song. Cosmik: I'm curious... What did you think of The Art Of Noise's version? Poison Ivy: Well, I was about to say there's not a bad version, EXCEPT... That one just didn't make it for me. And I love Duane Eddy so much, but I just didn't see what... I guess it helped Art Of Noise more than it helped him. But there are some songs that are pretty hard to screw up, like that one, "Harlem Nocturne," and "Night Train." All the versions there are are just usually pretty great, and I just wanted to add my own. Cosmik: How did you get involved with the Del-Fi project? Poison Ivy: We were at a friends house, and he said he was going to be doing something for it. He had a list of what everybody was doing, and I was pretty amazed that no one was doing "Peter Gunn," so I just said "Oooo! Here's my chance!" Del-Fi seemed excited to have my track on there, too. They seemed like nice people, and they're based in LA, too. So it was easy to do. Cosmik: I assume you collect surf records, also? Poison Ivy: Yeah. Cosmik: Did you get a little buzz from being on a label with so much surf history? Poison Ivy: Oh, definitely. That was part of why I wanted to do it. I used to collect their records before we were IN a band, and I never thought I'd have a song on Del-Fi! I mean, that's probably a silly thing to get excited about, but I was even excited about having a record on RCA in Spain. Most people would think "well, that's a major," but to me, it was the label Elvis was on. "Wow, I'm on the label ELVIS was on!" So, yeah, it was great. Del-Fi had a LOT of cool stuff on it. Cosmik: Is that a major buzz for you, having been a collector all your life, knowing that people are out there madly collecting all your stuff? Poison Ivy: Yeah, it's weird. Some of the records are really collector's items now. Cosmik: I asked Lux about this, too. You put out five or six EPs and singles for each album, and most bands don't do that. You guys make some of the coolest collector's items out there. Poison Ivy: Yeah, and then there's the whole bootleg thing, too, which is vast. Cosmik: Does that bug you? Poison Ivy: Most of it does, because a lot of it is pretty bad quality. There are some that are pretty good, but most of them aren't. And they retitle songs because we have fans that'll collect everything. So they change the title of a song, and our fans take the records home and... like they'll call "Psychotic Reaction" something, like on one they called it "A Walk Down Broadway." So the fans think "well I never heard them do THAT song, I guess I'd better plunk down all my dough and buy this." Then they take it home and it's "Psychotic Reaction." It's mean. But other ones seem more fan oriented. Some are really slick and have bar codes, and you can tell it's just there to hustle money, and then another one will be like a real crazy looking fan thing by some psycho, and that's kinda more interesting. Cosmik: [Laughs] That's a whole 'nother scary area. Poison Ivy: Yeah, but it's kind of exciting. Cosmik: You played without a bass player in the band for a long long time. Was it hard to adjust to playing WITH a bassist? Poison Ivy: No, it wasn't, because it evolved in a real natural way on A Date With Elvis. We didn't have a fourth band member, and I had already done that song, "Surfin' Dead," for the soundtrack of Return Of The Living Dead. We were still between members at the time that we made that, so I just made a wall of guitar and included bass. They said they wanted it to be "real pop," but OUR notion of pop was like Phil Spector, not 80s pop, so we put that Phil Spector thing, that kind of "bomp...bomp-bomp... bomp...bomp-bomp" beat in there. Then, when we made A Date With Elvis, we still didn't have anyone. Also, the bass I played with was a Dan Electro 6 string, and I also played a little bit of Fender VI on A Date With Elvis. I only played a real bass on one song. But I kinda dug it. It seemed even more prehistoric, to me. It was simpler. It's kind of, in a way, given me more space to go from chords to lead and whatever. It hasn't really changed what The Cramps is. A lot of people think it has, but Slim [bassist Slim Chance] still takes solos on "TV Set," and he plays those breaks on "God Monster." That's the bass player, it ain't me. So nothing's different. It's just a different octave. In a way, we're still acting like a two-guitar band. He does very un-typical things for a bass. A lot of the fuzz is on bass. The fuzz pedal immediately takes all the low end out anyhow. So it really hasn't been much of a change. The place I notice the difference is on rockabilly songs. It's given them more power. It's nothing slicker. I've heard people say it's slicker. It's just that you have an octave. With Brian Gregory and The Kid, we had them playing bass lines on the guitar. They were playing everything on the 5th and 6th strings, just literally bass lines. Nothing's changed, in that way. To me, it's just more primitive and prehistoric and heavy, and it just evolved naturally. Cosmik: Is gear a big issue with you? Are you into gear? Poison Ivy: Yeah... Yeah. Cosmik: What's your setup right now? Poison Ivy: My 1958 Gretch Chet Atkins 6120. Usually I play several guitars, but this is the first time I played a whole album with that guitar. Cosmik: Kind of gave it a cohesive sound, too, didn't it? Poison Ivy: Oh, it's a great sound. I record with small amps. You get a bigger sound with small amps. I prefer that. Cosmik: Like what? Poison Ivy: Valco. Live, I play with vintage Fenders. 15 inch speakers. Real simple and tiny. Small gear, big noise. Now, everything's miked, so when you see the stacks it's all for show. It's got nothing to do with the sound that's being made at all. You know, not that "show" doesn't have its use, but that's all it is, it's just show. * * * We had run well past the allotted time for this interview, so I asked Ivy if she'd do one more thing for me. I asked her to do a quick voiceover for our online "radio" show, Audible Debris, that I could use as a segue into Cramps tunes. After 45 minutes of conversation in which she sounded like Ivy, the girl next door, it was definitely Poison Ivy Rorschach who quickly said "Hi, this is Poison Ivy. Stay sick with Cosmik Debris." Look for The Cramps in the coming month, because they may just slide into your town for a while, and you wouldn't want to miss that. ____________________________________________________________________________ NO DAMAGE DONE: Fiction Damage Turns Fiction Interviewed by Paul Remington 1996 was a good year for bob and the boys. Their band, Fiction Damage, released their first CD after nearly two years of writing, performing and recording. Momentum was building. Heathen Stuff received airplay on local radio, and they snagged as many gigs in and around the San Diego area as they could. With all that, these ambitious musicians still describe how they hope to "slip through the cracks" and hit it big. And why not? Their music has the elements that can take a band to the top. They perform a repertoire of original music. They have personality, solid musicianship, and a following. Their music is hard rock with an interesting twist that requires musical aptitude and a good ear. They have an understanding of dynamics in writing, and a use of space. But, while they're hard, they're also soft. While they're eclectic and progressive, they're also steeped in "pop". Simply put, they are unique with a very original sound. So, who are "they," you ask? Meet bob, the songwriter, lyricist, vocalist and bass player of the band. Yes bob. No first name; no last name. Just bob. Why? To understand why, you need to appreciate the essence of bob. This can be captured through his music, his lyrics, and his writing on the band's Website. bob is not a follower of trends or the status quo. When asked why he goes by bob, he replied, "I figured I could get away with it because it's such an unglamorous name. The idea is that someday we'll have a good laugh at up-and-comers being referred to as `bob-esque'." Then there's the quiet and levelheaded Mike McQuilken; the timekeeper of the group. He wields the sticks and has a surprising mix of musical influences affecting his playing and the sound of the band. He's studied African rhythm and is sharpening his skills performing straight-ahead, mainstream bop jazz on the side, which is a whole different style of drumming. He's currently studying with Toss Panos, former drummer for Mike Keneally [Zappa, Vai, and Beer for Dolphins] and Z [Dweezil and Ahmet Zappa's band]. His skills are wide-ranging. Heathen Stuff allows McQuilken to stretch his abilities. Listen to Angelina or any of the other pieces on the disk. His presence is distinct and solid. The next member of the group requires some explanation. TJ Brinjak is the guitarist, replacing George Sanchez. The addition of TJ was a natural one. bob describes TJ as influencing the band, "Pretty massively, not only because of his influence, but because . . . there are latent things that we have, influence-wise. There are things that we have inside us that he's brought out." The band promises the addition of TJ to be a positive change. As for the band's name: they've decided to get rid of the Damage and keep the Fiction--literally. The October release of Fiction's newest CD, Five Short Stories, launches a new phase in the band's career. Released as an EP, Five Short Stories tells a tale in five songs of the maturation and ultimate demise of love--love's birth and death. The work on this CD still has that old Fiction Damage sound, but there are some exciting new additions to their style. Although mostly electric, there's an acoustic quality to some of the pieces. Vocal arranging has been well thought out. bob's songwriting talents are very well presented. The pieces have legs . . . they stay with you. While the San Diego music scene is glutted with thousands of bands, there's always that one band that stands out amongst the crowd. Fiction is one of those bands. Five Short Stories shows great maturity and promise. If this is the direction the band is taking, it's a fantastic one. The band is well aware of this, as the following interview attests. We caught up with Fiction a few weeks prior to the release of Five Short Stories. The band was clearly excited about the release, and the addition of Brinjak to the group. They sported insight, confidence, and one cannot overlook the unavoidable bob wit. - - - Cosmik: Tell me who Fiction Damage is and why you changed the band's name to "Fiction"? McQuilken: Well . . . we wanted to get rid of the Damage. [Laughs] bob: The damage was done. No, actually we found out that there was a huge band at the top of the charts called Fiction Damage. Cosmik: Really? Wow . . . they couldn't be that huge. I've never heard of them. [Laughter] Brinjak: Mariah Carey's backup band, I believe, was called Fiction Damage. Cosmik: Are they still around? Brinjak: No . . . no . . . bob: No, I just meant that they were physically huge. [Laughs] No . . . seriously, it was because we wanted to get a new guitarist and a new line-up, and we were thinking of new, new, new. Cosmik: Your current CD, "Heathen Stuff," is actually material that was written over two years ago. Is that right? McQuilken: Yeah, most of it, except for about four of the songs. Cosmik: How much time did it actually take to get that material recorded? Was it a two year effort, or did it take two years to finally get it released? bob: You know, it did kind of take a while to get it down. Right around the time we started recording, we hooked-up with our management. We were kind of trying to figure out what our relationship was going to be like with them, and try and record shows, and get a reputation going. But, then we recorded most of the basics for Heathen Stuff in a studio here in San Diego called Double Time. We came away with decent basics, but the studio wasn't really what we were after. [Mike] Keneally records a lot of stuff there. So, there was kind of an eclectic vibe. Our thing has always been to think eclectically with an eclectic approach without really having a "shiny" production. Cosmik: Songwriting seems to play a big role with the band. You don't just crank out circular rhythms with banal 4/4 time, all the time. You know what I mean? bob: Yeah, totally. I think that's why we have the dynamic of the fans we have. I've been writing for years and years and years, playing all kinds of different styles with all kinds of different bands. So I got to the point where I could craft a decent song by bringing it to the band. Mike's background is a lot of fusion, jazz, and a lot of African stuff that I've never been exposed to. T.J.'s coming from a sort of hard rock, R&B sort of background. It's just a question of not getting too . . . committed, or printing too polished a demo. Just bringing it in, throwing it into the pile and seeing what happens. That's where things start to get interesting. Cosmik: I would assume, once you bring a new tune to the rest of the band, that's when the piece really begins to take focus; when you begin developing it. bob: Yes, exactly. Like, Mike, T.J. and myself; we can sort of throw in an idea, rehearse it a few times, then take it back to the acoustic guitar for a while. Other possibilities start to come out. Cosmik: The Heathen Stuff CD is primarily electric. Do you focus at all on more acoustic instrumentation with the new band format, or are you taking primarily the same approach? McQuilken: I would say, it's primarily still going to be electric, but our dynamic range has expanded to the point that we have softer, more subtle areas, but we still crank it up to get the intensity across. There's probably a little bit more of an R&B--a jazzier kind of sound on the new material. We basically played the five songs that are coming out on this new CD, back to back, at a club on Wednesday. Cosmik: How did that go? McQuilken: It went really well! bob: It was so cool... so seventies. Cosmik: So seventies? bob: People were just standing there with their jaws down around their knees. I should probably make note of the fact that San Diego and the scene here has as much to do with molding our sound as anything else. It's a vast metropolis populated by eight trillion bands, either of which sound like Green Day or Alice in Chains. Cosmik: So, there's a lot of similarity between a lot for the sounds that are being created in that area. bob: Absolutely. With us, it's always . . . I don't know if it's some fetishistic thing to go against the grain, or if it's just wanting to offer people something new, or just sort of like just guffawing at the word "alternative." But, for us, it's always . . . When I was a kid and I got turned on to music, it was always something like punk rock, new wave, or something like that. You'd always hear Johnny Rotten and all those guys talking about what punk was and what punk wasn't. The thing that stuck with me was, whatever it sounded like sonically, it was a shaking-up of the status quo. It was sort of going the opposite direction of whatever the status quo was. It's funny because we've been really influenced by the anonymity of San Diego music. So much so, we wanted to do the opposite. That means to not necessarily have a ton of attitude, and not necessarily slam people against the back wall, but actually entertain, and actually be a band in the old sense. And, it's funny . . . it sounds very "Pollyanna" of us, but at least, for me, personally, it's kind of an evil glint. I mean, we do sing-alongs and stuff, which is just not done. And I find that a lot of fun. Cosmik: It sounds as though you're not interested in fitting into the norm. You're interested in paving your own road and following that. bob: All three of us have one great big thing in common: we couldn't fit in if we wanted to. We would try, and we would fail. It's just the way it is. Cosmik: How is that accepted in the San Diego area? If the audience is primarily acclimated to a specific sound and specific style of band, and a band like Fiction comes along, do you find you've received appreciation from your audience? Mike Keneally, I would assume, would be considered "non-standard" in the San Diego area, like your band . . . how is Fiction accepted? bob: I think you'd be amazed. People come around so fast. They sort of snap-out of their nose piercing and have new attitudes so fast. At first they resist. It just amazes me how many people get into it. Cosmik: Yeah, it's like anything else new. It's a matter of accepting it. Once they hear it, and they get turned onto it, the rest is natural. I think musicianship really speaks for itself, in many respects. Especially if you have a new sound and a new approach, that's one of the greatest assets you can have; originality. That's what defines trendsetters, and the movers and shakers in the music scene. Just fitting into what is currently out there is kind of like . . . what else can you do with it? Where can you go with it? McQuilken: That's a good question. I think that's something we're trying to do. I think one of the things we have that gives us the capability to go off in another direction is also because the three of us come from completely different musical backgrounds. So, bob's basically the songwriter in the band, but he introduces ideas and stuff like that. Just like the background that T.J. and I come from, we may interpret something a little bit different than he may have intended it. Sometimes it works really, really well, sometimes it needs to be a combination of the two things, but it always mutates it a little bit. Thankfully, it always seems to do that for the better. Brinjak: I think it ends up being kind of organic, like the music in New Orleans. You're gonna have jazz music there, you're gonna have a ton of gospel music, blues, bluegrass, and just because of the location there, those things are gonna blend into one big organic mix. I think that's kind of the thing that happens here. Just like what Mike [McQuilken] was saying, that everyone's approach to whatever ideas bob brings us, we'd approach it a lot differently than a lot of bands would. Cosmik: I get a kick out of some of the lyrics in your music. Is that primarily bob writing that? bob: Yes. Cosmik: If I can quote a segment of lyrics from "Company Man," you wrote: "Now you're standing at the bus stop with your book of Limbaugh quotes, and your Nicoteenage memories jammed like fingers down your throat." Heathen Stuff is loaded with lyrics like that, and it's very creative. Even when you get on your Website [http://www.erols.com/damage/home.htm], the writing is very much the same way. bob: I like to write. Certain things can really talk to me in a certain way. A tune like "Company Man", it might sound like an indictment, but it's not. It's a cautionary tale. I was almost writing that to myself. Like, if you end up like this, I will kill you. [Laughs] You know, we still have to have day-gigs, and stuff like that. And it's very conflicting having to say, "Yes sir, yes sir", all day. It bugs me. I tend to not cut myself too much slack on that. Cosmik: It seems to me you're writing more from the inside out than the outside in. The most interesting part of the Website, for me, is the Band Diary. [Band laughs] Cosmik: It's the most unique area of the Website, I think. It's deep, in the same way Heathen Stuff is. Now, when you write the lyrics, is that pretty much static? You write it and that's the way it goes, or when you get in the studio, do you find pieces and lyrics mold and change along with what the other band members feel. bob: Yeah, that always changes, definitely. Sometimes I'll have a lyric that's so . . . it's sort of my problem, because I have to sing them. Sometimes I'll have a lyric that's just so close to home that it's got to be that way. But, in a lot of cases, there's a lot of ways of saying the same thing. If there's something I need to say in a certain way, I'm not going to change that. I don't care what happens to the band politics. Cosmik: In terms of the content of the lyrics, do you envision getting into social issues? Like, right now I know the big issues in the news are Princess Diana's death, and the death of Mother Teresa. Are you moved and inspired by the mass-global? Or, do you avoid that kind of depth? bob: Oh, no . . . we totally do. The next project we're working on is actually a 70 minute rock opera based on the life of Johnny Versacci. When I was younger, I was much more into writing about political stuff and things like that. I used to read a lot of politically angry and rotten stuff. But, the older I get, the more I get into the things that are universal. I mean, if you write a good song about some sort of promotional scenario, I think that can speak to someone politically. Cosmik: Some people have an issue with the "We Are the World" syndrome of songwriting, where you sit for 15 minutes and crank out a one-hit-wonder based solely on auspices that are politically correct. While you may pay attention to political and social issues, I just can't imagine Fiction coming out with anything related to that kind of approach. bob: Not only that, you really limit yourself on rhymes. What rhymes with "Mother Teresa"? Except for maybe, "Wendy and Lisa". [Laughter] T.J.: There ya' go! Cosmik: Well, there you go . . . right there, you have the seeds of a new tune. bob: I'm gonna grab a pencil. [Laughs] Cosmik: Yeah, write that down. bob: One thing that's really cool--recently--is that the addition of T.J. has taken the songwriting in another direction. He and I have had some true collaborations--some real 50/50 stuff. Like, he has some chord sequences and I have some lyrics, or vice-versa. Cosmik: Have you worked together prior to him joining the band? bob: No, not really. Cosmik: With George's [Sanchez] departure from the band, how has T.J.'s influence changed the sound of Fiction? bob: Pretty massively, not only because of his influence, but because of . . . there's latent things that we have, influence-wise. There are things that we have inside us that he's brought out. I was talking about the liner notes for the new CD. I have a "latent-stack full" problem that he kind of just drudged that out of me. So, it's definitely changed us. Cosmik: I think it was T.J. that mentioned the word "organic" when describing your sound. Brinjak: Definitely. Cosmik: Is that descriptive of your approach to your influence to the band? Brinjak: Yeah, I just realized, as far as the song writing goes, we would have a chance to hammer things out, see what works, and see what does not. Like bob said, it just took off pretty quickly. We'd hang out on my back porch with acoustic guitars and, just about every time, we come out with something usable. Cosmik: That sounds great! It sounds just plain enjoyable. [Band agrees, in unison] bob: T.J. And I believe that will come through on the new CD, "Five Short Stories". Cosmik: That's right . . . that's the new CD that's coming out. And, when is that slated for release? bob: Probably be the end of September [1997]. We're at the point now that we're just adding a couple of final overdubs and we have some lead vocals to do. We actually mixed the single; the first song--it's called, "Love Reaches Out". I was getting ready to go on vacation for a while, and we wanted to have something to give our management, to make them drool. Cosmik: Did you pass it to them? bob: Oh yeah. Cosmik: What did they think? bob: They really dug it! Everybody's really eating it up. Brinjak: Yup. Cosmik: I'm on your Website now, and it says the following about "Love Reaches Out": "Love Reaches Out takes an interesting structural trip from Beatle-ish to Police-ish to Sneaker Pimp-esque to 'Dark Side of The Moon'--like in a scant four or so minutes." [Band laughs] Cosmik: I found the material on Heathen Stuff really grew on me. I'm quite interested to hear what comes out of the new incarnation. bob: Well, it's "pop-ier", but at the same time it almost isn't, because there's pop as such, and there's pop in reference to what's popular now. And, I think for the public at large, Five Short Stories, in a certain way, is going to be a bit more challenging. Music now can almost smack you against the wall. That's what music seems to be like on the radio now. Cosmik: Much of popular music is very homogenized and uninteresting, from a uniquely creative standpoint. Most stations play a repertoire of maybe 30 or 40 tunes, then recycle them endlessly throughout the day. bob: . . .over and over. It's the same thing with radio in San Diego. Out here you have your so-called "alternative" stations. Cosmik: Yeah, modern rock. bob: Yeah, the alternative stations have about a 10 song play list. Cosmik: [Laughs] That's about it--that's exactly right! I mentioned in the review I wrote for Heathen Stuff, the only concern I have about the release was the eclectic nature of the material. How was it going to get airplay? I think the tunes on that CD are very playable on the air, it's just a matter of a station wanting to promote it. How has that been a factor with your last CD? McQuilken: As far as radio play is concerned, at least in the California area, there basically is the 30 or 40 song rotation, which is mostly major signed acts. Some of the radio stations, from time to time, have a "locals only" type of show where they will play basically what's happening in the local music scene. We've received some airplay on those shows. Really, until you gain the support of a major label, you might as well forget about getting rotational radio play. bob: Unless you're handy with a sidearm. [Laughs] Cosmik: So, you find getting in heavy rotation is a difficult thing to achieve. bob: It's tough. Back in the old days--like during the mid-eighties--if you were an alternative band, or what was called back then an "Indie" band, if you had the resources, you could find an independent promoter, line their pockets, and count on them to get your product out there to college alternative stations. You'd get a biweekly report that stated that you've been added here, you've been added to Chapel Hill, you guys are doing really good in Arkansas, and it was great. You had, like, a little map. These are the places you need to get out to. These are the places you need to focus on. Cosmik: That becomes your gig list. bob: Exactly . . . exactly. It's really nice. For example, if you were added at the University of Connecticut, if you were number one with a bullet, you knew you could call and book a show and make a grand, and just widen your audience that much more. But, now it's just so overpopulated. Even the independent promoters, they have to think that you're God before they'll touch you. Cosmik: You're with High Time Records. Are you going to stay with High Time? bob: That's actually our management company. We've released our CDs as a totally independent thing, and we just refer to it as High Time. We'd like to get a deal, but it would have to be a certain kind of deal. What we've been looking at are smaller labels and bigger label distribution. For example, the way Red Ant is distributed by Warner. That's kind of what we'd like to end up with. Obviously, that's the ideal situation. A small label that doesn't have a zillion band roster. Cosmik: Exactly. Mike Keneally is signed through Immune Records, which is also a small label. He seems to be getting some visibility and doing well. Immune's owner, Suzanne Forrest, has given valuable attention to Keneally. bob: You know, it's funny, Paul, because you get these labels, like High Time, which we're through . . . High Time is like, us, sitting at our desk. And, Immune, I know, is Suzanne Forrest sitting at her desk. [Laughs] Suzanne's cool. Cosmik: Yeah, she is. She's been very supportive. She's been good to Cosmik, and a great Keneally supporter. So, now, I know Keneally has made some real positive and humorous comments about Fiction Damage. Specifically, he stated, "If I were on a lifeboat with Fiction Damage and there were insufficient supplies to sustain all of us, I would gladly sacrifice myself that they might survive. Their contribution to American culture is that great." Typical humorous Keneally quote. I understand you guys had a chance to gig with him. bob: Oh, it was the greatest! Mike, our drummer, got in touch with him. We wanted to do, uh . . . well, you tell him about it, Mike. McQuilken: Basically, we had this show set up at Sam Goody in Horton Plaza, which is actually the largest Sam Goody in California. It's a three level store, and on the bottom level they have a coffee house area, and they set up a stage there. You can get a couple of hundred people in there listening to you. So, we had this show set up there. What we wanted to do was . . . this was a point in time when George was no longer in the band, and we had a couple-three weeks to get the show together. I think the first time we got to work with him was about two weeks before the show was supposed to be. So, we gave Keneally a call, and he said he'd help us out with the show. Cosmik: Nice guy. bob: Yeah, he is. He's so cool! McQuilken: We played with another musician . . . oh, his name just slipped my mind. bob: Steve Kruse. Yeah, Steve's an LA session guy. He just did Billy Joel's new single. We were chuckling about that. He's someone that our manager, Kathleen, set us up with. The three of us had been saying "let's do something unique, let's do something different. If there's a guitar on "Missing Something" [on Heathen Stuff], let's make it a harp solo." We were all very "high concept" at first, and that just ended up being the reality. It's like, Why not? Let's get a harp player. Cosmik: Well that's a unique approach. So, you got together with Steve Kruse and Mike Keneally. How did the gig go? I assume you clicked with Keneally immediately. McQuilken: It went really well. We had a short rehearsal over at my place before the gig, then went down there. Mike played Keyboards. Cosmik: Yeah, he actually started out as a keyboard player, which surprised me. I've always known him more through his guitar talents. He's very adept at the keys. bob: Yeah, he's a great keyboard player. It was killer because we were sort of going for that greasy Hammond organ and Leslie speaker thing, and he was all over that! You didn't even have to explain it to him. Cosmik: It's right under his fingers. Brinjak: Insert tab A into slot B, and there's a band. My favorite thing about playing with those guys was just the level of experience and professionalism they had. For me, getting up there and singing is such a vulnerable experience. But, with a band like this, and all those guys behind that, I felt like a well-cradled baby. It was cool. Cosmik: Is that the only time you played with Keneally? McQuilken: Well, we opened for Beer for Dolphins [Keneally's band] three times. Cosmik: I know he's been quite active in the San Diego area. I'm thinking of clubs like The Casbah and many others. bob: We played the Casbah on our first show, and we opened for Mike there. Cosmik: Really? McQuilken: Yeah that was . . . that's right. Cosmik: That was rather historic, in a Fiction Damage kind of way. bob: Yeah, time will tell if it's truly historic. If anyone gives a damn! [Laughs] Cosmik: If anyone gives a Damage, you mean. [Laughter] bob: If it's not ours, we're done with it. And this other gig we did with Keneally and Kruse was T.J.'s first show too. That was total baptism by fire. We did a lot of instrument changes, and I was playing an upright electric bass. We did the song, "Gethsemane". I started it out acoustic, and Mike came on during the big drum explosion section. We segued that into a drum solo that was monumental! I grabbed a bass, and T.J. picked up a guitar, and we finished it out like a power trio. It was not an easy show. It was very ambitious. Cosmik: That's great. You'd stretch your abilities, then you walk away from that with more confidence, I would expect. bob: Yeah, exactly. The big thing we were going for was the whole idea of people coming down, they know what the CD sounds like, some of them do and some of them don't . . . some of them were really entertained by it. They really let themselves see us as a band that's not afraid to go out on a limb. For me, personally, that was really important. Cosmik: That makes sense. You put yourself on the line, and people recognize that. And, I think it's natural an audience would respond to that. bob: Yeah, they totally do. I know I do, when I see a band like that. They're not just cranking out the hits, you know; they're artists. Cosmik: Also, I suspect when you play live, you don't just play exactly what's on the CD the same way it's recorded. A lot of bands, when you see them live, it sounds as though they just put the CD on and pushed play. With many bands it sounds worse than the CD. bob: That's boring. You know, people already know the songs. Obviously, we're stuck, to an extent, since we're trying to achieve a stature to leave crummy jobs behind. In a lot of cases we need to play the songs as they are, because people don't necessarily know the CD. Cosmik: I'd think the improvisational element of the tunes themselves allow you to do a lot with each tune. Even if you play the song exactly the same, you can take completely different solos each time. bob: A lot of the songs on Heathen Stuff were constructed specifically that way. When we have the freedom to do that live, obviously that's the dream: to be able to completely deconstruct each piece. There have been nights where we just let it go where it wants to go. "Gethsemane"'s like that; "Angelina"'s like that; "Missing Something"'s like that. I like to watch a band where you never know what's going to happen. Cosmik: Absolutely . . . otherwise it becomes predictable. In terms of the musician, it gets boring, having to play the same tune night after night. bob: And then, where can you go with that? All you can do is change your hairstyle. [Laughter] Cosmik: Speaking of Keneally, I understand you, Mike [McQuilken], took lessons from Keneally's drummer, Toss Panos. McQuilken: I was doing it, like, every four to six weeks, and now I think it's been something like eight or ten weeks since I've actually gotten together with him. Sometime soon I'll hook back up with him and get some things going. Cosmik: Yeah, he's a fantastic drummer. McQuilken: Oh yeah! Cosmik: You also play in a hard bop band? McQuilken: Well . . . I'm playing a little bit with one right now. Part of working with Toss Panos was to broaden my education and work on my drumming. I used to play in the San Diego youth jazz band, and stuff like that. But, it wasn't in the same style as Elvin Jones or Jack DeJohnette. And, I just wanted to open myself up to be able to not only understand that but to be able to play in that manner, take those influences and incorporate that into any style I'm playing. I think you're going to hear those influences coming out on the new CD. The one thing about Toss Panos was, for me, I was just playing along with CDs. He said, "You know, you need to find some guys to play with." Cosmik: This was after Heathen Stuff came out, right? McQuilken: Yeah, this was after that. So, I get together once a week or once every couple of weeks, with a couple of other guys to go over Real Book charts. It's kind of like a drum lesson for me. Cosmik: It sounds as though this has had a major change on your approach to the instrumentation and music, and the band. It's difficult to find any up-and-coming rock bands that are conscious of the musical element. bob: Again, it's us, it's the status-quo, and I hate the status quo. I don't care what the status quo is, I'm gonna hate it. [Laughs] Cosmik: And, ultimately, I think it doesn't matter what it is. I mean, you know what you want, and that's all that matters. bob: Yeah . . . exactly. And, Heathen Stuff . . . It, uh . . . it sounds like . . . Cosmik: How does it sound to you now, when you listen to it? bob: Oh, we love it! I'm always going to love that CD. McQuilken: Right. bob: But, it's the sound of three guys trying to out brilliant each other, and that's cool. That has its place. But, Buffy and Jodie ain't gonna buy it. Five Short Stories is very much a song effort. Let's take this ridiculous amount of expertise we have and lets bring it to bear in a way that not only floors people musically, but also gets an emotion out there. Cosmik: Let's talk about that for a little bit. What is the concept behind the Five Short Stories? bob: It all came about because we wanted to change the name of the band from Fiction Damage to Fiction. For me, personally, as soon as I saw that word sitting there on a page, I was like, "Oh man . . . this is band-concept heaven." You know, I started thinking about books, and fonts. You could do this . . . you could do that. You could have a very complete visual package. Not only that, but since we're one of those silly bands that are too smart for their own damn good, it all fit together. It grew into this thing where we decided to put out a CD and decided, let's almost style it like a book. Like, the CD has a Forward, it has a Table of Contents, and it's very complete, visually. What happened was--as far as the "Five Short Stories" thing--we printed the songs and had the songs down as basic tracks in the studio. We stuck them in a certain order and realized that it was a big long story. If you put them in a certain order, it was about the birth and death of love, and what it is that takes love and twists it into the inverse. So, the beginning is all very positive, hippie-dippy, love reaches out, and I could cry kind of thing. The first song is about how love is everything. The second song is about how it's scary to be this vulnerable. The third song is about baggage, and how you can bring baggage to the table and just destroy love. And, the fourth song is about the pain and mistrust, and the bad things that can come from that. And, the last song is just, like . . . see ya'! Cosmik: So, you found the concept and explored it--like Vai did with Fire Garden. bob: Exactly . . . Totally! Cosmik: How long is the CD? Does each piece segue and flow into the next, or are they independent entities. bob: They're independent. But, it's us, so some of them are pretty damn long. [Laughs] Cosmik: Good! I like it when they're long. bob: You'll love the last song. It's called, "I Know Why". The description I wrote on the Website probably sums it up pretty nicely. But, it's this very, very dark, spooky jazz waltz. The lyrics are kind of Ray Charles, histrionic and over the top. Lots of "Baby, baby, baby . . ." and it's just one of those "ache" songs. Then, there's this false ending that comes back in to this whole-improvised section that goes on for a . . . pretty fair spell. Cosmik: How much time did you actually spend in the studio? I suspect you worked all this out ahead of time. With a studio, time is money. McQuilken: We wrote these songs very quickly. It almost seems like those four or five songs we wrote all within a month. I mean, got them arranged to the point where they were ready to record. So, we went in and laid down drums in a day. We went back and did the bass guitar. Actually, [addresses bob] the bass was doubled, wasn't it? bob: Yeah, I did a lot of bass doubling. I love doing that. Cosmik: Well, that's a neat thing too, you use fretless bass, which a lot guys can't do. bob: Well, sometimes I can't either. [Band laughs] It depends on what my consumption is on any one given evening. [Laughs] It also depends on what the stage lighting is like. It's really weird. Like, I play upside-down. If you just take a normal bass and flip it, that's how I play. Cosmik: So, you took the Jimi Hendrix approach. bob: Yeah . . . exactly! When you take a right handed bass and flip it left handed, there's no little markers on the side of the neck anymore. You have to watch it really, really closely. Obviously, when you're singing at the same time, it's definitely . . . I have a long way to go. Cosmik: It's a lot to pay attention to. bob: Yeah, it definitely takes a lot of mental energy. Cosmik: The sound of a fretless bass is so beautiful. bob: Very expressive. Cosmik: Talk about organic. Brinjak: Paul, um . . . about bob playing fretless bass and singing at the same time . . . I don't know how a human being does that. Cosmik: I can't do it. I play guitar, and I can't sing and play at the same time. I've tried, and worked at it. It just doesn't come naturally. Bob: What makes it work is . . . I'm a singer, like, just miles and miles above anything else. That ability came first, and then the desire to accompany it--we're talking about when I was a kid--the kinesthetic of playing came second. So, they developed at the same time. It was like a piece of music. It was like a counterpoint. Singing and playing bass has always given me a McCartney-ish, contrapuntal way of thinking of the bass line and the melody. And I love it! I love to take a song into the studio when all the tracks are printed, and solo the bass and the voice to kind of see if the counterpoint is happening there. It's very much like a classical composition where the violins are doing X, and the viola is doing Y, they fit together in a certain way. Cosmik: Is the instrumentation of each piece decided prior to going into the studio, or do you determine that while recording? bob: Instrumentation is a funny thing when you're in a three-piece. Cosmik: I'd think it would be. Your sound is a very big sound, even for three guys. When I first heard your material I thought, oh, there must be five guys in this band. bob: Yeah, exactly. It's a never-ending discipline, when you're in a power-trio, to stay that way until the song is begging for you not to. Because, there's some songs you end up doing as a power-trio, you add some stuff, and you end up shaking that stuff away. It's such a beautiful thing. Some of those Cream albums, some of those mid-period Police albums where they're just, like, "Look, we're a three-piece, we're gonna be a three-piece, and there's gonna be a lot of space in here, and that's gonna be the fourth band member." But, it's true . . . on Heathen Stuff we had a lot of stuff going on, and I think those songs kind of wanted that. On this one, it's definitely more sparse, but that was kind of an agenda all its own. Cosmik: But, that was a component you wanted built-in to it anyway. bob: Exactly! And it's tough, too, because you have to think about, "Well, this is cool in the studio, but if we put the London Symphony Orchestra on this, how are we going to perform it live? Does it have the energy, does it hold your interest?" Some things are funny. You can look at what other power-trios have done in the studio to spice up the fact they're in the studio, and there's not that live energy. Can we take this out live, and not have that four-part harmony going? That's something that always has to be considered. For me, that's the fascination of a three piece. That's it, in a nutshell. Cosmik: If I were to go the room and ask who your primary musical influences were, what would they be? Let's start with Mike [McQuilken]. McQuilken: I grew up on the old "prog" [progressive] rock field, and also bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin. I'm more along the lines of what I call real fusion, which would be early Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever. That's the kind of stuff that I still like listening to. Most recently I've been listening to the Bozzio/Levin/Stevens release. Those are my influences and what I like to listen to. But, I'm also big into hard bop, like New York style jazz. I really like what you hear from the musicians playing the club circuits there. So, those are basically my influences. bob: Mike's got a lot of African things going on too. McQuilken: Yeah . . . bob: Things that have come to play a huge part in what our songs sound like. Cosmik: Tell me about that. McQuilken: Well . . . I had met a guy from Ibou M'Eaye who was a member of the Wolof tribe. That was in 1987, or something like that. I had never seen traditional African drums before. I studied with him for a couple of years. There's a guy named Paulo that puts out the Djembe line, and that's the whole West Coast of Africa's style of drums. Cosmik: So, you've pretty much adopted that into your sound. McQuilken: After getting into that, and then delving more into music history, you find the jazz greats that we know of that came out of the swing era of the `50s and developed the bop style of the `60s, they used that. That probably influenced Elvin [Jones]. Cosmik: Okay, T.J. . . . you're up. Brinjak: Well, let's see . . . I grew up listening to a lot of classic rock and blues, then around college I took a heavier course in R&B and gospel. As far as specifics, I really like Ray Charles, and Janet Jackson. As for the new guitar stuff that you'll hear on the new EP, Five Short Stories, it'll be pretty easy for the listener to pick things out. Like, here's some hard rock stuff, here's some George Lynch, here's a whole lot of Stevie Ray Vaughn, and some more Stevie Ray Vaughn, and . . . Cosmik: . . . even more Stevie Ray Vaughn. [Band laughs] Brinjak: You're going to hear a lot of that. bob: And some Sarah Vaughn. [Laughs] Yeah . . . We recorded it in a motorcycle, too. Cosmik: What?! bob: I saw that in a feature. Wasn't that in Cosmik Debris about Ben Vaughn recording it in a car? It was so cool! [Ed.Note: Refers to our July 1997 interview with, and separate article about, Ben Vaughn. He had just recorded an entire album, Rambler '65, inside his car.] Cosmik: Oh that's where you got that. [Laughs] Okay, stay with me bob . . . you're next. bob: For me, it's not so much a question of influence as much as it is, under the influence. [Laughs] I started out back in the wonderful days of punk rock anarchy, and I loved the Pistols, the Clash, the Subway Sect, the Damned, the UK Subs, the Specials, and all that kind of stuff. All that stuff is coming around again now, and it's annoying the hell out of me! You wouldn't believe, man . . . the shows we play, the kids are like, "Play some punk . . . play some ska." I thought I was gonna want to do that when I was this age, like, now I can be all my heroes. It's like, "kids . . . that stuff was old when I was your age. Can we please offer you . . ." Cosmik: . . . something new. bob: Yeah . . . and then, from that, I got into the . . . well, you know how punk and new wave was. It was always, [English accent] "London school, no it's New York school, no it's London School.' Cosmik: London Calling. [Clash LP] bob: Yeah . . . exactly, exactly! Then I jumped across the Atlantic and got into all the CD stuff, television, Patty Smith, the Heads, the Ramones, Blondie, XTC, and all that stuff. The one that really stood-out was the Police. I worshiped the Police when I was a kid. They let me in. Everything was so sparse that you could see, like . . . this is what a guitar does, this is what a bass does, and this is what the drums can do. I couldn't really get into music before that, because I couldn't figure out what the hell everyone was doing. So, that was kind of my primer. Than when I went to school I really had the time and inclination to get into my head and study music. I've always been a real pop guy. I love pop. But, at the same time, I have this left-of-center thing. In college I got into the Beatles, Beach Boys, Big Star, all this sort of stuff. If you want to be a GOOD pop writer as opposed to a crummy hack, all the lessons are there to be learned. I think college was where I began dissecting all that stuff, getting into the studio, and getting into the "classic" and "pop" stuff. There's a lot of modern stuff that I really like. I love Michael Penn, I love Jeff Buckley, a lot of alternative bands. For me, there are three chunks: new wave/punk, `60s pop, and modern "alternative" music. I just slap that all together. Cosmik: It sounds like you take those influences and weave them into your music. But, writing pop music seems to be a real art. There's so many elements to pay attention to, not only in the piece itself, but in how it's recorded, produced, and marketed. All three of you seem to have a real eclectic mix. bob: Yeah . . . it's cool to see how it all comes together. Cosmik: What's the long-term projection for the band? Do you have any visions of other recording projects, live releases, tours? McQuilken: I think the next one will be, "One Long Story". [Laughs] Cosmik: [Laughing] It's like one of those `70s concept albums where the whole side is one tune. bob: Yeah! Cosmik: That would be really cool, artistically. bob: Mike . . . wouldn't it be cool to put out a live CD? McQuilken: Yeah. I think that would be really good. That's what we should probably do next. Cosmik: That's a real test of a band; what they sound like live. A real good band will do a better performance than the studio album because the spontaneous element exists, and the music recreates itself. bob: Exactly. It's all different when you're getting feedback from people. [Western accent] It's a whole different shootin' match! Cosmik: How are the gigs going these days? Are you guys booked-up? bob: No . . . it's hard to get shows in San Diego. There are ten trillion bands, and nine trillion of them . . . I don't want to, like . . . we have a non-negativity policy, but they suck, They're clogging up the club circuit. Clubs are opening and closing so fast you can't get a following going. In Southern California--I don't know if you've ever been out here--it's a whole different thing. In the course of my day I can travel 100 miles, easy, all for rehearsal. Make sure you have enough gas. It's so spread out and it's so diffuse. There's so many trillions of bands, and the things that get bands back to clubs is--of course this is universal--how many people come and how many get smashed on the club's wares. Cosmik: There's a lot of competition. bob: Yeah . . . and you have to make a decision, at some point. You have to make a very conscious decision: Are we going to be a big San Diego band, and are we going to use San Diego as a thermometer of what we need to develop or not develop. Or, are we going to picture ourselves as a national thing and not a geographically based phenomenon. It's hard to make those decisions. Cosmik: How do you approach that? That's an excellent question. bob: Well, we just try to play as many shows as we can get, and we try to get as many people to the shows we play, but we try not to let that end up being the sole focus. Brinjak: Definitely. I like bob's point about thinking of yourself as a national act. I could see, possibly, with this band, doing the shows in San Diego just to get out there to play as a group . . . bob: Yeah! Brinjak: . . . and I can also see this band slipping through the cracks, like Jewel or Stone Temple Pilots. Nobody thinks of them as a San Diego act. But, that's where they cut their teeth before they slipped through the cracks. Now San Diegens [sic] say, "Wow! I don't remember you." I see that could definitely happening to us. bob: Yeah, that's a good point. Cosmik: It seems as though you have a lot of control over what you're doing. Do you feel, If you became a national act, you might lose some of that control? bob: Over my dead body! No, that's not going to happen. I don't care if Joe Schmoe at MegaStar Records wants us to have Cindy Crawford's left buttock on our cover--they can eat me! Cosmik: Either that or the biggest sin would to be told you could have no tunes over five minutes long. bob: We're not going to get all attitudinal about it. I like three-minute songs, too. I think that there are fewer forms of art higher than the three-minute pop song. I aspire to it, a lot of the time. Cosmik: It's a different thing . . . a different approach. bob: It's something we've come to terms with more on the new CD, and obviously we have these big explorations and there's a lot of weirdness . . . I think you'll be blown away when you hear the first tune, Love Reaches Out. It's a four-minute pop song. It's definitely Fiction; it's definitely us. There are lots of weird noises, and lots of left-field sentiments, and stuff like that. But it's a pop song, and it's not because of Ahmet Ertegun. The thing is, we want to be successful. Cosmik: But at the same time, you don't want to compromise your own artistic abilities to make it successful. I think that would ruin the fun. bob: I think I would do a Cobain, at that point. Cosmik: Oh man . . . we don't want that . . . bob: I wouldn't do it in your house! [Laughter] Cosmik: Okay . . . so if you live in the San Diego are, go check out Fiction. Heathen Stuff is available on CD in stores in the US. People can get it at any Sam Goody, Tower Records, and Blockbuster Music. bob: Probably the easiest way to get it is through our Website. [http://www.erols.com/damage/home.htm] Cosmik: Five Short Stories comes out in October, so your fans will be looking for that. Things sound as though they're going well for each of you. Listen, guys . . . thank you for chatting with Cosmik. bob: You guys are like . . . gods! (Copyright 1997 Paul Remington, All Rights Reserved) ____________________________________________________________________________ TAPE HISS INTERVIEWS By John Sekerka [The following interviews are transcribed from John Sekerka's radio show, Tape Hiss, which runs on CHUO FM in Ottawa, Canada. Each month, Cosmik Debris will present a pair of Tape Hiss interviews. This month, we're proud to present interviews with Tortelvis (Dread Zeppelin) and Steve Wynn.] - - - - - - - - - - - - - STEVE WYNN Former leader of the influential guitar pioneers The Dream Syndicate, and now a veteran solo performer, Steve Wynn talks from his New York home, avoiding the dreaded packing ritual before a month long tour John: There's one burning question I feel obliged to lead off with: who is going to win the World Series? Steve: Good question. Being a lifetime Dodger fan and a current New York resident, to be completely schizophrenic I'm kinda looking toward a Dodger/Yankee series. I'll put my money on the Yankees. John: Is it true that on the night of a gig you were at the ballpark watching Fernando Valenzuela duel Dwight Gooden in extra innings? Steve: Yes, you've done your homework. It was an amazing game. That was back when they were the two top pitchers in baseball. It was scoreless in the ninth inning and I had a gig at eleven o'clock. I hung on till the tenth inning - the last possible second. I ran outta the stadium, jumped in my car, drove to the gig, got there just in time and opened with "Talkin' Fernando Valenzuela Blues", which, unfortunately was never taped. John: Maybe we should change the subject. Steve: Hell, I'll talk about anything, as long as I don't have to pack. John: Who is in your band these days? Steve: The Continental Drifters, which feature former Dream Syndicate Mark Walton, Robert Mecher, Peter Holseapple and Vicki Peterson from The Bangles. They play their own set as well. John: Your last record, "Melting in the Dark", was a great rocking album. Where are you heading with "Sweetness of Light"? Steve: It's a slightly more upbeat, positive, poppy version of the last one. That's drawing on my rusty rock critic skills. John: How did you get involved with Boston's Come for the "Dark" record? Steve: Come has taken similar territory as The Dream Syndicate. They're a two guitar band in which there's not really a lead and a rhythm. The two guitarists are kinda snaking around, doing a lot of improvisation. I put them in the same tradition as Television and Quicksilver Messenger Service. I was a big fan of theirs, and they knew my material really well. We were actually trying to get that together for quite a long time. It was three years after we agreed that we could get together and make the record. John: You're renown for short recording times. How long did it take to make the new album? Steve: The last few records took ten days, and that seemed just fine. This time I spent twenty. That's a quick record in most peoples' eyes, but for me it was like "Tusk." Actually it wasn't long enough for me to get too neurotic or self-indulgent, but long enough where I could stand back and see what I will like to hear six months from now. John: I've always liked the spontaneity and freshness of your records. Steve: Out of the fifteen records that I've made, I only spent more than a month on a couple. Because I record quickly it can come off as if I don't care, or I'm just not a perfectionist, or I'm lazy, or I'm a slacker. I think that by taking longer, you don't necessarily get a better record. Out of boredom or over inspection, you might file off all the cool things, and leave all the boring stuff. Mistakes are not necessarily a bad thing. I like to record the whole band together in the studio, so everybody plays off each other. It's not quite the extent of a jazz band, but you are reacting. And even in a scripted, non-improvisational pop song you still have room for give and take. John: When The Dream Syndicate first came on the scene in '82, there was a definite danger element to the music. When you're young and rebellious, and the world is there for the taking, it's easy to have that attitude. How do you feel about losing that exciting element of danger? Steve: You can never be as naive and innocent as when you start out, but I think the danger element is still there. Mostly live, but sometimes on record, as in Marvin Gaye's "That's the Way Love is", which I think can get as frenzied as anything on "Days of Wine and Roses". Just the fact that I'm better at what I do now, it would be a lie for me to fake some kind of teenage rebellion danger. I think it comes in different ways now - lyrically "Melting in the Dark" was quite disturbing, probably as ugly in its own way as anything that The Dream Syndicate ever did. John: I just wanna backtrack to something you mentioned earlier. Were you really a rock critic? Steve: Well, a sports writer actually, and I ended up reviewing music as well cuz that was the best way to get free records. That didn't last very long. I just didn't enjoy being that analytical about something I loved. John: And what about sports writing? Steve: My dream was to be on the masthead of Sports Illustrated. Something happened called punk rock which changed my whole way of thinking, and that was it. I was corrupted. John: Did you have a goofy nickname when you were a sports writer? Steve: I should've. I probably would've lasted longer. John: Don't you get tired talking about The Dream Syndicate? Steve: No, I'm proud of those times, and as a music fan, I know how that is: when a band starts out it's real exciting. I'm glad that "Days of Wine and Roses" is important to a lot of people. I was talking to somebody the other day, wondering if when I'm seventy years old and making my thirtieth record, will I still be talking about a record I made in 1982? John: As much as I like that record, I do prefer the follow up, "The Medicine Show." That one kinda got buried. Was that because you got signed to a major (A&M) and they didn't know what to do with it? Steve: Yeah. Back then, to be going from an indie to a major - we were actually the first band to really do it. To this day I don't think indies are any better than majors. There are artist driven majors, and corrupt indies. We spent a lot of time on "The Medicine Show", plus we changed our sound ... a lot of things. The funny thing is that in the States there was a backlash, but in Europe that record was and is seen as the band's masterpiece. In a recent issue of The London Guardian, it made the forty best records list in the forty years of rock'n'roll. John: What I particularly like is the dual guitar interplay of you and Karl Percoda. Did he leave the band shortly after that record? Steve: Yeah, it was a complete personality conflict thing. We played well together, made really great music, but grew to hate each others' guts. We were young and all the stupid things played a part: egos, drugs and liquor. It was sad because I think we could have made a lot more good music together. John: Did that personality clash effect "The Medicine Show"? Steve: Yeah, that record took six months to make. That was the least fun I've ever had doing anything in music. I like the results, but making the record was miserable. It was almost nervous breakdown inducing. And to have it slagged in the States made it even worse. By the time we got some indication (positive feedback) from Europe, we were too far gone. John: It's not as immediate as "Days", a lot of long songs, slow to build, some jams. Maybe it just threw people for a loop. Steve: Right. It was a very different record. All my music heroes would change from record to record. But you're expected to find your sound and stick with it. Sadly, it's the only record I've done that's out of print right now. John: Do you know what Karl's up to these days? Steve: He ended up getting his PhD in literature, moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, and he became a professor there. I heard recently that he's been playing in a band, and that he's made a record. Though I don't know anything about it. I'm real curious. I'd love to get together and play with him - not as the Dream Syndicate though. I think reunions are silly. John: You've done a lot of collaborating. How do you hook up with all these people? Steve: By touring for fifteen years you make friends. That's the case with Howard Gelb of Giant Sand, Peter Buck of R.E.M., John Wesley Harding or Come. They were just peers I've admired. Then there's people like Lou Reed, bassist Fernando Saunders, or Flo & Eddie, of whom I was a fan and sought out. John: What about Johnette Napolitano from Concrete Blonde? Steve: Oh yeah, we went out for a while. I still talk to her every week. We live three thousand miles apart, but we talk all the time. She's one of my best friends. John: Were you romantically linked when collaborating on music? Steve: No, but since we broke up, we've done a lot of stuff together. We covered Nick Cave's "The Ship Song", we've sung several duets on my records, and we've toured together. John: There were quite a few L.A. bands in the mid eighties that were very influential: Concrete Blonde, X, Gun club, Green On Red ... Steve: All great bands. John: Recently I spoke with Chuck Prophet from Green On Red fame, and your name came up. Steve: Right, we wrote "Look Both Ways" for his "Brother Aldo" album. I did it again for my "Fluorescent" album. John: Two different versions. Steve: Two very different versions, in fact. His came first, and it's more Townes Van Zandt folky, while mine is more a Bob Dylan "Desire" era stomper. Chuck's a great guitarist, I'd love to work with him. This might sound blasphemous, but he's in a league of Richard Thompson or Tom Verlaine. I think he's that good. For whatever reason, maybe his records don't sell that well - who knows, but I don't think he gets that kind of credit. John: Agreed. One of the things that came up was the "Danny and Dusty" album which you made with Green On Red's Danny Stuart. Whose idea was that project anyway? Steve: Danny's girlfriend at the time was doing a record of L.A. psychedelic people doing country music. Danny and I decided to put together a song for the compilation. We had so much fun doing the one song that we turned it into an entire album. John: Now wait a minute, you claimed that you didn't have a nickname as a sports journalist, but are you not in fact Dusty? Steve: I am Dusty. That's cuz Danny called me Dusty all the time. I have no idea why. "Hey Dusty, let's go get a beer." I think I was pretty clean at the time. I washed my clothes. I bathed regularly. We liked the whole Waylon and Willie thing so we called the record Danny and Dusty. John: Did you get caught up in that wild L.A. scene, becoming a casualty of excess living - the big rock'n'roll stereotype? Steve: Oh there was a lot of decadence. I definitely consumed a fair share of brown alcohol, but that's part of being young, and the transition of a music fan to the point of some level of success, and people offering you everything all the time. It's hard to say no. Hopefully you get through that point and get on with life. John: Is indie supergroup Gutterball still an ongoing side project? Steve: As much as it ever was. It's always been more of a social gathering that got recorded every now and then. John: So who's in the band, or is it a revolving door thing? Steve: It's pretty steady. It's Bryan Harvey and Johnny Hott from House of Freaks, Steve McCarthy from The Long Ryders and myself. At first we had Bob Rupe on bass, but he was replaced pretty quickly by Armstead Welford from Love Tractor. That's been the band now for four years. It's a real fun group. We did a record as a side project goof kinda thing and it became really popular. There was a period where we tried to turn into a real band, do a lot of touring, photo sessions, whatever real bands do. And we found that it just wasn't what the band was all about. The more serious we took it, the more we got sick of it. It's kind of a band that'll make a record every couple of years. We all agreed not to spoil it. The last one ["Weasel"] came out in '95, so there should be another record in '98. John: Did the House of Freaks call it a day? Steve: They did, which is really sad. John: Yeah, I loved that band. Steve: They were a great band, but you know it was just two people, which is basically a marriage. I think they still get along, but I think they were just sick of playing together. Their last record "Invisible Jewel", which got ignored... John: That was a fantastic record! Steve: It's an amazing record, and it's also the roots of a lot of what's happening now in music. It was really ahead of its time. John: Johnny Hott's wild percussion is just mind blowing - everything from steel drums to oil drums. Steve: That sound can now be heard in Sparklehorse. Johnny played in Cracker for a year, but he quit that recently. Bryan is playing ukulele in a Hawaiian band, and loving it. John: Thanks for the lowdown on all my favourite performers. Steve: This is like an encyclopedia interview! John: Say, it's been a long time since you've come to Ottawa... Steve: I think it was '88, and I have a picture of the marquee cuz it said "Tonight: Dream Syndicate, Tomorrow: Mark Farner [Grand Funk Railroad]". John: That sounds like our little town. Steve: I just love that. I still cherish that photo. That just said it all. John: Steve... it's time to pack. Steve: Damn. ..tape hiss DREAD ZEPPELIN'S TORTELVIS In an era of music tributes there is no equal to TortElvis, the man who mixes the King's music with Led Zeppelin and reggae. After a brief hiatus in which milk deliveries took precedence over music, TortElvis is back, bigger than ever. John: How's the milk business? TortElvis: I been all around the world the last year and a half, setting up home delivery systems for countries in need. And son, it sure is satisfying. John: You seem to have some strange callings in life. TortElvis: That's right. I'm an entertainer by night and a regular working man by day. Just one of the boys. John: Do you still have your towel boy? TortElvis: Yes. Charlie Hodge [former NHL goalie] hands me my towel and water. Everywhere I go, he goes. In fact when I deliver milk in the wee hours of the morning, he's there by my side. John: What poundage are you up to these days? TortElvis: I'm proud to say I've broken the 300 mark. Right now I'm at 345 pounds, ladies and gentlemen. John: How did you achieve that level; is it with the help of those big fat burgers? TortElvis: Ya gotta eat a lotta fat, that's for sure. Mainly it's sitting around doin' nothing. Unfortunately 'cause I work so hard, it's hard to keep the weight up, but I'm doing the best I can. John: Wow. So I guess it's safe to say that you won't be reverting to the early Elvis as we know him on the US commemorative stamp. TortElvis: That's quite obvious by looking at my girth. But I'm proud to do the later Elvis: the Vegas years. I think that's the most interesting time in his life. John: So how did you happen on the idea of moulding the Elvis persona with Led Zeppelin tunes? TortElvis: It was actually an idea that Elvis himself had talked about shortly before his death. I pretty well stole the idea. It's something that I think he would be doing if he was still around. John: So you think he's long in the grave? TortElvis: Well yes I do. There's no doubt about it. But the spirit lives all over the world, and hopefully I'm doing my part to keep the faith alive. John: Here's a question you may choose not to answer: I happen to know on good authority that that's not your real hair and those are not your real sideburns. Now when you take them off, would people recognize you on the street? TortElvis: I'm proud to say that after all these years of performing, I've finally grown real sideburns. You can come to the shows and feel them for yourself. Do whatever you want, but just don't shave 'em off. The hair may or may not be real at this point, but I am semi-recognizable when I walk the streets. John: Can you run down the current line-up for those who haven't experienced the Dread Zeppelin experience? TortElvis: We've got six players plus Charlie. Karl Jah plays lead guitar. He's an exact replica of Jimmy Page ...as far as playing goes. On the other guitar we've got Jah Paul Joe: he's the prince of peace and love. On bass guitar there's Butros Buttboy, who's also a fantastic dancer. And, this is a true story by the way, Spice, a former member of Menudo, plays drums. The fabulous Ed Zeppelin from Trinidad on congas rounds it out. John: You have a fine voice; have you been singing all your life? TortElvis: Oh yes. I was singing "Love Me Tender" out of the womb. John: Did you ever get a chance to meet the King himself? TortElvis: Yes I did. I met him in January 1977. He wasn't looking too good - way overweight. I was standing on the side of the stage as he went on for one of his final concerts. I told him "Elvis, watch your step." He turned and smiled. That's the very last I saw of him. John: I think that's more than we ever wanted to know, thanks TortElvis. TortElvis: Wellthankyouverymuchson. ..tape hiss ____________________________________________________________________________ IN THE BOOKS - A stack of book reviews we've been meanin' to write SPACE IS THE PLACE: THE LIVES AND TIMES OF SUN RA by John F. Szwed (Pantheon) $29.95, 476 pages Reviewed by Shaun Dale Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount was born in Alabama in 1914, but Sun Ra was born over and over in times and places beyond description, if not belief. John Szwed, a professor of music and African American studies at Yale University, has written a comprehensive and revealing look at Sun Ra's transformational life and transformative music. Szwed traces Sun Ra's development from his Birmingham roots to his elevation as an innovative leader on the progressive jazz scene and the flamboyant front man for the various incarnations of his Arkestra. Drawing on an incredible range of documentary sources and original research, Szwed has produced a valuable and overdue document of one of the most idiosyncratic and accomplished figures in American musical history. Sun Ra's music is well documented by recordings, often self produced, from throughout his career. This volume contains a 22 page discography that gives ample evidence of that. Written documentation of his life and career has been less widely available and far sketchier in its contents. A selected bibliography reflects magazine articles, concert and recording reviews and brief interviews scattered among many publications over decades. Szwed's integration of these would be a worthy contribution in itself. That contribution is enhanced by a considerable body of original research which includes interviews with musicians, family members and others with various levels of personal and musical involvement with Sun Ra. That research allowed Szwed to move past the musical and more deeply into the personal aspects of Sun Ra's life. He also provides insightful linkage between Sun Ra's distinctive cosmology and the tradition of African American thought, with connections to Egyptology, numerology, tales of the diaspora and general feelings of "otherness." The overall effect is to leave the reader with a knowledge of a man that only enhances the experience of his music. He also examines Sun Ra's roots in the African American musical spectrum, most explicitly his strong grounding in the swing music of mentors like Fletcher Henderson. A review can only point at the wealth of material to be found in this book. It is a must read for anyone with a serious interest in the development of modern jazz, African American history and one of its central figures. It's an entertaining and informative book for anyone who enjoys popular biography. (C) 1997 - Shaun Dale I WANT TO TAKE YOU HIGHER - The Psychedelic Era 1965-1969 (Chronicle Books) 208 pages; 200 full-color and black-and-white images. Reviewed by Jeff Apter Having recently strolled the length and breadth of Haight Street for the first time - starting at the Ashbury intersection, naturally - I have a pretty clear 'after' picture of hippie haven, San Francisco. This lavish book, tieing-in (tie-dyeing in?) with the like-named Rock & Roll Hall of Fame exhibit, fills in the 'before' gap in my education. Offering a trippy snapshot of the latter half of the 1960s, its every page is jam-packed with posters, pictures, prose and paraphernalia, presenting the obligatory icons of the age (Lennon's Rolls, Woodstock fever, shaggy scenester Ginsberg), along with surprising revelations. The biggest of these revelations is that the book's main essayists - former Rolling Stone writer Charles Perry and underground mover'n'shaker Barry Miles - track down psychedelia's ground zero to 1965, not 1967, as commonly believed. They also reveal how London was every bit as 'happening' as San Francisco. For instance, Ken Kesey's first 'Acid Tests' took place in '65, as did an epochal London poetry reading, which kicked out the Albert Hall's jams and kickstarted the London underground. And as Ginsberg chanted mantras to the Brits, a Nevada saloon was being given a psychedelic makeover, evolving into the 'Red Dog Saloon,' a forerunner to hippie HQs such as the Fillmore and Avalon ballrooms. And also during 1965, Dr Timothy Leary and his lysergic-loving acolytes were gobbling LSD as if they were M&Ms. So, despite the hallmarks of 1967 - 'Human Be-Ins' at San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, dazzling debuts from Hendrix, The Doors, The Dead and Pink Floyd, the emergence of 'Rolling Stone' and 'International Times' - the authors contend that '1967 was the beginning of the end' for psychedelia. That comment makes plenty of sense when you scan the 'timeline' that runs along the bottom of each page of 'Higher', which plots the escalating Vietnam body-count and the political dramas breaking out all over as the 60s rolled on. But the perennial problem of 'art vs commerce' was just as influential in psychedelia's downfall. Grace Slick, during one of the book's many candid flashbacks, reveals how she thought Donovan 'too cute...too commercial.' The end was nigh when 'Mellow Yellow' scaled the charts. Irrespective of exactly when psychedelia began and what killed it off, the latter half of the 1960s were still tumultuous years of social, cultural and political upheaval, 'a time when anything was possible', according to the book's editor, and Hall of Fame curator, James Hencke. This utopian dream runs like an electrical current through 'I Want To Take You Higher', via its hundreds of potent images and wistful essays (mostly written with the benefit of hindsight, admittedly). To me, some of the most vivid images are the posters of Family Dog music marathons and Grateful Dead shows, an ar