Hello Friends,
I will be reading from my new book “Seventeen Television” at Ampersand in Portland, OR on July 27th. I hope to see lots of familiar faces there! Afterwards is the after party at East End where I’ll be performing some oldies and goodies with Clorox GIrls! See you soon!
Cheers,
Justin
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Here’s the flyer for the last Down N Sound Lit Fest. Designed by the infallible Bradley Hanson
Down N Sound Lit Fest I
Morcego
By Justin Maurer
http://www.razorcake.org/columns/morcego-by-justin-maurer
“Morcego! Morcego!”
The Brazilian photographer sprinted out of our WW II-era Italian army hospital lodgings in his night shorts, brushing his shoulders frantically, as if he was being attacked by an army of killer bees. His shouting in Portuguese rang out across the Italian summer night and a few of us jostled out of our musty cots to find out what the hell was going on.
“What is it Mateus? What the devil is a morcego, for God’s sake?”
“Morcego is black and have teeth like these.” Mateus put his two index fingers in front of his lower lip as if they were vampire fangs.
“Oh Mateus, they’re just fruit bats. They don’t drink blood. They eat berries and nuts and small insects.”
“I don’t care,” Mateus said. “Tonight I sleep in the van.”
“Suit yourself. See you in the morning. Are you sure you’re going to be warm enough in there?”
“Better to be cold then to have morcegos and spiders and snakes while I sleep. Also, did you not hear the ghost?”
In the early summer of 2007, we were two American rock and roll bands undertaking a self-promoted, organized, and funded eight-week DIY tour of Europe. I took it upon myself to book the shows, drive, navigate, and handle the money. The Feelers were a napalm-breathing force of nature from Columbus, Ohio. These Midwestern boys had never been across the Atlantic and they were ready to drink, fight, and fuck in no particular order. So far, a lot of drinking had transpired. Not so much fucking. We’d fought mainly amongst ourselves in a passive aggressive, snide, ongoing commentary kind of way. But as long as the Feelers had a continuous supply of beer in the back of the van, they seemed happy. Along with being the frontman in my own band, Clorox Girls, I was their uptight tour guide and camp counselor.
We were too old to be young punks and too young to be taxpaying Americans with soul-destroying nine-to-fives. That would come later. We were malnourished and full of enthusiasm. We lived it up, playing beer-drenched, mayhem-filled concerts across Europe.
We were in southeastern Italy after completing our run in Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia, and Greece. We’d taken the ferry over from Igoumenitsa to Bari and driven a little further south to a tiny village where we were booked. The promoter had put us up in Mussolini’s WW II-era army hospital, and we imagined bloody, injured Italian soldiers with amputated limbs writhing in agony as we rolled our sleeping bags onto our cots. Various medical instruments still lay scattered, grisly reminders of the horrors of war. Years before, the villagers converted the former hospital into a community center of sorts. A few old hippies kept up the place and lived in the general’s former quarters, a daunting old mansion on the top of a hill overlooking the hospital.
After the morcego incident, we went back to bed and woke in the morning famished. Outside, it was a glorious day. Strange birds sang atop fruit trees. The golden Italian sun shone upon infinite pastures and grassy hills. We were in the middle of nowhere. And nowhere was beautiful.
“Someone could totally have murdered us last night,” said one of the Ohio boys.
“No one would find us for weeks. Those hippies smoke so much hash up there. They’d probably think we were sleeping.”
The spokesman for the Italian caretakers arrived. With his long, flowing grey beard and gnarled walking stick to match his arthritic fingers, every entrance he made was dramatic. The leader of the left wing commune looked like Hemingway with a longer beard. Plus his name was actually Ernesto, which secretly fueled my amusement. With his neatly pressed shirt and old slacks, he dressed the part of a gentleman gone astray. His eyes twinkled and he spoke softly in heavily accented English.
“Perhaps you would like to join us at the house for breakfast?” We nodded heartily and followed him slowly up the hill to the general’s former residence. An old woman was hunched over working in an overgrown garden. She gave us a wrinkled smile followed by, “Ciao.”
“Ciao,” we replied. Our Italian wasn’t great, but ciao we could do. Ernesto led us to an outside dining patio and we saw our clothes hanging from clotheslines on the roof. Puzzled glances were exchanged as we recognized our T-shirts, boxer shorts, and blue jeans swaying in the Italian breeze.
“Do not be alarmed. My wife collected your dirty laundry this morning when you boys were sleeping,” Ernesto said, easing our confused suspicion. “Do not worry. Let us take a glass of wine. We have some Chianti that we make here from the grapes in our garden.”
After seating us in the veranda, Ernesto disappeared. It was decorated simply with wooden tables and chairs, a few potted plants, and ivy that grew up the walls of the old general’s mansion. He returned promptly with a jug of wine and a stack of neon-colored hard plastic cups. He distributed the cups to us while stating each cup’s color in English.
“Red. Green. Blue. Pink. Orange. Purple.” He handed the cups gently to the ten of us. As he poured the syrupy red wine, our Brazilian Mateus snapped a few photos. As we leaned back for our second or third cup, Ernesto began to question us.
“Now this George Bush, this crazy cowboy, what do you make of him?”
“Well Ernesto,” I said. “I think it’s safe to say that none of us voted for him.”
“Marvelous,” Ernesto said quite pleased as he poured us another Chianti. “But if none of you young people voted for him, then how did he come to power?”
We explained our country’s folly of an election, all of the sinister chess playing which had taken place in Florida. We explained how George W’s brother Jeb was Governor, the hanging chads, and the mysterious dead voters. And we explained the state police profiling black voters on their way to the polls. And we explained how the Democrat had clearly won, but how the Supreme Court’s party line vote had halted any real chance for justice. Then we told him how after the planes crashed intoNew York and DC, nobody could even argue the point without being labeled a terrorist. Then we asked for more wine.
Ernesto nodded sadly. “This sounds a little like Italy. Here we have a very corrupt man. Berlusconi. Here in Italy we have many problems, but they leave us here in peace on our wonderful farm. We have made peace out of war. The only battles we fight are against weeds and moles in our garden.”
He smiled and we laughed, quite at ease with the six-odd cups of wine in our empty stomachs. In the distance, dust rose from the dirt road leading to the general’s mansion. A two-door black Fiat hustled up the driveway. The driver’s door flew open as the car parked and out stepped a pencil-thin man, six foot six in height. He was our Italian promoter, Rocco. He greeted us all with two kisses and a warm, “Ciao bellos!”
“CIAO!” we replied enthusiastically, a little drunk off the wine. Rocco said something to Ernesto and Ernesto went inside to fetch something. He returned with some plates, again made of this hard plastic neon material, and he began his rounds once again, this time with more gusto.
“RED! GREEN! ORANGE! PURPLE! BLUE!”
Rocco began to bring tinfoil-covered bowls from his Playmobil-sized Fiat as Ernesto passed us the plates and silverware. The warm bowls sent messages to our noses which relayed it to our wine-filled bellies. The message was that we’d hit the mother lode.
“It is small, but my mother insisted that you boys have some of her cooking. Here is the ravioli, here is the spaghetti, here is the pane, some fromaggio, sliced prosciutto, very simple. Here in the south we enjoy simple food.”
The red sauce had tinges of garlic that tickled our nostrils. Thick, soupy chunks of fresh tomato fell upon the yellow, handmade noodles. Fresh parmesan cheese was grated on top. We were almost in tears. We put our forks into the postcard-perfect pasta, imagined Rocco’s mother making this feast, and Rocco driving it to us on this heavenly hillside overlooking Mussolini’s old military hospital in the south of Italy. We were speechless.
One bite was a sucker punch to the senses. The taste exploded onto the roofs of our mouths, lingering in every crevice. The inside of our cheeks felt the garlic and it stung our stress and alcohol-induced cold sores pleasantly. The motherly love of the fresh tomatoes and parmesan and garlic was too much to bear. We continued to eat without speaking a word, pausing only to take gulps of wine. Warm homemade bread was broken, passed around, and dipped into the red sauce until not a drop was left. When it was over it was sad, surreal…. Three empty jugs of Chianti lie on the table as we mourned the gorgeous moments of the meal. Ernesto rubbed his stomach and lit a pipe, leaning back with satisfaction as he smoked.
“Rocco, we must buy flowers for your mother,” I said.
He blushed and sputtered, “No, really. This is nothing. This is a simple lunch for us. If you should be here for a holiday then you will try real food from this region. This is a simple lunch. For us, very simple.”
Ernesto motioned for us to follow him. We went into the recesses of the mansion where they had a room full of trombones, trumpets, tambourines, drums, and acoustic guitars. Ernesto informed us these instruments had been left behind by the general’s military band, so we formed our own marching band and marched the perimeter of the commune, delighting the workers in the garden with our out-of-tune renditions of “Louie Louie” and “Wooly Bully.” Then there was espresso on the veranda. We felt like princes, all thoughts of our friend the morcegovampire bat and the ghosts of the military hospital gone.
Then Rocco informed us it was time to head to the village for our concert. We reluctantly agreed, kissing Ernesto goodbye and promising him that we’d be good boys. As we passed the old woman finishing up in the garden, she said, “Ciao.”
“Ciao,” we said.
—
“Morcego” is an excerpt from Justin Maurer’s new book, Seventeen Television
Justin Maurer of Clorox Girls vs. tortas, toilets and ball-punchers in this excerpt from his upcoming chapbook, “Seventeen Television,” out on Vol. 1 Brooklyn–soon!
“Now I will rape you.”
The tiny Mexican hairdresser moved swiftly, waist and pelvis well ahead of his feet. I kept him at bay with my beer bottle and outstretched arm, offering a clink against his bottle. I managed to continually maneuver around him at arm’s length.
“No, somos amigos,” I offer. “Salut, mi amigo.”
“I thought maybe you were interesting person,” he asks me.
“I am an interesting person Enrique, just in other ways,” I say.
“What kind of ways?” He continued to move closer.
This was his storage room. Boxes were stacked around the place, and a rumpled futon lay in the corner. A few lines of pure Columbian cocaine were prepared on a table, but he was trying to get me onto the futon. Lucky for me, I was about two feet taller, with a reach of about three feet. This continual cheers-ing seemed to be working. I kept my right arm outstretched as my hairdresser deflector.
Enrique finally relented. “Do you want a line,” he asked.
“No thanks,” I said and made a beeline for the door.
In the other room, the rest of my band was partying with Las Ultrasonicas. They were throwing back ecstasy, cocaine, weed, hash, cigarettes, beers, joints, and tequila with nonchalant Chilanga abandon.
The day before, we’d been exploring the markets around El Zocalo, Mexico City’s main square. One narrow cobblestoned street would have plumbing supplies and PVC piping for sale, the next birds and birdcages, the next pirated CDs and DVDs, the next racks of clothing, and so on. It was mad and incredible, as if the Yellow Brick Road had the sights and smells and sounds of Mexico City. In essence, it was 50 million Chilangos living life their way.
The Spaniards tore down the Aztec temple on the Zocalo and defiantly built a Catholic cathedral on its ruins. Today, this cathedral offers bloody visions of Catholicism. They have bloody tears of the Virgin Maria. Gorgings of saints. Whippings. There’s of course the thorned crown upon Christ’s head, and finally the nails and spear wound of El Hijo de Dios, Jesus Cristo. No art for the sake of art here.
Around the corner from the Zocalo and the markets there was a torta shop owned by a former Mexican wrestler, the mighty luchador Blue Demon. Inside we snacked on a few tacos al pastor and a quesadilla de huit la conche. This is a corn fungus, a distant relative of a mushroom that’s edible after it’s cooked. The sabor is incredible.
A tiny man with a pleasant demeanor and well-worn skin approached us and asked in polite broken English how we’d heard of his place. We hammed it up a little.
“We are big fans of luchadores and Blue Demon was muy grande, el master de todo.”
“I am Blue Demon,” he exclaimed, beating his breast. He motioned to his wrestling uniform framed on the wall. It shimmered like the magic red slippers on Dorothy’s feet.
“If you eat my especial torta,” he said. “It is gratis, free, on the house.”
We foolishly accepted his challenge, and after a few beers the inhuman torta arrived. It contained three types of meat, mystery dressings, avocado, tomato, lettuce and peppers between a huge loaf of bread. This sandwich was as long as my arm and about five times thicker.
“Andale,” Blue Demon screams at us, “Vamos!”
My friend and I attacked the enormous sandwich and attracted a few bystanders.
“Los pinches gringos comen demasiado.” (The fucking gringos eat too much)
“Vamos, los gringos van a morir.”(Let’s watch, it’s going to kill them)
“Mira, los pinches gueros no pueden comer esta torta.” (No way can these fucking white boys finish eating this sandwich)
A good twenty minutes in, we were ready to surrender. A mariachi four-piece stopped playing to witness the final verdict. Children in sandals, stray dogs, old people, other diners and Blue Demon himself were now in whispers to see if we could do it. My stalwart companion gave me a look and darted to the bathroom. The place erupted in riotous laughter.
“Now wait, Blue Demon,” I said. “Only a few bites left, then we chupar a little tequila together. Juntos.”
“Andale cabron,” Blue Demon said.
In my mouth went pork, bacon, carne asada, roasted peppers, bread, avocado, and some other things. I chewed and chewed. When I couldn’t chew anymore, I just swallowed. It was the last unholy bite—I was determined.
“Salut Blue Demon,” I said. I placed the last fistful of torta into my mouth and swallowed. It felt like it was going to come back up, but I held it down. I took a gulp of my chelita and said, “Gracias, señor.”
The place erupted. I was congratulated ferociously. Bottles of tequila and mescal were placed on the table and uncorked. A bucket of beers—on the jefe—were placed on the table. The mariachis began to play and sing. My friend appeared green-faced. Someone gave him a beer. Blue Demon gave us a card with his name and address inviting us for drinks. We had found the Wizard of Oz.
Much of the next day was spent on the toilet. In Mexico City, toilet paper can’t be flushed, so the bathroom wastebaskets are full of recently used toilet tissue. Along with the altitude, this makes a prodigious hangover even more monumental.
That night our punk band, Clorox Girls, was opening for Mexican sensations, Las Ultrasonicas. They’d picked us up from the airport a few days earlier in their tour van. Three Mexican women about ten years our senior. They glimmered with madness.
Our budget hotel’s primary residents were transvestite prostitutes and their businessmen patrons—but it was close to where we were playing. The venue was run by the mafia, so they paid off the police to stay away. The mafiosos ran their own door, security, and bar. We were glad the girls from Las Ultrasonicas knew them mafiosos and were handling our getting paid. We wouldn’t have asked.
We were scheduled to go on at 11. The place was a seething den of Chilangos. Some of the kids were smoking crack in the bathroom. Everybody was ready. The place seemed primed to tear itself apart.
Initially, we had our backs to the crowd, and some guys thought we were girls and started to wolf whistle. When we turned about face, they began berating us, “Pinches putos! Gueros! Maricones!” (Fucking faggots, white boys, limp wrists!)
“Buenas noches,” we said.
“Somos Los Clorox Girls. 1-2-3-4!”
We tore into our set and a group of guys with baseball hats decided to punch me in the balls. The stage was at a medium height, so it gave them a perfect vantage point to ruthlessly pound me in the gonads again and again—they had a perfect angle. I responded by knocking their hats off with the headstock of my guitar and kicking at them. The crowd loved it and some started yelling, “Mata los putos gringos.” (Kill the white boy faggots.)
I asked for a drink of someone’s beer between songs and they drenched me from head to toe. My hair, T-shirt, and guitar were soaked, absolutely sticky, sopping wet.
I peeled my red T-shirt off. It was one of my favorites, an 80s Marvel Comics tee that read, “Mutant Maniac.” The group of ball punchers grabbed it and began taunting me like a bull fighter would a bull, jeering, “Toro! Toro! Toro,” while waving my stolen shirt like a bullfighter’s cape.
We finished our final song and I dove shirtless into the crowd in a desperate attempt to get my favorite shirt back. “Mata el pinche gringo,” the crowd yelled. (Kill the fucking gringo.)
They tossed the shirt to a girl. When I tried to grab the T-shirt from her, she tucked it under her shirt, and bit down onto my left hand, almost drawing blood. I had to slap the girl to get her off me. Into the microphone, I pleaded with the crowd in my best Spanish which was pitiful at best.
“Por favor da me mi camiseta. Esta camiseta estaba un regalo de mi mejor amigo. Mi mejor amigo murió la semana pasada. Entonces da me mi camiseta especial, por favor.”
(Please give me my T-shirt. This T-shirt was a gift from my best friend who died last week. Give my special shirt back please.)
The T-shirt materialized and was handed up through the sweaty throng. I had been triumphant. Life is full of failures so I live for these small victories.
After the show, we went to a party at a celebrity hairdresser’s posh flat in the trendy neighborhood of Coyoacan. Artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera had lived across the street. He cut everyone’s hair including musician Ricky Martin and actor Gael Garcia Bernal.
That was when he tried to rape me.
Hello All,
Here’s the cover for my new book of essays and short stories, “Seventeen Television” out on Vol 1 Brooklyn in May. It’s designed by Margarita Korol of Urban Pop Art .
Hello!
I’m reading and hosting the first Down N Sound Lit Fest. Hope to see you all there!
XO
Justin
Poster design by Brad Hansen at Twitch To The Tune
Interview with The Spits for Razorcake Magazine
http://www.razorcake.org/interviews/interview-with-the-spits-interview-by-justin-maurer
The Spits have been ripping it up since uprooting from their ancestral home of Michigan and violently planting themselves in Seattle. Through their own blood and toil, an outpour of music has consistently flowed from the Wood brothers, A.K.A. Shawn and Erin Spits. Their first single came out in the late ‘90s. My copy features a hulking beast stealing into the night with a beautiful girl draped over his shoulder. Instead of fearful, the girl seems to be quite delighted with her abduction, not minding the uncouthness of her Neanderthal captor.
Skateboarding, alcohol, drugs, heartbreak, and not fitting in are common Spits themes. They use violence, touring, and punk rock as their main escape from a shitty world. Thankfully, many have been able to use The Spits punk rock music as our own escape for over a decade now.
Get your skateboard under your arm, drink six beers, take your young girl’s hand, go into the night, and take back the alley. I caught up with them on their last tour, sneaking in a quick interview. The Spits had ants in their pants, wanting to jump back onto their skateboards to bomb one of the ramps nearby. Here’s the best punk band on the planet, The Spits.
Interview by Justin Maurer
Sean—Guitar
Erin—Bass
Johnny—Keys
Wayne—Drums
Justin: The Spits, as I understand, were conceived in Allegan, Michigan?
Sean: Correct.
Justin: You guys masterminded the band in the bars on Locust Street?
Sean: That’s home of the Locust Street Saloon where we started hanging out back in 1986, soon as we were old enough to start drinking. Michigan law—it was a little different back then—you could go into a bar not even being twenty-one. It didn’t matter. We’d go in there and watch local metal bands just rip. We always wanted to be in a band and that’s where it started.
Wayne: You guys started out being called the Riot Midgets, right?
Erin: Yeah, probably. In 1987.
Justin: [To Wayne and Johnny] Where are you guys from originally?
Johnny:Detroit.
Wayne: New Jersey.
Justin: Why the move to Seattle as opposed to Cleveland or Detroit or Chicago?
Sean: ‘Cause Seattle had a lot more goin’ on; nothin’ else goin’ on anywhere else.
Justin: When was the move?
Erin: I moved there in 1990. We formed the band in ‘91.
Justin: That first single with “Tired and Lonely,” when did that come out?
Erin: It was pressed around ‘96 or ‘97.
Justin: As a punk musician myself, I got some of my own inspiration from frustration with my Dad. Do I sense some Dad frustration with the Spits?
Sean: Yeah there was. A sense of frustration against the world. All kinds of shit. Small towns, government, cops, moms and dads and Jesus.
Erin: I think you’re right. Our parents are both really supportive now, but we were bad kids, you know.
Justin: In what way?
Erin: Me and my brother grew up in and out of foster homes. We were juvenile delinquents.
Justin: Smashing mailboxes? Shoplifting?
Erin: Oh absolutely, whaddaya got? We all had a kind of shitty upbringing. All the Spits had a bad time growing up; kind of a prerequisite to be in this band. Wayne, what was on your resume to be in the band?
Wayne: I grew up in a bad neighborhood. My Dad and I used to get into fist fights. We had a pretty bad relationship. I grew up in a black neighborhood and used to get my ass kicked daily.
Sean: Me too. I used to get my ass kicked, Johnny used to beat up cops in Detroit!
Johnny: Yeah, me, and some skaters.
Justin: What got you guys into skateboarding?
Wayne: Thrasher magazine! Skateboarding in the 1980s was still very underground where we grew up.
Johnny: And looked down upon.
Justin: You had to take a break in the wintertime as far as Jersey, Detroit, and Michigan were concerned?
Erin: You could skate parking garages in the winter.
Wayne: We used to skate year round.
Justin: I’ve seen Spits tattoos as far away as Spain and England. Do you have any idea how many Spits tattoos are in existence worldwide?
Erin: Last time we checked with our headquarters…
Sean: 3,172.
Justin: The new record on In The Red, how did that come about?
Sean: Larry had been chasing us down for a long time. My brother calls all the shots, and Erin thought he didn’t want us on his label. I said that, “Yeah, he did.” Finally Larry said that he did want us. Erin said “Okay,” and so we did this record with him.
Justin: It’s on 45 RPM speed, too?
Erin: It’s on 45 RPM and it’s self-titled.
Justin: So it’s the forth self-titled Spits album, or fifth, including the Nickel and Dime record that shall not be named?
Erin: Slovenly Records is re-pressing that album, our first. Nickel and Dime hasn’t paid us any royalties at all on that album for over ten years, digital downloads for over ten years. We’re owed thousands of dollars, so enough is enough. We’ve taken it back and it’s in press now on Slovenly Records.
Justin: You guys have a favorite Canadian band?
Wayne: Viletones.
Erin: Viletones were a good band.
Sean: Sin 35 were an excellent band.
Wayne: Skull Skates was from Canada. Rush.
Sean: I like Rush.
Erin: Forgot about Rush.
Justin: Strange Brew, Story of Anvil, or Fubar: which is a better cinematic purveyor of Canadian culture according to the Spits?
Sean: Fubar!
Wayne: That’s a good movie, but Anvil!
Sean: Anvil, oh yeah!
Erin: I’m going with Bob and Doug, ‘cause I’m a huge fan and that movie rules.
Justin: A lot of critics and reviewers state Devo as being the Spits reason for having a keyboard in the band. Why did you guys decide to have a keyboard in the first place?
Sean: It’s like having another guitar.
Erin: Devo. [All laugh]
Sean: Another guitar but a different sound. It was like a spit in the face to all of those garage bands at the time like the Mummies, the Makers, and all of those bands. We wanted to have keyboards but make it sound tough. Nobody else was doing it.
Erin: Not a Farfisa, but an old Casio. One local band, the Cripples, were doing it. We thought we could do a little better. Then the Murder City Devils got a fuckin’ keyboard and it was all downhill from there. [All laugh]
Johnny: I got started playing in the Human Eye, and I got serious about it then, like eight or nine years ago.
Justin: Wayne, what made you start playing drums?
Wayne: Well, what got me playing drums was necessity.
Erin: You don’t even like playing drums. You wanted to play guitar.
Wayne: I still do.
Erin: What was that band you were in?
Wayne: The Prime Evils.
Erin: We played a show with them at a strip club in Portland and asked him if he wanted to play drums. He said, “No, not really.”
Justin: What’s the story behind the fight at that dive bar Gibson’s in Seattle?
Sean: We went off. We were being jerks. The bands were the Gimmicks and the Castros, I think [all laugh]. Chaos ensued. The owner of the bar was a small, old Asian man. He told me to get the fuck out. And I told him, “Shut up and eat rice, Grandpa.” These guys start swinging on me, and then the next thing I know we’re taking on the whole club. The whole fucking place. And we beat them all up.
Wayne: With a tire iron.
Sean: And a kryptonite bike lock.
Justin: Final words for your fans?
Sean: Keep it real, eh.
Johnny: Stay in school.
Wayne: Drop out.
Sean: God bless Canada.
feedtime are a criminally underrated post-punk band from the late 70s and 80s Sydney punk scene who caught the bug after seeing local bands like (Australian) X and Rose Tattoo. Their minimalist approach earned them comparisons to Wire as well as X, but feedtime recorded only a few albums before calling it quits in the late 80s. Sub Pop have now re-issued the band’s discography from 1979-1989 as The Aberrant Years and have sent them stateside to tour with new labelmates and O.G. diehard fans Mudhoney. We caught up with Rick and Tom over a scratchy international call on speakerphone. Rick’s wife informed us that we better talk quickly since they were running out of beer. We obliged. This interview by Justin Maurer and Dimitri Coats.
We have Rick and Tom here, and we’re missing your bassist, Allen. Where is he? Riding his motorcycle around?
Rick (guitar): We like riding motorcycles—it’s jolly good fun—but that was a long time ago.
Tom (drums): He’s actually filling out his U.S. visa application. It takes three or four hours and he filled it out last night and accidentally deleted it, so he has to do it again.
Australia is home to some of the most venomous and dangerous creatures in the world—how did this affect your music?
R: Hell, I think humans are the most dangerous creatures, so you’re wrong about that. We’ve been talking about snake bites that are horribly nasty. A friend of mine recently got bitten by a brown snake and he was too far away to get any help, so he just went back to the farm and waited to die. But the snake didn’t inject him with any venom so he lived. Which is pretty good, isn’t it?
Brown snakes are among the most dangerous, aren’t they?
R: Various creatures—we have a spider … you know black widows? We have a spider here like that whose bite will have you dead within a couple of hours.
T: Not that many people get bitten.
R: But crocodiles—people go for a swim to have some fun, and they just grab your neck and that’s the end of it. You’ve got to be really careful, like when you go into bear country in the States. You think you can outrun them but you can’t, and if you run into the wrong one you’re a goner.
I’ve always been shocked how obscure feedtime is. With all the attention surrounding the Sub Pop reissue, do you think your music will finally get the respect it deserves?
R: (Laughs) Well, it would be nice if people get to hear it. If people like it or don’t like it is completely up to them.
What things that weren’t music inspired you to play music?
R: Riding a motorbike for me. I went for a ride on the bike and I had to fire up the motor and it wouldn’t start, and I wore a full-faced helmet in those days. Finally I started it up, and a rhythm just started and then stopped in my head as I rode and I couldn’t remember anymore. Finally I got a tape recorder and patched it in my jacket with a microphone up inside my helmet by my mouth and started shouting the rhythm and that’s how a lot of our songs got started.
Based on a lot of your artwork and titles like ‘I Wanna Ride,’ ‘Highway’ and Cooper-S, there seems to be a strong connection to cars and motorcycles. Where does that come from? Is this the spirit of Mad Max?
T: Australia is a big place and there’s not many people in it. And we all live in the city but if you go anywhere you end up driving long distances, and I like it. It’s great sometimes just driving.
R: A lot of people say we’re good driving music. I used to drive a couple of thousand of miles a week, and it was terrific for me. Sometimes if there’s a great song or rhythm in my head and I almost drive off the road, that can be a problem for me.
What do you drive now?
R: I’ve got no transport at all—I actually had a head-on collision a few years ago, and some of the people in the accident became paraplegic, and so I thought it was a good sign to stop for a while.
Who was more powerful live—Rose Tattoo or X?
T: I did see X back in the day, and they were pretty hard to beat.
R: I can’t answer that over the phone.
How about Radio Birdman?
R: They weren’t my thing. They were more pop-ism influenced. A lot of people liked them, but I didn’t respond to them at all.
We hear about the early Australian punk scene and how violent it was, and you actually had two drummers leave the band due to threats of violence. Were the threats real?
R: The threats were real and the violence was quite real too.
T: There’s a lot of people suddenly in love with the punk stuff, but at the time there were some people that reacted badly to it, and it was quite easy to stir up trouble. It offended and shocked some people, and if that was your idea of a good time, then you knew where to go.
Being labelmates of X on Aberrant records, did you consider them the godfathers of the whole Sydney scene?
R: Forming up, we had been going for a while and went and saw X—we saw the drummer throw down his drum things and I thought, ‘This is not for me!’ They were the godfathers, but some people say that we wouldn’t exist without X and I beg to differ. No—I don’t beg at all, actually.
What’s the greatest Australian punk album of all time?
T: I don’t know that much of it, but I’d have to go with X Aspirations as one really powerful record. A lot of those bands didn’t sustain whole records, but you had these great singles that were really short, sharp singles. Nothing stuck with me as far as Australian punk bands from back then. I saw a few. Every band had their night when they were pretty good, but I don’t know if it held up.
R: I’m not trying to be unhelpful, but we were stuck in our own little continuum back then.
In your early lineup, you guys covered X, Rolling Stones and Flipper. Was the song ‘Ha Ha’ off your first album in 1985 a tribute to Flipper’s ‘Ha Ha Ha’?
R: No! A friend of ours named Sean used to record us everything, and he recorded us a live version of Flipper, and that’s the version we used to cover.
Being from Sydney, how did you hear about bluesmen like the Blind Willies and Mississippi Freds?
R: Well, that was my problem. There was a guy playing in Sydney at the time—a bit of a fruit, but he was real into Leadbelly and he played ragtime guitar, slide and stuff. He’d just sit there, put his hat on and get up and start singing. It was really good. He played stuff like Blind Boy Fuller and Blind Blake, which was real different culturally for us. He was such a great master and eventually I just submitted to the stuff.
The song ‘All Down’ is amazingly grim. Who is Rhino and what is that song about?
T: ‘Rhino’ is Carla, who is my wife and has been for about 30 years.
Before the band’s hiatus in 1989, Rick, you were quoted as saying, ‘I got to the point where I would either kill myself or commit murder.’ What did you mean?
R: I was trying to create a person who was more personable!
T: The way I sort of see it is … the first time around for me it was a way of getting things out of our system. I had a lot of crap in my system which was why I was intense and haphazard at the time. People change. I didn’t need it that often, and that’s why it stopped pretty much.
Anywhere in America you are looking forward to on your tour?
T: Beerland in Austin sounds pretty good to me. My wife and I went on a long holiday in America. We went to Nashville and Memphis and I really liked that part of America—driving around small towns. A lot of it was similar to small-town Australia. I like it as a place. Familiar yet different.
It’ll be an interesting climate with the Republican primaries going on.
T: It sounds a bit weird, but we have the same weirdness here. Right-wing politics, talk radio, and then more populist kind of things. You have that weirdness everywhere. People like them try and get ahold of stuff.
How did it feel to listen to Wire for the first time after being compared to a band you’d never heard?
T: I was certainly aware of Wire back then—a couple that they do, like ‘Practice Makes Perfect.’ Interestingly enough they came out here about a year ago, I went to see them and I didn’t like them at all. I can sort of see some similarities in trying to keep it simple though.
Here in the States we are inundated with Crocodile Dundee and ads for Foster’s Beer and Outback Steak House. What do you think about those representatives of Australian culture?
T: Funny thing about all of those movies is it’s all of these hard-living bush people portrayed, but we’re one of the most urbanized countries in the world—90 percent of people live in large cities and 95 percent of people near the coast. We’d like to think that we’re all rugged bush guys that kill crocodiles for the fun of it, but I think the reality is more like a bunch of nancy boys sitting around drinking coffee in a cafe in Sydney.
I have heard that the Australian hangover cure is champagne and orange juice with roast chicken for breakfast. Is this true?
T: I’ll give it a go tomorrow.
justin maurer 