JUSTIN SIROIS: Completely High

Justin Sirois is founder and co-director of Narrow House, an experimental writing publishing collective. His poetry is wicked. He received Maryland State Art Council grants for poetry in 2003 and 2007. His books include Secondary Sound (BlazeVOX Books) and MLKNG SCKLS (Publishing Genius). He is a designer for Edge Books, and he's also responsible for the original Taxidermy Lodge (now known as TAX LO) dance parties. Currently, Justin is trying to find a publisher for his first novel written in collaboration with Iraqi refugee Haneen Alshujairy about displaced Iraqis living in Fallujah in April of '04.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?

Writing stories. I just finished a novel about two young men in Fallujah (Iraq) that I wrote in collaboration with Iraqi refuge Haneen Alshujairy. She’s amazing. We met on the internet and now she lives in Cairo. We’ve never met and she’s beautiful. A small press is reviewing it right now and I’m hoping they’ll publish it, but you never know. It’s tough, getting published and all.

Publishing Genius just released MLKNG SCKLS, the “deleted scenes” from that novel. People seem to like it a lot, especially the story where Salim, the main character, “uncooks” a meal for his girlfriend. It’s endearing and gross at the same time. Dehumidifiers line the kitchen counter. Everything sounds “undelicious”.

I’m about 2/3 finished with a new novel about two metalhead brothers growing up in New Hampshire in 1993. It’s a pretty sad story about disappointment (much like my other novel… oops), but it’s more about admiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons and realizing that before it’s too late. There are a lot of D&Dish hallucinations in the narrative – and the main character imagines he’s having sex with the drawings from The Joy of Sex.

It might upset my parents.

How long have you done these things? How have the things changed?

I’ve been writing all my life, I guess. I wrote a comic book when I was six and the spelling was so bad that my dad would read it to my brother and me and we’d fall on the floor laughing. Through high school I drew and wrote a comic/music magazine that I hope no one still owns, but people back in Florida mention it sometimes. It was named after a Sound Garden song. Yikes. Let’s forget that. Completely.

I wrote poems mostly between the ages of 18-28. They were easier to compose and manage. They changed a lot – confessional to language based then a combination of the two and then whatever. BlazeVOX published my book Secondary Sound in 2008. It’s about piracy and copyright law and sampling. But I always wanted to write stories. Now I’m trying to do that mostly. I’m a bit happier.

Why do you do these things? No, really, why? How does it make you
feel? What's it like when you are unable to do these things?

Because it’s absolutely absorbing and it’s impossible not to get these ideas/images/characters/issue out on paper. It’s good therapy. And it’s the closest thing to religion that I have at the moment. There’s no better feeling than writing a beautiful sentence or finishing a solid story. It’s literally the best feeling I’ve ever had. And if writing brings me closer to people – understanding and empathizing with strangers, observing behavior, both negative and positive – then it’s the best thing in my life.

Writing fiction is the only creative act that I can concentrate on for longer than an hour or two, everyday, no matter what. A disciplined schedule is essential if you’re working on one project for 10 months or longer – sometimes much longer. Between projects I won’t write for months at a time and it feels terrible; it’s close to feeling directionless and useless. Drinking happens more. Video games, too. Man! What a time vampire those video games are.

During that down time, I try to research as much as possible. Reading helps, of course. Eventually the next project bubbles up and I’m back to normal.


When was That Moment in your life that told you would become what
you are?

I think it was when I finished the first draft of Falcons on the Floor, that first novel. I felt completely high. It was a, “did I really do that?” kind of experience that built and built after two years of work.

Now I know I can do what I’ve always dreamed about, but with that realization comes a whole lot more pressure on myself to keep going.


How has your life changed to accommodate That Moment's effect on you?

Dramatically and not at all. Now I know I have the discipline to sustain a rigorous work schedule, I can stay motivated about a project no one knows a thing about, and there’s a building community of strangers who want to read my work, but, that said, I’ll always be suspicious of the quality of the work. It’s that inner voice that constantly tells you, “Man, you have nothing to offer… you’re so cliché.”

All creative people deal with that insecurity. You just have to work through it – keep making and loving and caring about what you do. Falling in love with your labor is just as important as loving your language.

How has your work affected your life in return?

I can’t imagine my life without writing. My best friends are in the creative community and I’d rather have massively great creativity surrounding me than a sweet house or car or whatever. I feel like I have the absolute best quality of life and I share it with the most interesting people in one of the best cities in the States.


What do you think of the future?

I’m excited about the new XBox hands free controller because I won’t have to buy a gym membership. Lifting Cuba’s embargo will be a beautiful event; generations have suffered for something they had nothing to do with. Maybe gay marriage and pot smoking will be legal one day – everywhere – even on airplanes. Gay marriage on airplanes, you ask. Yes. The Future. Goodness! I don’t smoke pot.

The future isn’t as bleak as people think. Now that DIY is mainstream and nerds are cool, life is better for creative people. We can make books or albums on the cheap and post them for free and if it’s good work people will pay attention. Wars are essential because they’ve always happened. That sucks. The planet is suffocating under the stress of irresponsible consumption. That sucks, too.


Would you vote for David Lee Roth in an election? Why or why not?

It depends what he’s running for. President? No. Sorry. NFL Commissioner? YES. Oh hell yes. I saw this YouTube video of an old interview Roth did for MTV and he was soaring on coke or some narcotic from another planet and I was like, “That man should be running the NFL.”

secondarysound.blogspot.com

SIZE MATTERS, Dec 3 - 20 @ Load of Fun

size matters, originally uploaded by Mountain Lex.

Load of Fun Gallery
LOUDLY PRESENTS

SIZE MATTERS
a show of porous proportions
featuring the work of
Dan DEACON
Samantha GARNER
Katherine HILL
Twig HARPER
Anne ISRAEL
Jordan KASEY
Jen KIRBY
Irene MOON
Asa OSBORNE
Dennis TYFUS
Andrew Jeffrey WRIGHT

Curated by Lexie Macchi/The Mountain Lake Thing
Opening! December 3, 7- 10pm
and join us in the Load of Fun Theatre
for a sweet party featuring
The Stand-up Comedy of Andrew Jeffrey Wright
CEX
Fresh juice by Sam

Load of Fun Gallery
120 W. North Ave
Baltimore MD

Service Anxiety meets Long Live Death, forms human pyramid

top tier left to right is Theo and James Sarsgard.
In 2003, James and I were on tour with Long Live Death.
James played the saw, I booked the tour and did backup singing.
James is now Noble Lake with Jen & Andy of Wye Oak.
We did this in Icky's backyard after Long Live Death performed a green kool-aid show at Trumbullplex in Detroit with Chicago's Service Anxiety.
Theo was in Service Anxiety with the dude on the bottom row, all the way to the right,
and one or two of the other Service Anxiety dudes are in this pyramid.
Someone please tell me what their names are.
Icky is bottom row, on the far left.
In the morning everyone ate potato pancakes.

I found this ol' thing because I started uploading actual photos to an actual flickr page after almost 5 years of ignoring it completely. Stay tuned here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58621716@N00/

ANGELA SAWYER: One Fantastic Record At A Time

Angela Sawyer runs Weirdo Records in Cambridge, MA. She's a dedicated musician with a weak spot for Julie London, a yen for the ukelele, and a skull tattooed on the back of her hand. She used to work for Forced Exposure and Twisted Village, played in Life Partners and created the pop-collage band The Phenomenological Boys. Her unique voice is as comfortable carving catchy melodic layers as it is hooting and swooping like Tiny Tim in Farsi. She used to run Weirdo out of her house as a largely online venture, but recently she moved into a storefront on Massachusetts Avenue where she specializes in the ultra-bizarre and hosts performances in the tiny shop space. Below, she tells us what its like.


I am a record collector & run a record shop that just moved into a proper storefront about 6 months ago. So lately, I've been working like a nutbomb, up to my eyeballs in it about 12-15 hours a day 7 days a week. And by it I mean records, and I mean a fucklot of them. And not just your run-of-the-mill records either. Nope, the name of the shop is Weirdo and it's the name for a reason. Freaky garage psychedelia from Bolivia. Soundtracks to French VHS pornos. Housewives in green pancake makeup sitting on the floor of their kitchens, banging pots & pans & shrieking at the top of their lungs. One sided 78s about baseball from 1904. Cocaine-damaged open-mic-night songwriters who wish they were rock stars. Singapore's answer to Nancy Sinatra. Off-key opera singers, mysterious bleeping boxes, jazz solos played on drinking straws, Beatles covers from Thailand, instruments that you wear like a shirt, nose flautists, tangles of cables plugged into unidentifiable objects, Hendrix fans from Zambia, one armed fiddlers, soundtracks to movies that were filmed in languages no one can speak, souped-up player pianos, and on and on and on. That's my meat & potatoes.

Now most people think they like music, same way that most people think they're funny or think they can hold their liquor. But there are some people, a small percentage of people, who organize their every waking moment around music. They give up relationships over it, pass on decent food & housing in order to afford it, and they rarely talk or think or dream about anything else. Some people do this, not just for six months while during a phase in college, but for years & years & years on end. Not only am I one of these people, I can't remember the last time I had a conversation of more than 5 seconds' length with someone who wasn't. Typical modern-day skills like cooking chicken, using a bank, or putting a band-aid on the knee of a child have, in my case, atrophied away to nubs. While I effortlessly sport seemingly esoteric skills like gargling coca-cola while using an electronic bullhorn, or remembering that Ananda Shankar & Laurie Johnson are men, while Blind Willie Dunn was not blind.

Why? Well, here's the thing about being a record collector. It's a lot less about owning stuff. For example, it's practically impossible to "invest" in records like you can in the stock market. People occasionally try some variant of investing with music (buying it 'for their kids' or for ebay), and they are a small source of amusement to collectors in their midst, until a few months later when the money runs out & they disappear. In fact, if you spend your life connected to records, you are conscripting yourself into a life of poverty, gar-un-teed.

Sam & Angela

People ask how I got here once in a while, because they usually don't know anyone else who thinks a decent selection of nose flute recordings ought to be as handy as spare batteries. I usually tell them, 'one fantastic record at a time'. Because that's the truth. The world is stuffed to the brim with meaningless drivel. It's often unsparing & ugly & desperate. Records are a corner of it where things mean something, where people care even a tiny bit, where what's precious is venerated and what isn't is left to the wind. I feel extremely lucky that I get to spend my time, say, tracing the hundred years of phrasing history that led to Ella Fitzgerald's intricate vocal acrobatics instead of... what? Some crap like mutual funds?

The thing that people ask a lot more often than how I got here is, 'how do you stay in business?' Seems funny, because I hafta tell you. I see lots stores that sell stuff no one actually likes, and lots of people whose faces light up with what they hear when they're here. The answer there is therefore: when you need your insurance, go see the insurance guy, and when you need your teeth cleaned, go see the dentist. When you need to be bowled over by something beautiful and genuinely unique, I'll find you.

See, instead of playing the violin, some folks like to turn the violin upside down & play it backwards. Other folks would like use the violin to imitate a scuffle with an injured cat. Still more folks would prefer to just put the violin down, then walk to the nearest pond & joyfully throw a bunch of rocks in it. All of these people are sort of 'my people'. And they are not most people's people. Definitely not. Even amidst friendly sorts who like to think they're quite open minded or quirky or curious by nature. Not most people's people. Definitely not.

Brendan Murray & Angela behind the counter, photo by DJ Ning Nong

But few collectors mind, because they care a lot more about carving out an aesthetic goal. They want to know. Is it possible to write a song that is both musically and politically urgent? Are funny songs automatically less profound? What is the secret ingredient that turns a mess of unformed noise into something meaningful? Is dancing a mode of appreciation or detrimental to it? Can a serial killer write a good song? How about a two year old? Are some chords better than others? Are some guitar sounds always cooler than others? What about the different kinds of listening that you do when something is live vs. when it's recorded? Or when something is a hundred years old vs. released this week? Memorized it from when you were a kid vs. never heard it before? These questions are not rhetorical. They have answers. Long, detailed ones. Because even if they never articulate such questions (some of them are nearly autistic, after all), record collectors define & delimit good music to themselves, by saving the worthy & pushing away the dross. Like a gardener, little by little, they weed garbage, plant seedlings, expand, upgrade, re-landscape, and continually focus, tighter and tighter, on the myriad number of ways that good music takes place. And they get to savor it along the way too.

So when people ask me how I got into my job or one of the bands I play in, I usually answer 'one record at a time'. The Four Freshmen & Lambert Hendricks & Ross convinced me not to go to grad school. The Beach Boys got me out of bed & to a doctor that time I had a 104 degree fever. I decided not to move to Chicago after all, because I was gripped by a fever for Emmett Miller yodels & figured it would take months to meet anybody I could talk to there. I nearly got arrested throwing things at a passing train because I was so hopped up on the Music Machine. Lord knows the gossip or bargains or morning coffees I've missed because I couldn't stand to be in a room with Carol King's 'Tapestry' for one more second. How many times have I freaked out my neighbors trying to sing along to Joan La Barbara records, or whistle to Evan Parker? And how about the recent risks in identity/postal theft in order to buy obscurities from Bangkok or Lebanon or Istanbul?

844 Massachusetts Avenue

A lot of people who collect records get started before they're 15. Sometimes an older brother leaves a collection on the way off to college. Many have fond memories of playing with turntables at age 4 or 5. I learned how to read from Disney read-along 45s, memorizing their sound & following along in a book until I had the book memorized too. Preferred it to being read a story by a parent, so I've been told. But I didn't have an older brother or a hip pal when I was a teenager, so I didn't get introduced to music that wasn't on the radio or tv until I was already in my 20s.

Which brings me to David Lee Roth, musical giant of my junior high & high school days. DLR is the epitome of what popular music can do. This is not to say that Van Halen makes the best music in all of popular music history. Doris Day, Steve Allen, or even the Ink Spots, for example, could all wipe the floor with Roth's bony white ass any day of the week. It's more that Roth's voice is uniquely textured and skillfully applied enough (don't think that there's no talent to emitting a sound like ripping sheets from your throat while in mid-karate kick, eh?) that it can answer any musical question: like the 8 ball can answer any question about your future. Sure, you can look at the guy and see a coke-addled, falsely exuberant jock who rips off Louis Prima (badly, no less). This would not be a mistake. On the other hand, just one step beyond the party persona, DLR can open a door for the uninitiated: to doo wop, extended technique, off-the-beat phrasing, the syllabic turns of foreign languages (yep, he recorded in Spanish & there's an acapella mix), 60s folk-pop (John Sebastian cover), the history of vocoders (don't ask), and so on ad infinitum. It would certainly be a shame if listening to David Lee Roth kept people from listening to say, Mohammed Rafi. But there's time enough for both so long as you're not wasting yours with mutual funds, and Roth is as fascinating as a car wreck, every time.

These days, I'm glad I got started collecting a little late. I vividly remember the sense of discovery when I realized that other people who did not fit in, musically or otherwise, had a place to go & congregate. Like the island of misfit toys, for burgeoning adults. Amazing! And I learned that these wonderful places were called (say it with me now) college... radio... stations. I worked at one (lived there between apartments even), and doing so helped me get a job at a record store in the early 90s. Didn't know much when I started, but loved having the top of my head ripped open day in & day out by mysterious black slabs of Pierre Henry or Albert Ayler. Experiences akin to seeing the face of Jesus on a piece of toast- except that it's as real as the hand on the end of your arm. One day another employee mentioned that a particular indie rock band was boring. I think I actually sucked in my breath, as although I'd heard plenty of guys in doc martins & hair dye knock Eric Crapton, I'd never heard any of them disparage some poor, tiny band of freaks. I slowly realized, that what makes music good is neither it's popularity nor it's obscurity, but simply it's quality. And that this was something you could learn to figure out, without the help of glossy magazines or tv specials, or even any local blowhards who might like to hold court. In a world overrun with crap, advertising, fear, etc., developing your own ear is a defense against meaninglessness, ugliness, shallowness, and idiocy. And here in my fortress, hidden behind my mounds & piles of music, I'm happy to say that I'm all loaded up & ready to shoot.

This month, the record shop I run is having a sale, because it's November and that's what I think should happen when people are thinking about getting their friends Christmas presents. It's not how most shops work- but I like to think of this shop as a place that zigs when everybody else zags. It's not a bad way to be. There's no money in it of course. I scrape for change & put things back on the shelf every time I go to the grocery store, and I try to stretch between trips too. But there's a lot of fun to be had. This autumn I learned to improve my duck call blowing, got a teensy bit better at the ukulele, accidentally whacked a guy in the balls with a mike stand while visiting Chicago, received several odd objets d'art from pals (one blew bubbles!), attended a Balkan-themed dinner party... And the records! Oh, dear me what sounds have been flying around in the air here! Columbian cumbias, zombie groans from Germany, field recordings of wallabies playing in waterfalls, the funny fartings of Danish policeman, drunken Peruvian teenagers on juvenile delinquent rampages. And you can bet that's just the short list.

please find Angela & company at:
WEIRDO RECORDS
844 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge MA 02139
857-413-0154
Images from Weirdo Records
Angela's Bands:
EXUSAMWA
DUCK THAT

GARY PANTER: Future Selves

Gary Panter is why the television show Pee-Wee's Playhouse looked the way it did. As a designer, artist, light show specialist, and musician, he's incredibly prolific, almost compulsive. The corners of his comics fill with flotsam, the walls of his gallery installations become quilted with years of collected ephemera, paintings throb eye-crossing patterns, and the landscapes of his graphic novels teem with leaning towers, scuttling creatures, smoke puffs, dinosaur goons. His cartoon language is self-referential and smart without being smarmy, and his sketchbooks are so plentiful they occupy about half of Picturebox's recent 700-page epic Gary Panter: The Book. Looking at his silkscreened small-run art books from the eighties makes one feel like he invented weird, or at least taught pop-art how to throw itself up; he prefigured artistic movements of the early twenty-first century by nearly two decades. Even though he's allergic, he has three cats: Triscuit, Squeaky and Roofie. His favorite movie is Call Me Genius starring Tony Hancock, his favorite book is Flann O'Brien's At Swim Two Birds and his favorite color is "all."

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?

I am always drawing, painting and playing guitar.

How long have you done these things? How have the things changed?

Since I was little.

One of Gary's weekly strips, from garypanter.com

Why do you do these things? How does it make you feel? What's it like when you are unable to do these things?

I can enjoy life, but I love to make something out of nothing.
I would become unhappy if I couldn't do those things, but I would try to go on.

Its JIMBO!

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?

I drew with my father since I was little and watched him paint cowboy and Indian paintings, so that was generally formative, but...

A moment that told me that I would get old hence, become, was:

One day in Brownsville Texas, in my yard of dirt, in 1956, I saw a tin washtub full of water, with glimmering reflections of the sky.
I picked up a stick and stirred the water and all my future selves that recall that moment appeared and were watching me.

How has your life changed to accommodate That Moment's effect on you?

It was a flow and not a change.

How has your work affected your life in return?

I get petted by people who like my work and reviled by folks who don't like it.
I like it, so I am not worried.

Totally mind-altering piece of Gary life-evidence from his blog

What are your thoughts about being Choctaw?
My father and Grandma were very much native americans to me growing up. My grandparents lived in Talahina, Oklahoma and worked at the TB hospital and at the Indian Hospital. At the Indian hospital the old people still spoke Choctaw. It's cool having some clue about where you come from. It was rustic --everyone chewed tobacco or dipped snuff. There were tornadoes and forest fires and giant hail, croaking frogs and bible thumping.

Where do the animal stories on garypanter.com come from?

The short stories on my site are attempts at writing-- heavily influenced by the writing of Donald Barthelme, Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Coover, Byron Coley and others.

What do you think of the future?

We will be cave men for a long time. Then we will become fancy seals and gophers with TV skin.
After that, the skies the limit. If we get nice enough aliens will reveal themselves.

What do you think of David Lee Roth? Have your thoughts changed or evolved over the years?

He reminds me of Soupy Sales. No, he still reminds me of Soupy Sales.

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
Have you heard Devin Gary & Ross?
No! Tell me about it.
Devin Gary & Ross is comprised of Devin Flynn, creator of Ya'll So Stupid cartoon formerly on Super Deluxe. He has been in various bands, for instance, Plate Techtonics and Gangstuhs Wit Gats. Ross Goldstein has a solo album called Free Dumb and he has made music with various people including Dearraindrop. They are both multi-instrumentalists. I play guitar and trumpet kinda. We do our own stuff and covers of neglected psychedelic pop tunes. We are into concrete music and vocal harmonies and the whole thing is a fucking blast! We played Issue Project Room, Market Hotel, Santos, Cakeshop and Providence this year. There is some early stuff of me and Devin on youTube, but nothing like what the three of us are doing now. There is a CD of Devin and Gary on Ecstatic Yod/Picturbox from before we found Ross.

Exhibition view, Gary Panter: Pictures From the Psychedelic Swamp 1972 - 2001
image thanks to Clementine Gallery, NYC

Everything:
garypanter.com

JASON URICK: Avoid Cleaning or Jogging

Jason Urick lives at Floristree space, loves football, beer & Camels, used to perform as Moonstealingproject, and has had white hair since adolescence. He spearheaded festivals, a record shop, an underground venue (slash home), and participated in projects such as Spirit Stallion, a pastiche band comprised of a varying cast (including OXES' Mark Miller) whose often-hilarious performances poked fun at the music industry's more self-important side with Guitar Center pranks and PowerPoint presentations. Lately, his solo album Husbands has been garnering loads of positive attention, a split 7" with kindred Baltimorean Jason Willett appeared last week from Wildfire Wildfire and a trip to Europe is in the works. Jason is a lighting rod for Charm City's musical climate; his longevity in the scene and knack for storytelling makes him a griot of sorts, his charm and humor draws people to him, and his expansive taste and enthusiasm keep him thirsty for everything the music interworld has to offer.

What do you do? What are you doing the most lately?
I do what I do, and sometimes I forget I do it. I make music but have never been a "musician"... but I do it because I don't know how not to. I book shows at Floristree, but I'm trying to do that less. I used to do owning a record store, running the Once.Twice Festival, rooting for the Redskins, playing in Wzt Hearts and living in Chicago... but I no longer do those things for various reasons.

Lately I have been doing putting out my first solo record, trying to figure out how to a be a laptop performer without boring myself and paying spectators alike, rooting for the Ravens and not booking shows (sorry everyone who has been emailing me for shows).

Jason's new album Husbands, out now on Thrill Jockey Records

How long have you done these things? How have the things changed?

I've been making music for about 14 years now... I started late. I tried to learn guitar in 8th grade... errrr... I tried and succeeded in learning how to play the intro to Crazy Train on guitar in 8th grade and assumed that's all there was for me to do on that instrument. Wait, I actually also had a short lived "band" in 6th grade called Arcangel. We had one friend with a guitar, and I made a "bass" out of a shoe box and 3 rubber bands with a Fisher Price tape machine mic inside to amplify it. Our drummer had buckets... we "practiced" twice. We did have a cool logo that we drew on our binders. Our influences were mainly Faith No More, D.A.D., Anthrax and Bang Tango. If I knew then what I know now I would've named our band the Shitty Tinklers, because thats how my memory of it sounds.
I didn't tackle music again until after High School when I decided that I could easily be that dude in Pavement that played a snare drum and made weird sounds on a synth. I got a Roland Juno 6 for my birthday and made my guitar whiz friend Jeff Kmieciak and co-worker Zach Mason start a band with me. We found a drummer via the City Paper, his name was Ferdinand and he was a 30 year-old Phillipino guy. He was really rad and live in the basement of his parents home amongst like 8,000 CDs. We called ourselves Fashionable Kitsch and turned down both shows we were ever offered. We practiced for about a year, but I quit when we started playing songs the same way more than once. I wouldn't be in a band again until Wzt Hearts which worked because we didn't even like to practice at all, so there was no way we would have to play the same song twice.

I don't like to practice... I should've listed that in the first question as something I don't do.

Why do you do these things? No, really, why? How does it make you feel? What's it like when you are unable to do these things?

I do these things because I wake up thinking about doing these things often, and other times I go to bed thinking of doing these things. I don't know why. Some people wake up thinking that that they need to clean their room or jog. If you know me well I rarely think of these things when I wake or go to bed. Therefore I make music instead of cleaning. Maybe I do it to avoid cleaning or jogging... I never really thought of that until just now.

It sucks when I am unable to do these things because that means I am possibly cleaning or working or jogging...wait, that's not true, I never jog. These things I like less than making music. It feels good to make music when I'm making it because it relaxes me,... it feels natural when it's going well... I don't think of anything else at that moment.

Jason Willett (left) & Jason Urick, photo by Devon Daimler

When was That Moment in your life that told you you would become what you are? What happened?
Is this a nature/nurture question? It feels like a mind trap... I'm not sure when that moment was or rather I am possibly unable to gather all the little moments that added up to make me what I am.... I would have to start early with something that happened in childhood like getting beat up in 2nd grade or seeing a Devo video on MTV, but I'm not sure if they mattered or if they actually happened. Though for sure at some point in early High School I realized that I liked music more than I liked most things but it was more like I always knew it but didn't know I knew it.... if that makes sense. I think maybe once I realized that Arcangel wasn't going to ever match the success of Guns N' Roses I put away this knowledge but once I saw Fugazi at Ft. Reno and they were walking around drinking lemonade with the crowd before and after the show, I guess I realized a world where the boundaries were more blurred.

I always imagined my role would be as a record store owner, or running a label or promoter. And it was for a while... it wasn't until Wzt Hearts were I felt more comfortable with the idea that I'd rather be making the music above all else.

How has your life changed to accommodate That Moment's effect on you?
It's hard to say because I don't know any other way. My life before what we have maybe pinpointed as the general time period that The Moment may have happened was most likely was spent mostly going to Junior High School, and watching Fresh Prince Of Bel Air while eating pizza bagels... now I watch thrift store VHS tapes (last one was Gladiator) while eating homemade pizza.

How has your work affected your life in return?

Well, I think it changed in mostly positive ways. I feel like the sense of community that you get from being involved with music has taught me a lot. I'm not sure what lead to what, but I feel like I need less to be happy than people I see that don't have that sort of community available to them. I dunno....



What do you think of the future?

I've been angry at the future ever since it failed to live up to the promise of hover boards by the year 2000. I'm also angry at the future for living up to Orwell's 1984 a little too much.

What does David Lee Roth mean to you?
A superior 1984 in some ways to the previously mentioned one.

Do you have anything you'd like to ask me?
Remember when Floristree dressed up as the Lexie Mountain Boys? That was cool.
I remember this as the best thing that happened to me that I wasn't there for. Same as being born! That was cool and about time too. Do you like how I just coined the word "interworld"?

Jason Urick/ Jason Willett 7" on Wildfire Wildfire
Jason Urick Husbands on Thrill Jockey Records

1 - 10 of about 1,900,000 (0.12 seconds)

The Doorway to Diamond Dave: "Bid on David Lee Roth now!" This Welcome Mat of Legging Otherness is where we can see true results. Not included: the 2010 Tour, a Twitter account of questionable provenance, the mirror that appears when gluing these invisible shards back together.