Utopia of The Tired Man

2012-01-20T09:56:00.000-08:00

I miss me

Famine of the Haze

2011-04-25T01:11:00.000-07:00

Crash Night

2011-03-08T20:11:00.000-08:00

Dedicated to Nina Elisabeth

One night as we rode through the city in dark rain, my friends and I tried to turn left. The car was smashed into on the passenger side by a rapidly moving semi truck, and there was a concussion and neck injuries. But other than emotional and state trauma, there was nothing seriously physical. And something like that can have strange reach; let me explain. I remember seeing for a split second, the headlights of the truck 50 meters back. Our driver’s view was blocked by a brown bank truck when she turned. Though I was leaning forward from the backseat I didn’t say anything. Neither did my girlfriend.

Everyone let out whatever noise they had time to before what felt like the collision of your front teeth into someone else’s. No mouth to soften anything, just that sound. Shards of it.

The sixteen -wheeled truck sped up to get through a yellow when we were in the middle of the intersection turning left. The impact sent us round and round, the car’s front end caving in and an attic’s worth of junk, chunks, bolts and hoses bounced out into all round directions of the 140° we spun in.

I don’t remember things stopping or slowing down. I just remember people yelling about liquid coming out of the car as we all just sat still. I climbed out, just, to marvel at the size of the thing that had smashed us. I felt a kaleidoscope of peeled open eyes from every direction. Witnesses, eager to volunteer testimony against the driver who was younger than my little brother. No one present would have ever guessed that it was our driver’s fault.

The fire department arrived first, then the ambulance, then the police. We were just trying to get to the movie.

We’re just trying to get to the movie. I told a paramedic as he shone a thin light into the center of both my eyes. Siddown.

They hoisted the remains of the Subaru onto a flatbed truck and we convinced them that it was time for us to see the movie about Hildegard Knef. I didn’t see much of it though.

After, we all hugged and split up. The taxi ride home was lurid and grim. I sat quietly terrified and flinched at every individual headlight that went by.

When I stood up to get out of the bathtub later I fainted.

It can’t take more than a few hours, I told her. Before I left the Vancouver General Hospital at 3:30am, there were ex-rays, MRI’s, a CT scan and all kinds of other tubes, wires and pads attached to me. They gave me whiplash tests, neck exercises, long questioners and the fizzy kind of apple juice I hate.

I met with seven different doctors, most curt and uninterested. I threatened to leave twice. At the end of nine hours, sitting with Hannah in a waiting room, a new doctor told me that my neck and shoulder appeared fine, that there seemed to be no permanent damage from the crash. He asked to see me alone.

I sat on a small round stool in the middle of the empty iatric room. He studied his clipboard.

Sooo the testsss weent wellll Jesuaaa. He dragged his syllables out, reading talk from the paper. Evvverythinggg lllooks ffinee regardinggg the accidentt. Sooo that’ss gooood. He stopped dragging and started speaking in beat. But, something we believe to be completely…separate from the accident is…we did find something wrong with your brain.

CT Scan of Jesua's left hemisphere

Under

At 6:45am I signed into the hospital. A hurried, orderly brought me into a change stall. I was handed a giant plastic bag for my things.

When I had gone to meet the neurosurgeon, we started by listing the drugs I had been using recreationally. I told them about the heroin and the ketamine injections. And the GHB and the crystal and the pills. They recommended I stay away from the cocaine and speed. I could do that. I told them.

Because you don’t smoke, the surgery will be quite common. We’re going to remove part of your skull in order to get between the two hemispheres. They told me. And though they were exceptionally nice, my request to video record the procedure was shot way down. After a long discussion they finally agreed to taking photos using tiny cameras on the tools that would enter my dome.

The orderly joined me in the stall. Her presence felt comfortable. You’ve got the angels flyin’ with you, you know that? Dr. Speakinghead is the best there is…if anyone in my family had to do somethin’ like this, they’d be seein’ him too. You’ve got the angels. Another kind of smile came, this one a little sinister maybe, that lead her plump arms to me. She bent and gave me a warm, immersing squeeze as I sat on the cold bench, pants at my ankles.

My girlfriend Nina waited with me at the bed. She watched them puncture me for more IV. She never tired of holding my hand.

Congratulations. I remember Dr. Speakinghead saying. You’ve got the biggest aneurysm in the ward. Almost 2 cm!

They wheeled my gurney into the lit OR. The hall made my body feel wet and soft. I wondered what all the industrial sized stainless steel machines did besides cut people up into sausage. I wondered about the anesthetic.

The nurses and doctors talked to me with a controlled tension that could have split an atom, with again slowed drawn tone.

In my mind I was already at the exit. I hadn’t really been anywhere since they told me that an enormous, swollen artery in my brain threatened to pop my life off at any minute. The buzz in that hall was severe, every hurry with reeled control. Human life. Open brain. One of 10 today. No room for blunders. Adrenaline scores skyrocket. So does caffeine. And nothing could be done but surrender, wait.

Frail, in a skimpy gown, I was instructed to climb off one bed onto another, one with a squishy, tiger-striped hologram pad. It held like paste.

After tiny explanations and no introductions, they put the plastic widget over my mouth. Please breathe deeply Jesua. And before the end of 3, I went far to sleep.

Moving into my brain

Aneurysm and clip

Aftermath

Nurses did tests to see how well my brain and body harmonized under the end of the propofol (the same milk they claim to have killed the Thriller).

I came out of that thing into the warm smile of my mother. She was there watching me, watching everything around be intolerably awkward, in the tired grey room. I didn’t understand yet. My eyes closed for me.

At first I couldn’t lift an arm and I was too far-gone to talk. But if I tried really hard I could remember my name and the date, and those motherfuckers woke me every hour to re-ask me the same goddam questions. My left eye was blacked shut and my head was swollen twice its size. I was covered in old blood, with a swollen line from the bottom of my ear to my widow’s peak in an adroit pink line. In the weeks before, I daydreamed of seeing all of my friends at once, but nobody came. My mouth was held shut by my own jaw. I couldn’t get food in. I couldn’t move my right toes.

There was this night nurse though that I swore I’d kissed. I knew her. Jeanine. I swear. She came in the stone dark like a seraph one night. I wished for her blonde with all my might, to jump with me on the trampoline again. I’d wear my Black Crows “Shake Your Money Maker” t-shirt. And she’d kindly dole out another hand of liquid morphine.

On day 5 Dr. Speakinghead paid me a visit. He was wearing a handsome motorcycle jacket. I told him I wanted to go home. He said Ok. I hazily recollect leaving, being at my house, on the couch in and out of consciousness for weeks. My girlfriend and my mother were there. I went out on Halloween without dressing up. People thought I wore a great costume. I dragged a pale, infirm skeleton to work at the barbershop tending other people’s heads.

Ittook months for me to lay my fingers on the ground where they worked, closing over the hole in my skull with a titanium plate. It doesn’t set off metal detectors. What was left, was a mixture of total blur and clear, visible future. My mind had mostly removed me from the past situation, but I started to taste the salt of fresh ideas. I still get headaches that wake me up all night, or I find myself shaking scared from simple things like traffic, or the waterslides I watch 6 year-old girls scream and leap right down into. And as hard as it is to admit, I actually fear the creeping hand of death now.

I still wonder if the screw sticking out above my eyebrow is a Philips or a Robertson. Ask me to feel it next time I see you, maybe you can tell. I still don’t believe in angels, or medical practitioners who do, but at that time, I was granted the right to walk in the footsteps of Christ.

Fall Moon

2010-10-26T22:41:00.000-07:00

Photage: Saint Jesua/Perry Stalsis

+<+ <+< +<+ <+<+

2010-10-10T00:03:00.001-07:00

Photage: Jesua & Perry

Children

2010-09-27T02:32:00.000-07:00

Photage by Saint Jesua & Perry Stalsis

The Velvet Wasp

2010-09-14T15:56:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a kitchen in an unknown and old house, there sat a small, abysmal kiddie pool. The house, being unknown and old, existed from deep inside the mind of a dreamer that came from within a dream. The pool that stood within its kitchen was a symbol of the imagination, and it as well could be said that the pool stood as symbol for the small but deep heart, located within the cavity of a young boy.

Velvet Ants flew diligently around as if the kitchen were a familiar home to their activity. In make up the striking Velvet Ant does resemble a flying ant, but is actually a very vibrantly colored wasp known for its deadly sting. So from here it shall be referred to as the Velvet Wasp, and like the pool, is also a symbol of rare imagination, but more specifically, the impulsive desires from within the boy's mind.

The Velvet Wasps, in such a number put the boy ill at ease. He was outnumbered, and as such became afraid as he watched them. But as is often the case with fear, a kind of strange excitement followed that the boy did not know. It gave him a tiny, sharp flicker of power through his frame, into his loins and a feeling he couldn't explain came over him. Malice.

From a distance he started to pick things up, and to throw them at the wasps, knocking them out of the air and into the pool of water. His heart began to pound as one by one, he watched them squirm, drowning them dead, all but the last. No matter how the boy tried, he could not get the last wasp into the water. It would not sink, or go under, it kept surviving. And it came to battle.

With tricks and great effort, the boy used everything he could, eventually growing brave enough to get so close that he was able to violently slap his hand right down on top of the wasp, hitting it directly into the pool. But the velvet wasn't taken so easily. It bounced off the surface of the commotion when the boy drew back his hand. And it was there that the ant realized that its life was in danger, it sensed the threat of the boy’s peaking spite. And the boy himself became alarmed at this, grabbing a wet sponge to crush the ant down with. He threw it high above the water and the heavy sponge ended right down on top of the ant causing it to disappear amongst the swishing waves. The boy held his breath with wide eyes and watched things around him begin to settle. The air started to calm. But the sponge began to move of it's own accord. It started to turn over slowly and deliberately and the wasp dragged itself up with black, mechanical, twitchety legs. He could see its desperate anger—its body growing bigger with rage, its golden abdomen flickering to red. Now, it flew at him.

His shoes squealed in the puddles on the floor as he took to running. From the kitchen, down a hallway, through corridors of the unfamiliar old house, giant steps around corners, left and then right and then left again, until he came to sliding glass doors. He yanked. And paused.

Nothing.

Silence.

I beat it, he thought.

BUZZZSHHHH! A thunderous droning above his head caused his eyes to jerk up above him to the hateful Velvet Wasp. The insane thing dove straight at him in a fury of sound, burning down and at the last minute smoothing it’s dip, rolling right into the hole in his ear with the ease and gentle familiarity it would give to its own nest.

I’M GOING TO BE DEAF...IT’S GOING TO STING MY BRAINS!!!

Desperately the boy forced his finger in after it, to feel it, to crush it. And he felt nothing.

by Saint Jesua

2010-09-14T14:46:00.001-07:00

Photography by Saint Jesua & Perry Stalsis

2010-09-13T22:01:00.000-07:00

Photography by Nina Asseng

The Law of DE

2010-09-09T01:04:00.001-07:00

Secret Vice of Buffalo Wardh

2010-09-08T00:45:00.000-07:00

Photography by Saint Jesua & Perry Stalsis

To all those that died by way of the rope...

2010-02-15T23:32:00.000-08:00

From "Cities of the Red Night" by William S. Burroughs

"This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lords of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breathe is the stench of dung and the perfume of death, Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours, Lord of Decay, Lord of the Future, who rides on a whispering south wind, to Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities, to Kutulu, the Sleeping Serpent who cannot be summoned, to the Akhkharu, who suck the blood of men because they desire to become men, to the Lalussu, who haunt the places of men, to Gelal and Lilit, who invade the beds of men and whose children are born in secret places, to Addu, raiser of storms who can fill the night with brightness, to Malah, Lord of Courage and Bravery, to Zahgurim, whose number is twenty three and who kills in an unnatural fashion, to Zahrim, a warrior among warriors, to Itzamna, Spirit of Early Mists and Showers, to Ix Chel, the-Spider-Web-that-Catches-the-Dew-of-Morning, to Zuhuy Kak, Virgin Fire, to Ah Dziz, the Master of Cold, to Kak U Pacat, who works in fire, to Ix Tab, Goddess of Ropes and Snares, patroness to those who hang themselves, to Schmuun, the Silent One, twin brother of Ix Tab, to Xolotl the Unformed, Lord of Rebirth, to Aguchi, Master of Ejaculations, to Osiris and Amen in phallic form, to Hex Chun Chan, the Dangerous One, to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star Beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to Hassan I Sabbah, Master of the Assassins.

To all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested....

NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED."

Cass McCombs: You Saved My Life

2009-11-05T20:55:00.000-08:00

I first meet Cass McCombs in a dressing room. I have a terrible cold, watery eyes and a clouded, weird, fever head. His first sentence after “I’m Cass” is “give me a minute to get changed into my outfit”. He returns twenty-five seconds later wearing a round straw hat and a denim jacket with a bright pink, airbrushed scorpion on it, where across his shoulder blades are the self-referencing bubble letters “Lion Killer”. Also sunglasses.
“It’s easier to be somebody when you have an outfit” he tells me as we spill from the Commodore out into an alley through alarmed fire doors. We hit Granville Street and wander into an old arcade. I tell him about the orange, 8mm, time-stained porno reels in the back, his attention is on the pinball machines saluting like a row of brave, lit-up Generals.
Full disclosure: I am a big fan of this man. And so in order to make
the interview experience a little less ordinary I thought about doing it somewhere
other than backstage, like on a rooftop where we could look over Vancouver Construction City while gabbing about whatever.
But it turned out to be harder than I thought. After inquiring everywhere I
could think of within walking distance of the Commodore I got nothing but frowns and terse looks. Next time I’ll say I’m interviewing Brain Adams, twats.
But, two nights before the show someone from the Vogue called me. A pleasant dude, extremely kind, and a definite member of the Johnson Family agreed to letting Cass and I hang around inside the historic old theater.

The plush and comely Vogue is dark in the lobby. The main auditorium is under renovation, covered with random wood, tools and activity. McCombs disappears walking up and down the isles boyishly, hands in his jacket pockets, exploring the place high and low. We eventually find the basement, which is quiet and away from distraction, and Cass and I settle onto a dusty faded heliotrope sofa from the 1960’s in an odd sloped room directly under the theater’s seats. He takes off his hat and puts the sunglasses inside. He takes his shoes off and pulls his knees up to his chest, spilling floppy pea-green stockings onto the cushions. McCombs doesn’t do a lot of interviews. He doesn’t enjoy the pressure of something so unrelated and removed from the creative process. In a dirty, disheveled maintenance closet room, there is one fluorescent lamp shining down and onto this mysterious, esoteric deacon.

The first thing I notice are pale humble eyes and his mischievous teeth. You can tell a great deal about someone’s personality from their teeth. He later tells me that he is a “reactionary person”—that if you put him in a corner, he’ll bite back.

In our strangely fitting location, I bring out the Catacombs double LP, his 4th most recent full length, released in July and already sold out in America.
“Ritchie Valens or not?” I start, pointing inside. Besides the musicians (and Chico Marx), the photos in Catacombs all involve the Chicano rock legend. Three are of the high school Valens barely left before dying in a plane crash at 18. The other photo, an airport in Pacoima California, not far from where Catacombs was recorded, was where Valens was from. McCombs is “a huge fan”. Once when asked if he could play a show with anyone past or present, he responded: “Merle Haggard, The Grateful Dead, Ritchie Valens and The Germs”. I ask him about this. “Those are the four cornerstones of California music, the Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. All California artists have to base their art on those artists….” He relists them for me slower and, with the amount of conviction he uses when articulating “The Dead” he makes me seriously reconsider ever slagging those hippies. No joke. Darby and Jerry together at last.

The records McCombs has put out so far reveal him to be a weird maverick, never following any particular style, deploying them all successfully, joined only by a music that achingly pierces the heart just as successfully as it does the head. In order that he keep his art evolving, the California nomad approaches every song a new way, which at root could possibly be attributed to his peripatetic lifestyle. He’s lived all over: California, San Francisco, Baltimore, Chicago, New York City and London, all before the age of 31. McCombs doesn’t have an apartment, nor astonishingly, is he or any of his 4 piece band getting paid anything for their opening slot on the Band of Horses dates they are playing. “They are good friends.” He says. “Where they say we go.” It is clearly about nothing to him, but the music.

And for him it seems that friends also are synonymous with the creative process. On a few different occasions McCombs speaks about the importance of his friends not only to his music but to his creativity in general. For example, a regular contributor to his projects has been best friend Aaron Brown, who co-designing the board game which appears in the fold out of his last full length outing “Dropping The Writ”, created the cover art for Catacombs, directed the Dreams-Come-True-Girl and Executioner’s Song videos and, as a gift, designed his previously mentioned custom denim jacket.

As it often goes, McCombs was born into the troubadour life. He grew up in and around music. When I ask him who in his family played what instrument, he rubs his eyes with his palm heels and then all his fingers, and through his hands in a long exhalation tells me he doesn’t like to talk about his family.
“Were there ever any profound musical experiences that helped you understand things or changed the way you felt about the world?”
“It’s continuous.” he states. “But growing up there was a lot of thrash bands and metal in the Bay Area, a lot of Hip Hop and Punk…and it was a really polarizing time and different people felt so attached to certain styles of music and I never got on my high horse like that and—wait, I don’t know where I’m going with this….
There is a long silence.
I remember hearing that McCombs loves digging in thrifts for old cassettes while on tour, it’s how he collects music, that he’s done it forever. I reach into my bag and hand him two from my collection when the hang time begins to seem ominous.
“OH! LEONARD! O.D.B!! I lost my best of Leonard Cohen…and this ODB tape is in great condition!” I tell him that I had another cassette just of howling wolves in the Canadian wilderness, but that I couldn’t part with it. It’s perfect starting the day/shower listening.

Again there is a long silence. And then he switches on: “Don’t even bother digitizing it,” he says sarcastically to no one in particular with an intonation vaguely reminiscent to the late, great Bill Hicks. “There are these people who digitize their cassettes…it defeats the purpose! Let the thing degrade and destroy itself…and then it’s gone forever like you will be someday—What is our obsession with permanence?! It’s a bull**** concept!” Remembering himself he quickly adds, “I hate when I curse, I really didn’t want to curse.” I tell him I’ll cut it out. “Cut it out he says,“ and then revises, “It is a…hollow concept.”

Industrial vacuums rattle and whine overhead and the saw dusty renovations continue. I ask McCombs what he thinks about something Jorges Luis Borges casually dropped in a political description that went something like: “America, hampered by the superstition of Democracy….”. I ask in regards to the song on Catacombs “Don’t Vote”. His reply: “Let’s look at the lyrics.”
“It’s about how there are systems put upon you, and you are judged by not following those systems…and it is a choice not to participate…although you will be judged. Last night at the bar we were talking about the supposed tradition of giving cheers, clinking the glasses and making direct eye contact, and whose tradition is this and how important is it exactly and what if you don’t follow these [dogmatic] traditions—what are the consequences?! And the song is about the consequences of not following a tradition, whatever it is.”

Changing gears I inquire, “The Executioners Song” video has just been released. How did it materialize? I thought I saw bones and human remains in it?”

“You may have. But when you’re making a video it’s just all laughs, you’re just goofing off,” he muses, “it’s free! I mean you just keep the thing rolling until something happens…oh there’s some sheep, let’s just wait for an hour until the sheep do something…you know? Slow mo? Fine! There is no genius behind video making”.
When I ask him about the amazing bar we see in the video with money all over the roof, he tells me that it’s somewhere in nowhere, near Sonoma, near Petaluma in northern California. Lowering his voice a bit he adds that it is supposed to be haunted.
Jokingly I tell him that the Vogue, too, is haunted.

“Let’s go. “ He decides getting up, grabbing his hat. “Let’s seriously get out of here....”

*Later that night, McCombs and his band pull off a brilliantly tender set, despite an inattentive, chattering crowd. With the help of Melanie Moser (keys, vocals), Christian Owens (bass guitar), Blake Mills (electric guitar) and the player of the best (and most reduced) drum solo I’ve ever seen, Andy McCloud, the band coax out the shimmering specters from around us. It is the first appearance of McCombs on a Vancouver stage, and for those of us paying attention, he and his friends let us in on some of his remarkably graceful secrets.

Photos of Cass McCombs by Kris Krug: StaticPhotography.com

Dear Diary [sic]

2009-02-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

unedited journal page.

To D.F. Wallace (R.I.P)

Another Day At the Crematorium

We decided since we were left alone at work today to drink codeine baths to help the day along. Sometimes you need a hand to move the days here.
My colleague surprised me at how easily a person could get saccharinely dusted off of an over the counter bottle of 222’s (dosage being around 510mgs of caffeine to 272mgs of codeine that we dissolved effortlessly in cold water and passed through a coffee filter). It tasted like poison. The coming on was gradual and at first I rushed, enjoying the pummeling fuzz through my frame while we talked about Once Upon a Time in the West. But later as my body started to register 3 hours sleep last night, and no food at all, things took a turn.
I didn’t feel right, sat reeling while bodily functions recoiled in horror at the total, thorough sickening sink that crashed in, rolled back and washed away at my sands.
I watched the sun through the window from my spring-backed office chair reflect off the pale stone mausoleum looking out over the cemetery.
I told Jorges that I needed to lie down as I stumbled up.
“Yeah dude…you’ve dipped a couple shades…”
I went into the room for families to witness their loved one’s cremation. It had a small, cheap, white floral patterned sofa. Laying down with my eyes closed brought on caffeined-up opiate daymares. I dozed for a minute and then another minute. I jerked awake. I jerked awake again. I got up. I sat down hard. I stood up again, nothing felt okay. The weight of my own head lead me stumbling in a semi-run back to the main office where Jorges was researching an essay on pants size reflecting the relationship between boys and their fathers.
He suggested a gravol to settle my stomach and as I threw it back I noticed the water bottle I was using was empty. My mouth was so pasty that the pill stuck onto my tongue like it wasn’t going anywhere. I tried to force swallow it several failing times. I felt the flat orangy coating coming off as it sat on my tongue and I felt the works stir inside of me.
I had time to turn 180 degrees and step twice. Bent over a desk I bucked harder than I maybe ever have in my entire life, no bullshit. My frame rung itself out in rampant snake bite twists, forced convulsions, water bursting forth in an unmeandering confession. It forced hard BLEHHHH screams, the slowed down whinnies of a wild, trapped horse.
“Smells like stomach in here dude…”
That afternoon, it took me a long time to get all the puke out of my moustache.

• Witch • Interview by Jesua •

2008-04-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

Kinda like the waaaay old days with Deep Wound, Mr. J Mascis returns to the drum kit with his new band Witch, a loud reminiscence of 70’s metal (Budgie) and psyched out doom (Sabbath). Their 2008 release ‘Paralyzed’ tosses a bit of fuzzed proto-punk in with strange hints of something seemingly indie. Mascis' longtime friend (and fellow Canadian) Dave Sweetapple joins with bass and Feathers members Antoine Guerlain and Kyle Thomas.
Thomas told me that this record has faster material than previous due to Mascis’ hard hitting and hardcore influence constantly speeding everything up (“even on the slow jams”).

On a side note, Mascis is rumored to be an enormously difficult interview, very untalkative and rude, bored to a laconic point. [hint: read his parts in a nasally, dry, sarcastic tone]…and because I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect going into the thing, I ate a handful of mushrooms a few hours before I went to meet up with the band at Berlin's Knaack Club.

There was a lot of laughter.

I wonder if they knew….

Dave: Ok, enough about us…What are you doing here?

[This marks the first time that a band has ever prodded me with questions in an interview]

Jesua: That’s a good question, although there isn’t really an answer…

Kyle: Should we sit in a different position?

Jesua: No. I’d prefer things pretty informal, that’s why I wanted to go for a walk…I mean, I’ve heard [pointing at Mascis] that you hate talking, so I just thought we’d keep this as low end as possible…

[Explosions of laughter from everyone except Mascis]

J. Mascis: I’ve heard you were boring and difficult [in a light nasally British accent].

Dave: …a difficult asshole.

[more laughter this time from everyone, much more jovial]

Jesua: So, do you guys think that the world is actually going to end in 2012? [xoLaura]

Mascis: 2012 Mayan Prophecy I see fire…[singing in a metal voice, accompanying hand in the devil horns]

Kyle: I think it’s all just gonna start over…

Dave: Wait, I didn’t here about this…I thought it was all for like 2000 when everything would change…

Kyle: No man, 2012 is all about the Mayan calendar…

Jesua: Would you rather be able to fly or read minds?

Mascis: I’d rather fly.

Kyle: I’d get really depressed reading minds…

Dave: Board ze green bus to Berlin…[more laughing, this time leading into coughing] Does anyone have an inhaler I can buy? Do you have any asthmatic friends?

Jesua: I could ask…you really need one?

Dave: UDerol.

Kyle: Yeah he needs it bad, he can’t breathe.

Dave: I bought the wrong one….

Jesua: You never know what you can find with a few phone calls…
Are you guys friends with any Masons or Scientologists?

Dave: He’s a mason [pointing at Antoine].

Jesua: Really?!

Antoine: Yeah…a stone mason.

Mascis: I know some Scientologists.

Jesua: Do you feel they have any insights for your life?

Mascis: Not really…I find it…[trails off]

Jesua: I heard L. Ron Hubbard is an understudy of Aleister Crowley, did you guys ever hear that?

No’s go all around

Dave: Is L Ron Hubbard still alive?

I don’t know’s go all around.

Jesua: Did you ever hear about his recordings? He apparently got banned from every country in the world, so he got this yacht and sailed all around and recorded music and there are records pressed of it….

Whoa’s go all around.

Kyle: Is it lounge music? I bet it’s lounge music.

Jesua: How do you get banned from every country in the world?

Mascis: Well, the Germans certainly don’t like him. Scientology was banned in Germany.

Antoine: I know some people who are in a branch off of it…but I think Scientologists are encouraged to join other groups and influence them…that’s part of being one, you have to spread into other groups covertly.

Kyle: If you go to LA there’s that really creepy L. Ron Hubbard street…

Jesua: Yeah, L. Ron Hubbard Boulevard.

Kyle: There’s a very mysterious Mason house in the center of my town…nobody knows anything about it though.

Jesua: If you could play anywhere known to man where would that be?

Dave: The Commodore Ballroom. [in Vancouver]

[high pitch giggling]

Jesua: Hey, they put tires and horsehair under the floor so it bounces. It’s great for dancehall shows…I guess maybe you guys should play there.

Dave: People love to dance to Joey Shithead…

Mascis: Richards on Richards

Dave: Hookers on Davie…

[This is the "what we know about Vancouver" part where they also make fun of me]

Jesua: J who’s you worst enemy?

Dave: Lou Barlow.

[explosion of insane laughter all around, cackling even from me]

Dave: Dude, you just fired that shit outta nowhere, what’s that about?

Jesua: I’m just going for it…

Mascis: I’ll have to get back to you on that one…

Jesua: Who are your favorite hero’s of fiction?

Mascis: Pete Cougar [in the meekest, nasal voice I’ve ever heard].

Jesua: Who’s that?

[Mascis looks at me like “Who’s Who?” and shrugs…]

[silence…pondering]

Dave: …a hero in his fiction…[barely getting it out before bursting into raspy hysterics]

Jesua: Pete Cougar?! [I repeat joining in the howling]

At this point everyone goes barking mad, Dave and Kyle actually fall onto their backs, scream-laughing and I’m worried my spot will be blown because I’m laughing so hard it’s hurting…

Antoine: …a hero in his own fiction [Baaa hhahaha hahhaaa]

Mascis: Can you think of a better one? What?

The laughter goes on for about 130 seconds non stop on my recorder.

Pete Cougar

Jesua: Ok, known to other people then…actual people….

Mascis: Well, specify…

Kyle: I read a lot of Richard Brautigan when I was young….

At this point things get even weirder and Mascis’ apparent brother-in-law joins us with friends using a TomTom GPS system to locate us at the Lenin monument 5 blocks away from the Club.

Jesua: Who are your heroines of non-fiction?

Dave: Leni Riefenstahl. She was a photographer from Berlin, she did a lot of photography for the 3rd Reich, and then she started doing a lot of nature and under water photography…

Kyle: I was listening to a lot of Alice Coltrane…like everything she’s done...

Mascis: What about Emily Dickenson? I live right down the road from her house…

[more laughter]

Kyle: Lindsay Mackaw…

Antoine: Ruth Garbis.

Kyle: Yeah, of course!

Now Dave and J pick up my recorder and start making animal sounds into it whilst giggling like schoolgirls so that I can’t hear a goddamm thing that Kyle is telling me about Ruth Garbis other than the keywords “best friend” and “totally perverted”.

Jesua: Where can I find her stuff?

Kyle: We’re recording her album right now, so she doesn’t have anything yet, but…

Jesua: Hey J did you ever see the Bad Brains live?

Mascis: Yes I have.

Jesua: Tell me about it, where was it?

Mascis: A place called Mavericks in Boston, they showed up really late and it was all hardcore…no reggae…and it was like 20 minutes long… it was awesome. Then I saw ‘em again later in Amherst after the SST record and it wasn’t as good, but it was alright…backflips both times. That’s definitely one of the best shows I have ever seen…one that was 20 minutes long. Sick.

[Dave giggles like maniac in the background and I’m beginning to think he’s taken the mushrooms]

Mascis: The first one was the famous show where skinheads threw snowballs at Ric Ocasek when he came to see the band.

Dave: [busts into weez laughing like a maniac now…then gets a hold of himself finally] Jesua, did you ever see the Bad Brains?

Jesua: Naw. Unfortunately it was ahead of my time….

Kyle: Just the Bad Brians…[referring to the Bad Brains cover band]

Mascis: Where were you in 1982?

Jesua: I was 2 years old…so probably at the Parkland Mall looking at the Tigers with my Uncle Mike…

Mascis: You coulda gone!!

Jesua: I wish someone woulda taken me.

Dave: My Dad took me to Alice Cooper when I was 6.

Jesua: What was your first show?

Mascis: Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter opening for J. Geils…

Dave: You dick! You saw that?!

Kyle: Mine was Corrosion of Conformity.

Antoine: I think my parents went and saw 999 when my Mom was pregnant with me.

Dave: The Brains couldn’t get into Canada, so I had to go to Buffalo to see them. I still think of that as the best show I’ve ever seen.

Antoine: My parents took me to see the Crash Test Dummies when I was young. The singer said he had 3 balls and that’s why he sang so low.

Mascis: My gym teacher had one ball. It got shot off in the war.

Dave: Is that the guy with no legs?

Mascis: No, it’s the guy with one ball.

[laughter explosion #37]

Jesua: [Getting a hold of myself again] Ok, Ok…I have one last question. Everyone ready? What are your earliest music memories?

Mascis: I remember bangin’ on pots and pans…setting ‘em up…

Dave: My Aunt and Uncle were babysitting me, and they had this blue Mustang…and I was 2 or 3 and I remember laying in the backseat and this fucking song was going on and on and on, I was thinking ‘what the fuck is this?!’ And at that point I developed this hatred for what was playing on the radio and I came to find out later that it was “Hey Jude” and since then I’ve hated the Beatles…

Jesua: I’m not a Beatles fan either.

Mascis [giving me a round of applause] Alright!

Kyle: That’s my favorite band.

Dave: You like the Stones?

Jesua: I love the Stones…

[another round of applause, this time with cheering] I am amongst children here!

Kyle: I used to sing and record ‘Somewhere Out There’ from that movie ‘An American Tail’. [starts singing it to Dave, hands together serenade style]

“Sommmmewherrrre out therrrre, beneath the pale bluuue skyyyyyyyy….”

Jesua: I think it’s ‘beneath the paaaale moonliiiiiiiiight’.

Kyle: Whatever.

Thank you for a lovely evening Witch. I am so glad you guys were completely rad.

• Earth: Bees and Hex • Interview by Jesua •

2008-03-10T16:50:00.000-07:00

Earth have become drone veterans. They have been involved in the style for over 17 years, cataloguing the exploration of heavy doom, sedate rock, arcane spaghetti-western style country and purring gospel. They stray from vocals and in fact everything guitar music has come to stand for. Sounds are thoughtful with a powerfully steady arc, taking influences from colossal riff bands like Sabbath, Melvins and Flipper as well as repetition experiments in the vein of La Mont Young. Better known label mates Sunn O))) originated as tribute to Earth, referencing the Sunn O))) amps the band formerly used to obtain it’s loud, feverishly heavy tone. After several line up changes and other complications the band stands as a 4 piece with Dylan Carlson on guitar, Adrienne Davies on drums, Steve Moore on keys, trombone and Don McGreevy on bass.

“Umm…we have to do some laundry, do you want to come with us and do the interview there?” Adrienne Davies asks me.

I first meet Dylan Carlson on the street outside of Berlin’s Lido while he lights a cigarette. It’s rainy and surreal. He nods his ball cap with a short hi and goes back to scanning the street for a taxi. His eyes are an intense cross between rat and hawk. Adrienne stands beside him, somehow raw, yet motherly and sweet. We get into a taxi and Carlson takes charge in directing the cab driver in the broken German he says he kind of remembers from high school. The cabbie drives us over the Warschauer bridge and into Friedrichshain, where we look for a Laundromat. He drops us off and we cross several lanes of traffic and tramline. When we get inside there are hippies, students, and no laundry soap. Adrienne volunteers to go get some, I tell her I’ll go too.
“Don’t forget fabric softner.” Carlson reminds us.
In the shop, Adrienne and I make small talk and bad jokes about the unrecognized products on the brightly lit shelves. Her accent rings slightly American South. In the lineup we talk about their rare and insanely complete Sunn O))) record collection.
“We’re saving those for a rainy day”. She tells me sounding stoked. She seems pretty stoked in general, easy going.
When we return, the Laundromat has emptied. There are only high powered fluorescent lights and the steady thrashing hum of 8 united washing machines. I can’t even guess how many dryers, but you could fit 2 people inside while you watched them whirl through the oculus window.

J: Tell me where you got the name for the record for starters.

DC: That came from the bible story Samson and Delilah, and there’s also a folk song about the story. There’s a British syrup company called Liles and that’s their logo, bees with a lion’s skull…there’s kind of a number of influences of that idea.

J: Have you heard anything about the bees in America leaving their homes and dying off?

DC: Yeah, they’ve completely abandoned Seattle.

AD: Dylan’s guitar/amp tech said that Seattle has one of the highest sound wave cell phone interferences…

J: Right, yeah it’s something to do with sound and electromagnetic…apparently bees just won’t go anywhere near mobile phones because the waves they put off fucks up their ability to orientate themselves…

DC: Kinda like how we fucked up the whales with all the sonar. They can’t project their songs as far anymore so their communication among pods has been reduced. They can’t convey information about mating grounds and stuff and they don’t travel as far...

J: That’s sad…

DC: I don’t own a cell phone, so… (laughs)

J: What made you decide to write a sequel to Miami Morning Coming Down?

DC: The sequel comes more from…it’s not necessarily that they’re the same musically, it’s more like I get a feeling from playing it that’s similar, you know it’s not a cut and dried sequel. The original Miami Morning was a darker version and then part 2 was more of a happy ending.

AD: And if you listen to the guitar lead, that melodic structure…I hear a real similarity, maybe not technically, but the refrainy weird ending, the noodling guitar part is similar to me.

DC: Miami Morning 1 was the last thing I ever recorded before the vanishing act so it’s a going away thing and the other one has this…coming back.

AD: The new one is more hopeful.

J: The whole record is more hopeful…it’s looking up into the light.

DC: This album was different where Hex had an idea, where as this one we did the music first and then I had to go back and arrange it for the record and that’s when I started to see that it had this darkness to light cycle, and usually I’ll have tons of titles and this time I had tons of music and not enough titles.

J: I could play that record for my parents and they’d probably dig it, or at least understand, whereas Hex…you know my Dad loves country, but I couldn’t see him understanding.

AD: My mom didn’t get it either. I played her Hex and she’s a big country fan, I was like “Mom you’re gonna like this it has pedal steel, and this one has banjo and” she just went
“oh, that’s nice honey”…but for Bees she said it sounded like real music. It’s very adult for us…

DC: We were going to call it “Earth Grows Up” [everyone laughs]

J: Did you feel any outside influences to make something more accessible?

DC: This was interesting because Hex had the themes with the Cormac McCarthy book and it was an anti statement…like I’m not doing what I did before…a real against the myth kind of thing.

AD: Yeah, what Earth isn’t anymore…

DC: It’s a band record. It’d be me and her and Steve Moore jamming and working on stuff before the studio…

AD: Steve Moore played a big part in this record.

DC: Before, I hired people to come flesh it out, but I’ve been playing with these people for a few years and now its a community thing as opposed to a solitary thing.

J: What’s the last thing that you found the drone in?

AD: I think country music.

DC: This is an argument we have all the time. Everyone in the band hates this band…and I love them and she hates them…

AD: Oh no, you brought it up...get ready…here it comes.

DC: …but The Grateful Dead.

AD: Dylan has a little secret love affair with the Grateful Dead that I just can’t get behind.

J: I dated a dead head for a while...

DC: I blame my mother.

J: So the Grateful Dead were the bridge for you?

DC: The single for Darkstar…live it was totally this improv but they did a single of it that was a B side to something and it starts out with banjo and tambora and it goes into the chord progression and they had to fade it…I admire them because their business model is against record labels, and as well they considered the fans part of the whole experience rather than like ‘We’re the band’ and everyone was important…and then also I like the fact that they played the songs differently every night…

J: Yeah, those are all great things…what’s exciting about music.

DC: Yeah and I understand that a lot of people don’t like them, but I think they don’t like the lifestyle of the fans more than the actual music. Especially after they got big in the 80’s and all the frat boys put on tie-dye. But they’re one of the few models of improvisation in rock over a continuous period. The albums were signposts to make the label happy, but where they really lived was live.

J: There’s an LSD symposium in Switzerland in a few weeks and Albert Hoffman is speaking there. He’s 102 years old. Alex Grey is speaking as well…

DC: I love his work, man. Hopefully someone breaks out their store of original Sandoz…

J: Why do you suppose this kind of music is getting a spiritual reaction from people?

DC: To me it seems like it’s because it’s against the trend of the world. Everything is about instantaneousness, digital…everything’s chopped up and jerky with this constant stimulus. Hopefully we create a space where that’s not there, where time extends and there isn’t this constant barrage…our songs have this delayed arc to them rather than lick after lick after lick…hopefully it’s this space where everyone can get together.

J: Do you have any rituals or tentative activity that helps you get there?

DC: Not really. There’s not enough time before the show…we have to do laundry. It’s more like it happens on stage.

Adrian gets up to check on the laundry because she’s worried about her vintage western shirts getting snatched.

J: Do you still work on the side? I read an interview around Pentastar where you talked about needing balance to appreciate your practice time.

DC: Yeah, I still have a day job. Earth basically pays for itself. There was a quote from Robert Fripp that I really like where he was saying as a musician the only reward is music and all the other stuff that comes out of it is extra. If you can make a living at it that’s cool that’s gravy, but if you start putting that first it’ll destroy it. He even goes so far as to say a professional musician’s job is business…so if we want to move the music forward, then don’t be a professional musician. I have no head for business anyway…luckily I have a few people around to help me out on that. Especially since I don’t have a computer or internet, no cell phone…

Adrian returns.

J: What have you learned from touring with Sir Richard Bishop?

DC: How to do it smaller (laughs). I’m envious. I wish we didn’t have to get this…

AD: Big dumb rock show?

DC: Yeah, the trailer and…I want to reduce the equipment…

J: What?! When I looked at the stage today I thought whoa, there is nothing here. 2 amps, a kit, a trombone and of couple pedals…I was like where is everything?

[more laughter]

DC: I keep wanting to get sparser but the music seems to get fuller. It gets depressing with all this logistical suff…
Right now I’m just trying to make a small impact on the world while touring.

AD: Are you serious? [laughing] You mean like dumping our instruments on a boat…like Dave Mathews…?

DC: Well no…hopefully it’s a big impact on someone musically, but like less of an impact gaswise…but I still won’t play an acoustic guitar.

AD: And I won’t play a small kit. [more laughter]

J: Do you guys have any juice about the Hex record?

AD: I’ve got some juice about Dylan Carlson.

J: Oh yeah?

AD: He has a twin brother…

J: Does he ever stand in? Do you ever use him for weird practical jokes?

DC: He’s not identical.

AD: You two would be fucking with me all the time….

DC: The wind chimes are off our porch. We had real Native American rattles…

AD: Yeah, that stuff was hand woven with beads and stuff and I was playing that…

J: Where’d the image of Bloody Bill come from?

DC: From a book about Jesse James, it was about how Jesse James was one of the first kind of terrorists, you know it was for a political cause, leading a Guerilla life against the Federal government, and he had secret confederate guys in the government protecting him and…

AD: [sarcastically] We want more confederate folklore attached to Earth…

J: I heard that a lot of people used to say they were him after he was dead…

DC: Yeah, or his descendants…there was a lot of that as well.

AD: Bloody Bill had cool blues eyes, you can’t really tell from that photo…but we were looking at old style photos of babies…it was dead outlaws or dead babies…we decided to go with the outlaws…

Adrienne Davies

J: Tell me a bit about your drum history.

A: In school band I played the snare and I was the only girl in whole drum section. Then I forgot about it for a long time. I started playing guitar and I was really into that but it never came naturally so I gave up and then drums fell back into my life and I went with the “getting as good as I could without trying” and then I decided to put the work in and a couple years ago I started getting really into theory and timing, you know to be more expressive. But I was always worried that I’d lose my voice and I didn’t want to sound like every other rock drummer. I’m on the teeter totter of learning as much as I can but losing that beginner’s open eye quality to it.

J: I’ve heard you called the slow metronome.

A: Drummers always ask how I play that slow…playing faster like punk rock or whatever I find my minds not in it…I can do without thinking…but when I do it slow I have to be in a kind of trance…and so focused and keep your heartbeat slow…it’s really hard to play below your heartbeat.

J: Did you just say that you use your heartbeat?

A: Yeah kinda, with your breathing. A lot of drummers do accent drumming where their’s like 1 2 3 [she immitates a November Rain fill with her mouth] dat dat dadoo.
I do a lot of groove…I know that word sounds dumb…but I try to keep with a groove even when it’s really slow. We try the songs faster and slower when we practice, but a song will tell you where it should be. Dylan’s melodies tell you where it wants you to be. In Prague there was this totally wasted chick yelling between every song “Play faster, play faster”. We were like ‘hey lady, you’re at the wrong show’…and then it became the slowest set we’ve played in a long time, just to be antagonistic….we made it extra slow for her.

Earth played Ouroubourous as their encore for Berlin. It was elegant and loud.

† “How was the interview?” Steve Moore asked me over a joint afterward.

“Surprisingly comfortable…even kind of cordial.” I said. “They where really cool.”

“Yeah, Dylan and Adrienne are amazing. People can really change after they’ve been clinically dead for 5 minutes…[laughs]”

-Saint Jesua

2007-12-13T09:54:00.000-08:00

• Al Cisernos of Om • (Interviewed by Jesua)

2007-10-11T12:49:00.000-07:00

I remember seeing Om's 2nd record in Scratch and buying it because of how captivating the cover was without any idea of what it sounded like. I took it home and it turned out to represent itself brilliantly. Everyone in my household continually took turns borrowing it. I have fond memories of playing dominoes with my housemates after a Thanksgiving feast last year with joints, wine, a bag of ketamine and Conference of the Birds on repeat for hours.
Om are made up of ex-Sleep bassist/vocalist Al Cisernos and ex-Sleep drummer Chris Hakius. Sleep were considered a “tightly focused, intensely dedicated super-heavy riff band” from the bay area of San Francisco. Fans were right pleased when rumors of Sleeps rhythm section coming together on a new project started to circulate after a long silence. Pilgrimage is Om’s 3rd and most intricate release.

JK• To start I want to ask you about the choices for the art of the record. I've only seen the front cover.

AC• The front cover is all there is. We try to express the sounds with an accurate visual representation…and when I first saw the painting and I wrote to the iconographer, we talked, I felt we connected. We gave him our previous records and he felt that there was a commonality also. It’s a photograph of his work from the wall of a church in Wisconsin.

JK• How’d you link up with Steve Albini for Pilgrimage?

AC• It was a recommendation…I got 5 or 6 different bands, different styles of recordings he’s done and the drum sound was remarkable on every one of them, they passed every single test…so we went to Chicago. I wanted to aim for that reason [drums] …especially being a two-piece band.

JK• What were the tests?

AC• Listening.

JK• Oh, I was imagining actual lab experiments going on…

AC• Yeah, the lab in front of the stereo.

JK• There’s a lot of references to esoteric stuff in the lyrics of Om, I was wondering if there was any specific schools of esotericism that you’re particularly interested in or look to for inspiration of ideology?

AC• Not within one specific tradition, but for certain I look for that back similarity… that background in all the systems, you know even a formal devotional style or the philosophy of a system…or even in art, all approaches. It’s essential that that background-- in some point in the process that I’m taking in-- be tapped or I’m like what the fuck? What is this? You know? (Laughs)

JK• What do you think of the idea of drone and noise music being married to this sense of druidism and monkism and priesthood?

AC• Uhhhh…is the question do I connect Monasticism to drone music, is that the question?

(And here I should have said no…because it wasn’t the question specifically, but I I just blurted out “Yeah” for some reason).

AC• No. I connect any music that taps…it’s not a place, it’s not even a thing it taps…what word can be used here? [pause] In any of those approaches if that’s done it creates that atmosphere and it creates a sacred presence and there is an atmosphere that does take place, but it seems kind of overly contrived to be like “Oh Ok, we’re a drone band and this reminds us of a monastery”…I mean that’s ridiculous….

JK• When you write, are numbers important to you?

AC• When it’s analyzed later there are consistent sets of numbers but it’s not calculated in a meter sense ahead of time…at the end I can go back and chart it, so it happens subconsciously…but it’s based in emotions for us.

JK• Do you guys have any specific rituals that you do before you get together to work on your stuff that help to get you into the creative state?

AC• We definitely have to get into that space, I guess a better way of saying it is that we have to leave ourselves at the door you know..?
So…that can be done in so many different ways. We usually start by having a discussion while staring into the sun or something…and there’s this usual point where we both start laughing, and we’ll run and grab our instruments…something like that.
And it’s always changing, but we definitely have to get into that in whatever form it’s happening in, in whatever part of life we’re in. And everything else just happens from there…I don’t even know if that make sense, but I’m trying to discern things that are left best said through the work itself…I know it’s an interview so I’ll try to describe it.
It reminds me of that principle in physics where you can’t observe the location and the speed at the same time or in doing so you change it…you just need to let it be.

JK• Yeah…when it’s identified, it ceases to exist.
Do you want to talk a little bit about the religious undertones of Om?

AC• Umm…I don’t feel that there’s a compartmentalization of religion from other areas of life in any other area of life or consciousness…I think that it’s inseparable from life…it is life and so to specify…”and here there’s an intentional”…you know, it doesn’t work that way for us. All of life is a song, all of it.

JK• I came into this thinking…I mean, this is your first record on Southern Lord and there is a theme with some of that music, like RTK and Earth and Sunn O))) and people stand and listen to loud, repetitive din and it is maybe not religious…but definitely spiritual to be washed over by that sound…you know people stand and close their eyes and lose themselves and…

AC• It’s cathartic…I think….

JK• …it’s more about, instead of thinking about something, you just feel it with your body instead of trying to verbalize…this is what I’m getting at by asking about the religious undertones of Om.

AC• I don’t equate the combined expressions on these different bands or artists as symbolic of a movement or scene. I don’t. I feel each one is specific, unique and I don’t want to imply or infer that there’s a community around everything because it’s doing this thing…

JK• Yeah, or connected by a label…

JK• Yeah, because I think when that begins everything starts to go backwards and divisions start rising, and

JK• …It’s looked upon as a scene, and now that scene is done…

AC• Exactly, people roll their eyes and go [bored] “oh that’s cool”. And it’s just another divider in the record store, and I think everything is unique in that sense and an attempt to categorize it for efficiency in communicating it may be practical, but it feels self-defeating.

JK• …and you know that’s true, because I came into this thinking ‘Ok, Southern Lord, it sounds like this…

AC• Well, and you know that’s one of the reasons why we did sign with them because we do feel that they have a diverse roster that they aren’t a label where they say ‘Oh yeah, we’re on that label’ and you know people are all [bored] “oh cool”.
And it definitely was like that on Ear Ache, for certain…at the time Sleep was putting out that album we sounded like no other band on the label but they’re like [sarcastically] “oh that’s cool, nice…I’ve heard that before”.
And I think we’re seeing a time period now where bands are kind of all feeling that, and playing together and sharing more and [sarcastically] ‘there’s that camp over there and that camp over there and’ you know…fuck that. San Francisco is awesome for that stuff though.

JK• That’s hands down my favorite American city…

AC• Yeah, mine too…

JK• It’s so amazing…and beautiful. I’m from north of there, Vancouver.

AC• Yeah, we played Vancouver in ’93 at the Cruel Elephant with Neurosis just after they’d put out Enemy of the Sun.

JK• If you had to choose from any powers, would you rather be able to fly or read minds?

AC• (Laughing) [Repeats the question to someone in the background, long pause] Umm…I don’t know. I’m not sure.

JK• I’m also interested in some of what you’re reading. Based on references to Sufism, esotericism, Masonry…whatever….

AC• There’s too much. I wouldn’t know where to begin. Again I think that stuff is case specific, like a book that moved me at a certain point in my life and my journey, was in that karma…and so you can’t just give a list of books out and say here…go. You find those things when you’re supposed to find them.
This morning I’ve been studying a game on my chess board that was played by Mikhail Tal, and he’s one of my favorite chess players, you know, that and drinking coffee…

JK• I read that you were teaching chess a while ago. How’d that come about?

AC• I do that around the tours of the band, I still do that. When Sleep stopped playing I met a woman in Berkley named Elizabeth, and she’s run a chess school now for over 27 years and I‘d met her and I told her that before I ever got involved in bass playing I spent lots of time and played lots when I was a kid and she suggested I try [teaching]. I thought it was ridiculous…impossible, but she really encouraged me to try it, I did and something happened, it was effortless and the kids were happy and I thought it was cool to share and study chess together.

JK• I work at a camp and whenever the kids take out the chessboard it’s like oh good…put down the video games, you know…give chess a try.

AC• Most definitely.

JK• Ok, I think that’s it for today. Thanks so much man.

AC• Yeah great, we’ll be in Germany soon.

JK• Great! Are you going to Canada at all?

AC• Eastern for sure, but if we do the Northwest it’d be on route to Alaska because we’ve had tentative plans to play Anchorage. On route to that we’d play the west part… and hopefully we play like Whitehorse in the middle of winter or something. We just need some generators and we’re good to go…

JK• Yeah, I’ll spread the word up there.

AC• (Laughs) Ok, thanks.

Let me be someone I admire

2007-10-03T10:26:00.001-07:00

The Fall

2007-10-02T02:36:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I am naïve for just assuming this show would be flawless, but I tend to get lost in nostalgia for a band of such magnitude…plus I just wanted it to be good so very badly. When I went to see the Vibrators last summer thinking I’d be consumed in their poppy streety radness I was really disappointed. They were sloppy, boring, old and who cares? We like slathering vehemence and moody atmosphere at our live shows, that’s the point, right?
Oh, but I’d heard that the Fall were hit and miss live, either “ON or OFF” and that people had seen them lately and that they were undoubtably “ON”. Plus, whatever incarnation of them is around, it still puts out great records.

The Fall came out during the opener, a VJ busy mussing up clips of Black Sabbath and Elvis, and their entrance alone was grand. The band got on stage and started to set up in the dark while the visual background screen changed from a huge fat Elvis to a shitty pink and yellow spray paint throw-up that looked both tacky and amazing reading "The Fall". And then Mark E. Smith nonchalantly strolled onto the stage in a sport jacket, the longest shoes I’ve ever seen on a man and trenches in his weird face. Everyone went bats including I. There is no need to explain what a legend the cuss is or why because.

But the shows atmosphere turned out to be a problem. The Maria is a nice place located on the Spree, with around a 4-500 person capacity, and it was the introduction to their 3-night anniversary party.
The crowd at this show was exceptionally bad though. Before the live entertainment started a DJ was playing some unfamiliar yet bitchin' surf, and there was a crowd of what I gather were old-schoolers, mostly dudes, dance-twisting their cares away in front of the speakers at the stage. You see that and think, hey, it’s cool that weird, badly dressed old school Germans are still having a good time at that age when my boring parents are breaking their backs all day and giving anything left to the Television…but then you look a bit closer and you realize that they are absolutely fucking shitcanned, slobbering, crossed-eyed. This could have been the tin-can radio at a local currywurst kiosk blasting Scorpions, and they’d still be air guitaring windmills, squatting to the floor. I think the rock scene in Berlin is hidden very deep in the ground because of all the dudes who jock out at loud, energetic rock n roll shows. Its a pity.

So back to the Fall. This embodiment of the band was tight and together. The guitarist was great, pale and sweaty, even though MES kept turning his amp knobs downwards until they were practically off by the end. The bassist was very new metal, but his playing was on and he and the drummer looked as though they were having a really good time. The foxy keyboardist sang, and played a Korg MS-20 in a pretty little red dress.
An unnamed source told me that he recieved the Fall's Rider request via fax the week before in messily handwritten child scrawl that looked like this:

Fall Rider:

2 Packs of Benson and Hedges

SPEED – ( NOT COCAINE )

And MES remains King Fuck, jaw vibrating, providing enough power to fuel Berlin for a week. Then there are the rumors that the keyboard player is his tiny babe wife, and he just celebrated his 50th birthday.

So, the Fall played, Pacifying Joint, Blindness, Sparta FC (with less enthused backup vocals than the record) I’ve Been Duped and Mr. Pharmacist which I did not expect. When they played What About Us? last, MES walked off the stage casually and forcefully hucking the mic over his shoulder, into the audience, where the crowd took turns shouting back at him “What about us?” while the band played on. A beautifully punctuated and adeptly executed move.
The Fall joined Berlin in a 2 song encore ending the show in White Lightning. Older ladies still kept getting smashed all over the place while they tried to capture digital proof of MES’ Muppet face. I was knocked all over trying to do the same (blurry photos aside) and people continued to behave like they’d never been to a show before, jumping on the stage, dancing so so badly (you think dancing in expression but this simply was not) and knocking people down in a soaked, sweating drunk rage and further dampening the mood. Mark E. Smith ignored the many annoying attempts to flag his attention by never making eye contact, either engaged in the back wall, his band members, or waving his hand dismissively towards the arms overly enthusiastically giving him the double thumbs up over and over and over and over and over again.
The Fall played well despite their lack of enthusiasm, with MES just how I’d expected him; dry, uninterested, festered. But a combination of that and the terribly Alpha crowd left me unsatisfied.

†

2007-08-31T07:36:00.000-07:00

White House's Philip Best at West Germany Aug 23 screaming beside his mic accompanied by deafeningly aggressive sounds of hiss-humming apocalypse. In hand, a homemade bible of media clippings, text and photographs of children and missing little girls that he licked and rubbed all over his body. He had our full fucking attention...

Aux Ruas, The Locust and KTL, Festsaal Kreuzberg

2007-08-31T07:31:00.000-07:00

08/24/07

The night started with a friend and I hatching a last minute plan to get in to this show free after we walked by and checked the scene out. We’re broke, it’s the Locust, they’d want us to….
We cased the entire block and decided our best bet was to try to get in from the back, only Berlin doesn't exactly have 'backs'. To do this we had to climb over a Volkswagon dealership‘s security gate and through 3 1/2 hof’s (a hof is kind of a courtyard that is inaccessable unless going through the building containing it, or over the building into the hof) to try to jump the short wall at the east side of Festsaal Kreuzberg to the outer yard and into the show.
We were accompanied by countless motion lights, blinking on to our antics. I was accidentally in black with a black hood, which I decided was going to make things worse if we got caught because authorities would think I was some anarchist asshole breaking into BMW or the Bio Food Company, rather than some anarchist asshole merely trying to save 16 euros on a show.
We scaled barbed wire of all kinds, scrambled up walls, over gates and fences and strode thin, dirty alleys. The moment of truth came when we had to sneak across a filthy, tinfoil rooftop and drop down into the hof right next to Festaal’s outside garden under bright security light, in blatant view of the guys working the door. We military style crawled across the roof, faces to metal (Andy in all white) thinking that we were missing Stephen O’Malley because the Locust’s MySpace profile said that the show started at 8 and it was already 10:50. Halfway across, Andy claimed he was spotted by one of the staff who pointed at us, but I didn’t see anything like that. We had to o’ so painfully, ever so slowly and patiently wiggle the fuck off of the roof, back the way we came. Was our cover blown? We jumped down from the roof just as someone yelled at us in German a few meters away, at the front of the hof---now, trouble with Johnny Law means my ass is outta Deutschland, and directly into the Alberta oil boom. No thanks, I’m having a nice time here---so instinct to flee like the Japanese in a Godzilla movie hit me. We casually strolled the opposite direction, backs to the angry voice, ignoring the warning shouts to “HALT!”, and as soon as we rounded a corner, we bolted like mutherfuckers. Down the alley, over the barbed wire, which happened to be far less ginger than on the way in, screaming up walls and fences with scraping fingernails, jumping down 6 meter gaps onto concrete and buckling knees, trying not to destroy bones or the camera around my shoulder. We reached the car dealership yard panting and jumped that gate, running among the cars in florescent light, ducking into the gravel. We hopped one last sharply pointed fence, rounded another corner, ran down the street and into a bar to catch out breaths.
“I gotta do more cardio.” Andy told me in gasps.
We traded clothes, panted more, and I guzzled a glass of white wine with ice to cool off. We made a plan and split up because Andy was paranoid they were going to kill him and I had to use a bank machine.
I made my way to the show where he was to meet me after changing his once white jeans and hair as to not be recognized. He never showed, and when I called to find out why, he said he was “really pooped”.

The opening act were a two piece from Denmark. They were a bit like Ministry, but with fatter 909 kicks, and faster. It was good, but it made me wonder if a bald, shirtless guy could headband as hard as a guy with long hair. Anyway, Aus Raux were a good opener to the show. The small crowd danced and exchanged nods of approval.
Next, the Locust swarmed the stage (and that’s not tried cleverness, they actually swarmed) in new putty grey outfits with shitty fun fur hard-wear and reflective tape, with their photographer and sound guy also in uniform: 6 locusts at the stage.
There was sound bullshit for a sec, which postponed the wonder…and they started with 1 smack of the snare followed by everyone at once attacking their instruments with everything they had. They were a fucking flesh eating machine. So tight, so hungry, so fierce and deadly…it was the most exciting thing I’d seen since Philip Best the night before. That drummer is in my gay-fantasy-dreams, so precise and harsh, possibly the best live drummer I’ve ever seen. Set list I cannot name, but who gives a fuck about specifics. This was controlled, brilliant mayhem. It went from thrash, to hanging doom, to spaz-core, to prog, to white metal, to every kind of insane thing you can understand about fast, loud music, but it still remained perfectly in tact, obliterating the line between in and out of control. It was perfect, and I felt twitching-spasms in me that I haven’t felt at a live show in years. Plus, I expected the typical 14 minute set, and the Locust again wowed us with a set that lasted 45 minutes, maybe longer. The best part was, it never got boring at all.
KTL is a side project of Stephen O’Malley of Sunn O))) with Peter Rehberg from Pita that started as a theatre accompaniment project and was up next. I haven’t had the pleasure of seeing Sunn O))) yet (which is pronounced ‘Sun’---the O))) being the logo, not part of the name) so this was the reason I’d come…and even paid.
It started with Rehberg using low, loud pulsing that sounded like the hum of an industrial machine. O’Malley slowly joined in with his guitar and together, they started into the symptoms of swirling drone. A smoke machine randomly set out spirts of mist, at times completely shrouding both men in bright white. Some people chokeda dn waved their hands in front of their mouths.
Basically, the sound increased and hissed and peaked. At the height, people left because they weren’t prepared for the blistering volumes or because they thought they got the point. Some screamed with their heads cocked back as if trying to imbibe greater volumes.
O’Malley then burst into flames and melted to a black puddle of what looked like motor oil on the floor…what a show!

2007-07-10T10:16:00.000-07:00

"It is hard to fight an enemy who has outposts in your head."
--Sally Kempton

Beach House

2007-07-09T09:55:00.000-07:00

J: Jesua Kansur E: Erik Devro V: Victoria Legrand

Beach House are: Alex Scally-Guitar, Victoria Legrand-keys, voice. Their record is available on Carpark Records.

“I haven’t been drinking because I’m extremely jetlagged…but fuck dude, I think it was the interviews today that made me feel like throwing up.”
-Victoria

The two-piece from Baltimore, Maryland have been compared to other boy girl duos such as Mazzy Starr and Slowdive, but they don’t necessarily agree. At the same time they don’t necessarily mind it that much either.
A Twisted Independence Day on the 4th of July at the Festaal Kreuzberg in Berlin housed Menomena, O’Death and Beach House as well as a totally seperate noise show in the basement with Berlin’s Heatsick (Steven Warwick of Birds of Delay) and Michigan’s Viki. I unfortunately only caught a bit of each show, thankfully Beach House’s whole set was included and it was really amazing.
After BH I headed downstairs into the other show by holding up my wrist in the same fashion as the people in front of me, thankfully there wasn’t so much as a glance to verify my stamp. Sorry guys, but I’m garbage eater broke. I caught the very end of Steve’s set, which from what I heard gave actual members of the crowd a fever, but totally missed Viki. I did catch glimpse of her rad satin short shorts while she was lying on the floor though.

When everything was finished, Victoria and I stood at the soft pink lit bar. She had white wine and I had Jagermeister. She started with talk of the long flight from Baltimore to New York to Berlin (with no movies or books), and how both her and Alex were running on little to no sleep. Victoria wasted no time, telling me that she’d already had three glasses of wine. She seemed ready. I introduced her to my business associate Erik Devro and we talked more about jet lag, the amazing burger she’d eaten at White Trash Fast Food upon arrival in Berlin and who Erik looked like.

V: You look so familiar, are you from America? …no, I know who you look like. You look like Cass McCombs.

…to which Erik and I barely contained explosion because we’d been listening to and talking about Cass all that day. (Imagine our surprise!!) The discussion moved into Cass not making it into Canada to play the Media Club in Vancouver last summer.

J: Yeah, he was supposed to play Vancouver…we were pretty excited but….

V: He’s married now, and his wife is his manager. The only thing I could think of is that it was a tour that he organized himself, not the label because he’s been having a very long period with his new record, which I have a copy of and I can’t give to anyone…well, only 8 tracks and it’s not mastered, but I think a lot of him not getting in was just unorganized. My boyfriend is very good friends with Cass. Cass kinda has bad luck…

Victoria also casually mentioned another band Cass was working on with “a beautiful little marshmallow guy” named Jason Quever of San Francisco’s Papercuts. Quever produced McCombs first 2 records before a falling out between them. Now I’m told they’ll work on something entirely different together.

J: So what’s up with these White Stripes rumors, you guys are dating you’re brother and sister bla blab bla…

V: No, I’m just gonna be fuckin’ honest…I would never date him…we’re similar but we’re very different. I’m not doing any of the White Stripes rumors thing, I’m not interested in being something I’m not. We’ve never dated, we’ll never date…if we dated…a bomb would explode…and we’re not brother and sister either. It’s not important. It’s like gossip.

J: People love that joint, they just love that shit though…

Alex joined us at the bar to let Victoria know that he was ready to go anytime she was, seemingly right then through his eye contact. Earlier on, Alex explained to me that he was deliriously tired when I’d asked if I could talk to him for a minute. He’d agreed despite. (Unfortunately I blew that by failing to check the volume level on my recorder and missed any point of provided reference).

J: Tell us about some of the bands you’ve had good experience touring with so far?

E: Where can we hear your voice before Beach House?

V: You can’t hear my voice before Beach House…and if you ever do, you’re a bastard.

E: I’ll give you my teeth.

V: Yeah, ok…but only the gold ones.

J: How do you pick what songs go where in your live set?

E: Yeah, why did you play Apple Orchard first tonight?

V: We used to not play Apple Orchard first because we felt it was better to save it as kind of a surprise but now it’s become sort of like, for right now…because we have a new album almost completely written that we’re not revealing, but for right now it’s the definitive song for the first record, so we feel like when we open with that it’s just like, whatever, we’re playing it first. It was also one of the first songs I ever wrote on that keyboard.

J: Is there any departure between the first record and the new record?

V: The first record is one of those things that…when it was written it never changed. The new record is different because we’re constantly going back and changing things.
It was a very obsessive procedure, but it wasn’t exceptionally egotistical…we just thought, you know…we want to hear this…more out of our own curiosity. We honestly didn’t think that it sounded like something else, I mean, maybe we’re crazy but….so we kept it because we thought people would decide if it does sound like something else, oh it sounds like Mazzy Starr, oh it sounds like [something I couldn’t make out]…but we’re ok with that. We’re not trying to control people’s ideas. Music is the thing that keeps people from killing themselves…although Elliott Smith did kill himself. The music created another reality.

J: There was a good crowd response tonight. People were really into it…you guys were getting pretty loose toward the end…

V: Yeah, that was nothing compared to the end of our 30 day tour…we were loooose by the end of that…I had my feet in the keyboard stand…I was telling jokes…I mean doing that many shows makes you completely insane, but….

J: Who does your hair? It’s really good.

V: A bunch of different people, you like it? This cut a friend did in her kitchen. I washed it with the hotel soap shampoo everything all in one…

J: It seems like your hair is part of the music when you are playing.

V: Yeah, it is. I mean, what can you do sitting behind a keyboard? What can you do? Rocking back and forth is not just an autistic motion, it’s not a psychiatric motion, it is a fetal motion of a human organism…and there really isn’t that much you can do.

J: What should we know about Baltimore?

V: Dan Deacon, Sex and Ponytail…um Beach House…and other people that are on labels now and it’s just kind of strange little…the scene is small, everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing, we’re all very related. Like we’re all playing the Baltimore Festival on July 21st which is a Saturday in an alley way…and I’d imagine it’ll all just be local people, a local party, which will be cool. Nobody’s threatened by any buzz…in the past 2 years there’s been Pitchfork attention, but nobody’s gonna flock to Baltimore…I mean, I don’t really anyone who wants to flock to Baltimore.

E: You should release an acapella record.

V: You’re being silly.

E: No, like with the album…just have it like accompanied by an album with only acapellas.

J: Yeah, then you can be remixed with Baltimore Club music.

V: I always said my 3rd record was gonna be a techno record, because I’ve always had a total love for like…straight up….[trails off]

J: How old are you both?

V: I’m 26, Alex is 25.

J: He really looks at you when you’re playing.

V: Yeah, I’m like…is he looking at me because I’m completely fucking up?

E: He really gets stoked off of you…like he’s always kind of side-winding off you.

V: You guys are very, very, very intelligent…very, very observant, keep going, doing this….

J: We were just really blown down by the show.

E: YOU OPENED WITH APPLES!

J: Yeah, your eyes looked really black from where I was standing, and I was thinking either she is really high, or she’s looking right into me, and then after the show you said that you were looking right at us…

V: I have no fear about looking right into the audience because I’ve been trained through theater, and like you can’t have a fear…you have to except that people are in front of you, you know no shyness. I don’t want to pull a Jim Morrison….but I don’t want it to be like pop music either, you know like [starts singing in a flaming teen boy voice with her finger in the air]
“I see you, I’m talking to you…”

Alex joined us again to tap Victoria on the shoulder and give her the “I’m ready to leave this time for real” eyes.

J: Ok I think we’re good. You guys want to split? I’m going to shut this thing off.

V: Ok. Thank you, this is the best conversation I’ve had all day.

Beach House return to Deutschland in October with an undisclosed Thrill Jockey artist to play 4 dates. (Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Munich)

2007-06-29T10:19:00.000-07:00

Erik arrived last Tuesday night.
The Turkish corner store supplied 11 kinds of herbal liquer (like Jager but with foxes or witches on the bottle instead of a stag), a flirty eyed counter girl and an assortment of room temperature drinks.

2007-06-29T04:12:00.000-07:00

Raumerstrasse Sunset