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Visiting grandmother who is 99 years old. Really? Yeah Wow. And she spends her Julys in Gulf Shores at this condo she owns and the whole family gathers around her. She's the matriarch. Yeah, at 99, I'll bet. Yeah, she'll be 100 next year so we'll be here next year. She originally came out of Pineapple, Alabama. Where is that? It's in Wilcox County. Sort of near Greenville (AL)...Life Magazine called it the black belt of the South in the 60's because it was the poorest county in the South, but had the richest soil. Is that where you're from? No, I was born in Florida, and there's a connection there. You see my father was brought up on a plantation in Pineapple, Al and he moved to Miami and he was the dean of student affairs at University of Miami. So we had this connection to Miami, the university there. You were born in South Florida? I was born in Corral Gables Hospital in Miami...Then in the 60's when my Grandfather took over the plantation land that was left to him by his father and built a little lodge house on it. So, throughout the late 60's early 70's, I'd spend my summers pretty much here, bumming around. And really identified with it, especially at that age. So we come down here every year or so now. My grandfather passed way, but my grandmother still lives, so we all come down here. But next year we'll probably go back to Pineapple as opposed to Gulf Shores (AL), which is fine with me. I'm not a beach person so there's nothing for me to do here today. The beach, is that her thing? I don't know. Someone else in the family organized it. It's just what's happening right now. But we all did make a T-shirt there that was an edition of one of, but it was the Sonic Youth/Nirvana tour T-shirt. When we first went out with those guys. And Kim and I sort of had it done here, it was one of those paint spray T-shirts... Airbrush? Yeah, airbrush T-shirts. We were gonna make multiples of these shirts. We brought it to Europe in 199 and when we went to Europe to show it to those guys, they looked at it. The only response we got was this...question mark (laughter). It had dolphins on it, and surf boards and it said "Sonic Youth/Nirvana European Tour" in Air Brush. We were like, "This will be so hot to make copies of,” but it went completely over their heads. Guys from the Pacific Northwest just couldn't connect with it. So that never happened, but Kim and I still own that T-shirt. And we're pretty proud of it. Did you do that over here? Yeah, in Gulf Shores. Have you had the chance to check out Pensacola much? Well, we always land in Pensacola, although I don't know if we're gonna do that anymore because someone told us it's cheaper to land in Mobile (laughter) but I looked into Pensacola and we discovered your store last time (Subterranean Books) and that was really exciting for us. We're really into the literary world and to find out that that exists here. Like, my only impression of Pensacola is landing here and driving through it and seeing antique stores and thrift stores, and that was great. So, we'd hit that sometimes. I guess it was the last time we were here that we came in and started poking around and we saw your store my accident. Yeah, a lot of our underground here is a lot more underground. Oh yeah sure. Which is cool cuz it doesn't get exploited as easy, but sometimes is harder to keep going. Then that whole Mobile thing going to this little record store over there. I mean I wasn't too surprised. I know there is activity going on everywhere, like people interested in things outside of the mainstream, but I was surprised to see it in Pensacola. I didn't really expect to see it here. Especially after seeing your store and finding that record store that sold a lot of Independent music. Yeah, the first time I came here I was surprised too. I guess you just check out a flier and go to the 5 or 6 other places people are connected to. Yeah, it's great. This is kind of going back, but how did you first get into punk? Well it happened...I was sort of that transitional period of the early 70's. Picking up on images of the Stooges, New York Dolls, Patti Smith. And Patti Smith used to write for Cream Magazine. I remember there was an author's photo. But some of her poetry in Cream magazine was just great. She was in Black and White and not the color glam shot. As a young teenager I was really into Bowie and the Glitter Rock scene but that was all part of the transition with Punk Rock with the Dolls. And I was into Alice Cooper. I was into that sort of aesthetic of music. It was kind of like challenging and fun and sort of dealing with issues that were a bit more like what it was to be an American teenage alien (laughter). At the time, the early 70's, it really went against the Allman Brothers Band and Yes and the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer Appreciation Society that was what high school society was like at that time. I listened to that as well, but I was more into heavy metal still like Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Alice Cooper. That was even more interesting. And Bowie was more interesting and Todd Rundgren was interesting and The Stooges were VERY interesting and the Dolls were just like all of a sudden really, very interesting. Just the fact that they were into dealing with cross gender issues and that was really super dangerous at that time because it was like high school society didn't accept that type of stuff. I just thought it was fantastic and the irony in it was really intelligent and there's a certain intellectual excitement that didn't exist in Rock and roll culture at the time and I really gravitated towards it. Luckily I was living only an hour and a half from New York City. Did you move up there because of any of that? My father was school teacher, a university teacher and he taught at the University of Miami at the time and in the middle of '69 or '70 we moved to Connecticut because he got a job up there and it was an hour and a half from NYC What did he teach? Philosophy and Music. So my household sort of had that little vibe to it. But I remember really responding to those sorts of images. And there were magazines like Cream Magazine and Roxy Magazine that sort of talked about the stuff. Even Rolling Stone would sort of have a picture of the MC5 and that always sort of interested me more. As soon as I started hearing about The Ramones I got really interested. Before then they called it “Street Rock” or “Raunchy Rock.” But The Ramones first album was really it. I remember when that came out, my father had just passed away. He had a brain tumor in '76 or '77 and we were going back and forth to the Hospital in New Haven, Connecticut and I remember stopping in the record store in New Haven when The Ramones album first came out and I bought it and brought it home. And I remember putting it on and that was completely a maker for me. I was 17 years old and that was perfect timing. And I knew right away what I wanted to do. I wanted to do that. They were just so shocking to me cuz it completely wiped out everything before it. It just decimated the guitars solo (laughter). Because I was listening to this CD the other day of Ten Years After which I really liked, and I remember as a young kid my brother always had Ten Years After records and we were listening to "Live at the Filmore." Like, every track had a 20 minute guitar solo or drum solo...I just remember that kind of thing, well you can never really be in a band unless you play as well as that or extend yourself like that. And I remember seeing The Ramones in '76/'77. It just completely obliterated that. And it was time. This is a whole new other generation. And I really immersed myself into that. There was really no one really else like that in my high school. There were one or two people who were sort of interested. But basically I was the only one. And then when I started going to New York and I got out of high school and I sort of found a job there. I got a little apartment there. Everybody I met sort of has the same story. Like "I was the only one." But anybody who was the only one in whatever town they were in, whether if it was in Connecticut, Kansas, or even Australia. Some one like Jim Thirlwell, you know from Feotus. He was my age and I met him early on and he was like living in Australia or some little town outside of Melbourne, and he said he know NOBODY. But he heard that stuff early on, looked at the magazines and thought that was completely what he identified with. And anybody who did that at that time either moved to New York or London...urban centers. It was great. What was it like living in New York at that time? It was different than it is now because New York was kind of like this trash heap of a town (laughter). But the fact was that you could live really cheaply and get away with it. You could work part time. Yeah, like right now, most of the people I know who are living up there are squatting or have 20 people living in one room. Well, that's pretty much the only way to exist working as an artist there. But it's in its final days of catering to that lifestyle. And it's a shame because New York has such an interesting history of cultivating that lifestyle. It was pretty much an island for immigrants. So, you could live cheaply and on top of each other. You didn't have to work too hard. You just had to find little jobs to pay your cheap little rent. The real estate has really changed. That's what's good about a place like this cuz a lot of us don't work and can spend all day playing music, writing, or just nothing. Well, I think it's a different culture now. I don't think the profile of New York City or any urban metropolis has the importance that it had throughout the 20th Century. I think it's really changed. Which is fine. I think more people are connected with information. At one point, New York was the media information capitol. But it doesn't have that cache anymore because information is so shared right now that it is not necessary to have such a capitol geographically. So in a way, let it become this real estate kind of Wall Street driven metropolis. I think people know that there is no artistic center in America now. It can exist anywhere and everywhere. Do you think that's good or bad? I think its' great. To me it's like...That's the thing I really liked in the early 80's when Hardcore first started because it started establishing this fact that the most interesting activity is happening outside of the urban area. It was coming out of the suburbs. It was coming out of the rural areas. It was about creating its own network of communication, of clubs and distribution, labels and stuff like that. Nothing really existed early on. Punk Rock was like New York, (and that was) harder for a lot of those first bands. They didn't have any ambitions to exist as an alternative to the mainstream, anyway. They were all on Sire Records. You know, Patti Smith did her first single independently but that was...they weren't trying to make any gesture towards independence. It was just because they thought that was something to do (laughter), which is pure of heart but at the same time they were immediately signed to Arista and they never turned back. To me it was much more interesting later on when Rough Trade kind of established the idea that we could work independently. How responsible do you think Punk is for moving the artists out of the cities? I think it's pretty responsible. I think it's responsible for changing the mindset of youth culture. Giving it a whole new set of ideas, ambitions. In a way it was this really rebellious attack culture. It was anti-disco, anti-hippie. I mean, people don't really remember that when punk rock first started a lot of it was "we hate disco." (laughter) It was all about that. Disco was so prevalent and that was sort of lame culture as far as we were concerned. It would terrorize you. Especially in high school. If you were hip, you'd be a disco king. And it was really bad. And nobody understood punk rock as an alternative at that time. It was either Disco or you were a technical Allman Brothers genius. Or a leftover hippie and it was a bad scene. Punk Rock was really amazing in that offered something that had a lot to do with interdisciplinary art culture, like literature and painting. That's what was so great about it. What do you think of Punk now? Punk now? I think it's on one hand a very established culture and on the other hand it's like a culture influx always, which I kind of like. You can really sit back and be critical of people who are so pro-punk to the point that they sort of dictate what punk is. It's like "That's wrong." Punk is not about dictating about that it is. It's about being completely open to your own liberation and being in you own awareness and such. Like authorities in Anarchism? Yeah, and it's funny because you read a lot of people say "this is punk" and "This is not punk." And it's like "who cares." It's really about a person who gets involved in punk culture. It's something you either deal with positively or deal with negatively. It doesn't matter as long as you...as long as it sort of makes sense and it's truthful to the person. And it's like "Well, fine." That was the whole thing with DC Hardcore when it first started. It had a very identifiable sound and vibe to it. But at the same time you'd have these young kids that would dress up like London 77 punks and then you'd have sort of the new breed, Ian Mackaye (from Minor Threat, Fugazi, and Discord Records), like shaved head, cotton pants and sneakers. Then you'd have Iron Cross who was really into leather jackets and studs and that and at the same time they were both kind of on the same page. I kind of like that existing in a way instead of someone dictating a fashion sense of punk. But in the same way, I like the idea that punk has a sort of fashion sense in a way, even though it sort of wants to erase it. It's not about that, but it is about that in a way. It's about...it's important for punk culture to draw attention to itself. And that's what really sets it apart from 60's counter culture models. Especially with the Diggers who were all about anonymity. That's what they wanted to be about was anonymity. If the media doesn't know who we are they won't be able to distract from what we do. Which I always thought was this fantastic thing but of course it was never successful because "Hippie" was this thing that was "media-ized." In a way I think that punk is this great culture that could learn from this whole history of counter culture. Right now the way I think it exists as an amalgamation of radical counter culture. And I don't really see anything replacing it because it exists really successfully as an amalgamation. Where as "Hippie" was "Hippie" and initially "Punk" was "Punk" but now you can have somebody expressing classical 60's hippie ideals, but they're still part of punk culture. And who would have thought that, but it exists. What bands are you excited about now? You know I'm really into all kinds of...I'm really into what the Boredoms do, a band like XBXRX, things like that are fantastic. There are young bands like that around the country. There's this band up near us in New England called Lightning Bolt that people talk about and it's sort if in the same way. The people who live in an enclave and they just sort of...have these amps that are all spray painted and they go out in their car when they get a gig and they play in places...they won't play anywhere...they wont play on the stage. They'll play anywhere but the stage. There whole thing is "We don't play on stages." So they just set up next to the bar and they just pummel. But there's a lot of grass roots bands like that. Those bands are great. I like friendlier sorts of music like Stereolab and Catpower, that kind of Genre. But basically the music that I'll go to see is improvisational music. There are so many young people making improvisational music, more than there ever was. It's a really interesting situation right now. Any last words? Nah, we're just gonna hit that local record store, what is it? East Hill CD Yeah, and hit that guitar store, too. We gotta head back. Well, thank you very much. Yeah, sure. |
