Gillian Gilbert (New Order) interview: 2012

RE-NEWED ENERGY

Gillian Gilbert is at the Macclesfield country home she shares with husband/New Order drummer, Stephen Morris when I phone. She immediately slips into a relaxed chatty mode, happy to discuss New Order’s past, present and future – after all, it’s been a long time since any typical band activities – rehearsals, touring, international press, New Order itself, have encroached on the keyboardist’s life. The 32nd inconsistent year of the iconic band’s existence is upon us, and Gillian, as with each member at some point or other, is a little surprised to be back. “You just never know with us what to expect, really.” She understates. However, New Order’s latest reunion is a very different story to previous times. The silence that followed the band’s last album - 2005’s Waiting For The Siren’s Call - was broken by a statement in 2007 - apparently from within the group’s ranks – that New Order were ‘no more, and never likely to be again’.

New Order, 1980

That announcement made by (now ex) bassist Peter Hook was, it turned out, a false indicator as he was the only one at that particular meeting. Hook’s subsequent plundering of Joy Division’s back catalogue and threats of legal action against the remainder of New Order (for using the name without his involvement) are now matters for the public to cast opinion on, but New Order’s surprise return in late 2011 - excluding Hook - implies a solidarity within the group still exists and is willed to power in the roughest of times. But then their name did always suggest purposeful leadership, with an even vaguely hierarchical connotation, which all seemed very cocky considering they essentially began in 1980 as 'Joy Division minus the popular singer'. As New Order, they chose a new lead singer basically on the flip of a coin, and for a time nobody in their right mind would have bet on a future for the band. Perhaps though, it’s that ‘unlikely rise’ from potential post-Ian Curtis obscurity that formed the catalyst for New Order’s ‘survive anything’ mentality. Few bands after all have endured their level of disharmony from outside and within their own ranks, so it’s not such a surprise, that in the wake of a very public battle with Hook, their passion has again beaten their hate.

Bernard Sumner, Gillian Gilbert and Steven Morris re-united as New Order last year with a new bassist Tom Chapman and second guitarist Phil Cunningham. On the eve of their first Australian visit with the new line-up - and with no new album to promote – Gillian surely speaks for the whole band when she says that this reunion was a more ‘tentative one’ than previous times. “We didn’t really know how it (touring a new line-up) was going be received by the New Order fans, or if the interest would even still be there. But we have come to think of this time as like a new beginning, really.” The first New Order show without Hook was intended as a one-off benefit gig for long-time friend of New Order’s, Michael Shamberg – a film producer responsible for the bulk of New Order’s stylish and surreal music videos - who became terminally ill. It was also the first show to feature Gillian back behind the keyboard following her indefinite departure in 2000 to look after her sick daughter, “I missed just being with everybody.” She recalls, “It took me a long time to get used to not being in New Order.” The line-up was completed by members of Sumner’s other band, Bad Lieutenant but the obvious Hook-shaped hole in the band raised potential problems for the long term.

Performing Blue Monday on TOTP, '83.

“We were quite scared about doing a fully fledged tour with new band members, because we had to of course work out if Tom could cope with such a big part to play.” Gillian offers, “So instead of barging back into the spotlight as it were, and announcing some big ‘come-back‘ tour, we took small steps.” Tom Chapman will inevitably be compared to Hook at every show on the tour but, Gillian notes, it’s wrong to assume he’s merely imitating. “Tom isn’t copying Hooky, he has his own style of playing. Tom wasn’t there when we recorded those songs, and so it stands to reason that he hears them differently to Hooky and has his own take on them.” New member’s aside, the current New Order live show reflects on the band’s past now more than ever, and the visual identity created around New Order’s music. Gilbert explains, “In the past it was always about touring to promote a new album or whatever, but preparing for Michael Shamberg’s benefit concert, forced us to listen to a lot of our older material – some of which we haven’t played live since the ‘80s – and create a set list to go along with a lot of the videos he produced.” Those videos, including Blue Monday’s oddly posed dogs, Bizarre Love Triangle’s falling suited men and True Faith’s mime artists gone feral are images as iconic as the songs themselves, Gillian agrees.

                                                  the classic 'True Faith' video



“I’ve always loved what Michael did with True Faith especially.” The video, which features costumed dancers performing increasingly violent, synchronised routines, thinly hides the band’s most overt drug-referencing in a song.  True Faith – the song and video - was one of the first to drag underground club culture into the mainstream, where it was immediately deemed ‘unsavory’. “I remember Radio One refused to play it unless we changed some of the words.” The original lyric “Now that we’ve grown up together/they’re all taking drugs with me” was tamed down to “Now that we’ve grown up together/they’re afraid of what they see”. “It was never about promoting, or glamorising anything though,” Gillian adds, “Meanwhile, nearly every song on the radio now it seems, is loaded with drug references, only it doesn’t seem to be an issue anymore. Is it shock for the sake of shock value? Yes, I think so.” And if any band should know, it’s New Order. 

Keyboardist Gilbert, also

occasionally played guitar in NO.

Madchester, Baggy, Acid House, and a slew of other music/drug-related sub-cultures have all been credited to New Order’s influence on music, but a scene was already in the making, born from a rapid rise in street-level music creation and a potentially destructive new wave of party drugs. New Order simply provided the best possible soundtrack for whether you were going out, or coming down. The scene bloomed within the well documented home of Tony Wilson’s Factory label and Hacienda nightclub, but many of the bands and many more of the drugs ultimately proved bigger than either business. New Order survived Factory, but only just. To recoup some of their lost earnings, the band reconvened in 1990, “for what we thought would be one last time”, to record the official World Cup anthem – World In Motion. In a bittersweet twist, the song hit number one at the same time New Order were broke, disbanded and had little hope of a future. “It was encouraging having a number one single, yeah, but really we did that record as a commercial venture because we were in trouble financially.” Gillian confirms, “Steven (Morris) had the idea to do it, and just because we knew it would be used by all the TV stations broadcasting the World Cup, we all agreed. It was one of the few financially smart things we did as a band.” Its romantic to think the band keep New Order going for ‘love not money’, and although Hooky is the current bug in the band’s ointment, their instability had begun long ago as a result of bad business. It’s often downplayed for the sake of a good mud-slinging story, but Factory crashed during the making of New Order’s then come-back album, 1993’s Republic which ended the band’s tolerance for the industry for many years. Regarding the band's future plans however, Gillian can only offer her personal wishes.



“I would like to finish this tour, take a short break and then see what the future brings. We don’t have plans beyond these shows right now, but that can be an exciting prospect as well." She ads, "I don't think we will be recording a full album again, but I'd like to do an E.P. perhaps. We always had singles that weren't on albums in the past, so I think an E.P. would be a good compromise of those two things." As for the recent history in which ties between New Order's and Hook have seemingly been cut for good, Gillian concludes, "Many things way out of our control have slowed us down over the years, but… I think, in a way, the band is bigger than us as individuals, which makes it easier to carry on in the face of… whatever the universe can throw at us. I think with this group getting back together, we knew there would be battles (Hook) to get through, but in New Order, that’s just how we play."

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The 'Low Life' album and tour was unusual in that it was the one and only time the band's images were used in the promotional artwork.

Dr Alex Paterson (The ORB) Interview: 2012

SPACE BALLS

UK electro act The Orb, always found themselves lumped in with the narcotic-influenced club music scene emerging in the late ‘80s, while journalists struggled to find a more accurate description; ‘Pink Floyd for the ‘90s rave generation’ and ‘Space-obsessed knob-twiddlers’, are just two of the terms that have been commonly used to describe the duo, and complimentary or not, founding member Dr. Alex Paterson can see no reason to give a shit. “I’m still here 25 years later talking to you, so I think we must be doing something right.” Paterson’s early morning croak assures me his ‘blissed-out drug music’ is a ‘good match’ ahead of the touted double-billing of The Orb with UK sample-monsters, Bomb The Bass. “It’s good; I think we both come from the same school of plagiarism.” The self-appointed/self-medicating doctor laughs.

“As it happens, I used to go out and buy Bomb The Bass’s records for when I was DJing back in the early days.” Paterson recalls, waking himself up a little more. “We’ve both always listened to music with the same ear for working out how you can make something new out of something old, I think.” Paterson’s mention of ‘plagiarism’ is more self-referencing than accusation. In its earliest form, The Orb was an excuse for Paterson and one Jim Cauty to create sampling anarchy. Cauty however fell out with Alex following the debut album, The Orb's Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld and went on to raise hell as one-half of The KLF with Bill Drummond, who’s own free-for-all approach to using copy-protected music was as prolific as their lunatic stunts. The Orb continued on with some-time members, Youth (ex-Killing Joke), Kris ‘Thrash” Weston, Tim Bran and various others, before Paterson’s longest term ‘co-Orbist’, German-born Thomas Fehlmann joined in 1995. With the many cohorts under the bridge, I wonder is Alex the archetypal ‘difficult artist’?

“No, I think it’s more that there’s a kind of snobbery among a lot of English DJs, and many of them seemed to be in competition with each other, and I didn’t want to be a part of that.” He adds, “Thomas didn’t behave in that way, which was a new experience for me. We do things for one another, not for self-aggrandising reasons.” The Orb, although linked to the sample revolution born out of hip hop, claimed their own distinct niche as ‘ambient electronic pioneers’; a term which Paterson is immensely proud of. “I was an A & R scout in the early ‘80s, so I always had my ear to ground, wanting to know what was going on in music, and nobody was doing ambient house music before The Orb formed.” Paterson, as a recreational pot-smoker spotted a gap in the dance-oriented club scene for chill-out music that wouldn’t completely kill the listener’s vibe. “A lot of people were putting on stuff like Neil Young or Pink Floyd after a night out clubbing, so we thought we set about changing that by offering an alternative.” The two premiere ambient house chill-out records were The KLF’s Chill Out, and The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, which Paterson now admits was heavily inspired by Brian Eno.

“My day-job back then was working for Roxy Music’s record label in London, and Eno was one of the reasons I got into making music of my own.” He exclaims, but Eno apparently was keen to distance himself as an influence from Paterson’s work. The Orb were indeed gaining exposure for a lot of the ‘wrong reasons’ in the early ‘90s, as sampling on the level employed by them was a major concern for labels wanting to release music with the hassle of lawyers banging at the door. “The sampler made it easy for artists like us to completely alter a sound to use in a recording – so much so, we got away with a lot more than most people know about.” He laughs, “I can say that now, because if a sample isn’t claimed within seven years, forget it, no one’s going to go to the trouble, but it got to stage where our label (Island) wanted us to provide tapes of all the different parts to each of our records on separate tapes, so they could see what we were trying to sneak in there. The funny thing was, the samples were so unrecognisable after we’d finished with them, Island couldn’t even tell what they were anyway!” For the artists who may have griped about their work being sampled on an Orb record, there were as many who proclaimed it a kind of honor, Alex recalls. “When Steve Reich heard his guitar turn up on Little Fluffy Clouds, he got in touch with us and said, ‘I fucking love this, I never thought someone could do this with my music. It’s amazing.’ He wanted to go on record as a supporter of what I was doing. It’s just when publishers and record labels get onto you that it all goes to shit. They’re the only ones really worried about losing money; it’s rarely the artists as far as I can tell.”

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Tim Simenon (Bomb The Bass) interview: 2012

THE BASS PHENOMENON



Bristol-based rag-tag collective, The Wild Bunch flourished as outsiders from what was happening in mid-‘80s mainstream music. The DIY approach they took to making music and various other art forms simply wasn’t in a competitive field, as much of their output was consigned to being played in local clubs or on pirate radio. However, the future had in store an unprecedented level of acclaim and acceptance for the micro-scene’s main players. Massive Attack, Neneh Cherry, Tricky and Nellee Hooper among others, all got their first break in the mostly migrant collective. But the scene, long before launching the globally admired stars of trip-hop, was early on having a rather profound impact on a young Scottish-Malaysian lad named Tim Simenon. Simenon, being a Londoner, was an outsider even among the Wild Bunch, “I became friends with a lot of that group through going to Jazzi B’s Soul II Soul club. They ran a local DJ battle night, where anyone could show off their skills or just hang out.” Like them, Tim was driven by the potential of a new music style created utilizing samplers. 

“I was the guy with the records, basically.” He laughs, “I had been collecting since I was about 8 or 9 years old, and when I started mucking about with samplers I had a shit load of music already to work with, which was essential if you were serious about live DJing.” Simenon adopted the title Bomb The Bass to DJ under, and like his mates in Massive Attack, the emphasis was on devastation; specifically the ‘annihilation’ of hundreds of recorded works for use in samples. However, where Massive Attack became known for the somber, subtle approach, Bomb The Bass’s debut single, Beat Dis! hit the listener with a montage of over 50 samples, kicking open the door for a whole new wave of sample-heavy dance 12”s. He’d created a monster, but his actions also shook up the Wild Bunch crew, most of who were yet to release any of their music/mixes. “DJing was still a new thing, and a lot of the artists on that scene wanted to release records, but nobody knew if what we were doing would have any kind of appeal beyond our little club nights. That’s the beauty of what was happening in that scene, we were just friends doing what we enjoyed doing. Nobody thought it would become this massive thing.” 

One of the first of the Bristol crew to get a record out was Afro-Swedish MC, Neneh Cherry. She and Tim collaborated on the sweet but sassy, Buffalo Stance in 1988, which became so huge, supposedly it was the prompt for Madonna to write Express Yourself. “I have to say, that was one of the most enjoyable records I ever worked on, primarily because Neneh was such a breeze to work with. I’ll always remember that powerful attitude she brought to everything, I mean Buffalo Stance was her through and through. That was her personality, you know.” From that single, the scene began to grow as more and more names linked to the Wild Bunch turned out records that seemed incapable of failure. Bomb The Bass’s second album, Unknown Territory surfaced around the same time as Massive Attack’s Blue Lines prompting talk of a ‘new movement’ in music, however Tim was a far less stationary act, flirting only briefly with trip-hop. His next release would begin to develop from a collaboration with Russian/American hip hop artist Justin Warfield (who’s album, My Field Trip To Planet 9, Tim was enamored with), but who more importantly, shared Tim’s love of William S. Burroughs. 

Tim's 3rd album, Clear-ly inspired by Naked Lunch.

“I remember at our first meeting, Justin and I talked a lot about Burroughs, and straight after he went off and wrote these fantastic lyrics based around Naked Lunch.” Simenon’s Bug Powder Dust began as a collection of dialogue samples from the David Cronenberg film adaption, before blossoming into a full collaborative rap. The track - a massive hit - pre-empted 1995’s Clear, and a newly acquired use of live instrumentation. Tim was beginning to scratch the surface of Bomb The Bass’s potential as a live band, but it would take a further 14 years for him to fully realise it. For the remainder of the 1990’s, he retreated into production, while his ideas for Bomb The Bass’s future fermented. Simenon worked his magic on Gavin Friday’s inspired Shag Tobacco, and on the ill-fated Michael Hutchence’s solo album – his final recording, it would turn out - then as the decade neared its end, a production project came his way in the form of Depeche Mode’s album, Ultra. The band’s ninth album equated to their revival following a disastrous self-destructive period, while Simenon on the other hand, completely disappeared from view.

“I hadn’t had a break in over ten years… Not since I started releasing music in fact.” He recalls, “I needed to be inspired again, and so it was vital I take a few years off. The Depeche Mode album was a really dark time for me and them, and so rather than push myself even further, I spent a couple of years in my room in front of the speakers just listening to music instead of working with it.” Simenon’s silence was finally broken ten years on with a dramatic new sound in 2008. With a new collaborator, Paul Conboy, and the notion of Bomb The Bass as a live act finally began to take shape. ”The key to getting back into music was writing the Future Chaos album.” He explains, “That album came together with such momentum that I found I had regained a kind of excitement about making music which had been missing for some time.” Keeping in mind the festival’s title of 'Future Music' that Tim will be in Australia for, aside from his rich back catalogue, fans can expect some fresh new sounds, he confirms. “Paul and I have been writing the follow-up to Future Chaos, so we’ll be premiering about five or six of those songs in Australia.” The new album, he explains, bares little resemblance to the sample-based work he mastered in his formative years.

 

“On this tour Paul will be singing and playing live bass, and I’ll be making the beats and just playing around with the BPM’s a lot more. It’s exciting for us to have the sort of ‘raw edge’ of a live band, which I’ve been wanting to do for some time, but for the album we will hopefully be getting some guest vocalists in which I haven’t done for ages.” Bomb The Bass’s most successful tracks had always put the credit on guest singers; Loretta Heywood (Winter In July), Justin Warfield (Bug Powder Dust), Jazzi B and Maureen (Say A Little Prayer), yet Tim’s own signature is there in every single piece. “What you’re describing there is ‘The Texture,’” He laughs.” That’s where I come in, I think.” It was Tim’s ‘texture’ that put him in hot demand as a remix artist too. Credited on Bjork’s Play Dead, remixing Massive Attack and Depeche Mode etc.. – everyone, it seems, wanted a sprinkling of the BTB magic, but Tim follows a simple rule when choosing who to mix it with. “All the artists I’ve worked with over the years, I’ve done so because we have shared a connection in some way.” He assures, “It’s important to get along with people I’m working with for me to be able to work. I’m just lucky in a way, that all of the people I have collaborated with have been or become friends. I mean it’s got to be fun, or what’s the point, eh?



lEIGh5

TIM SIMENON'S SELECTED PRODUCTION/REMIX C.V.

Depeche Mode - Ultra (production)

Depeche Mode - Strangelove (remix)

Depeche Mode - Everything Counts (remix)

Depeche Mode - Enjoy The Silence (remix)

Jamie J. Morgan - Walk On The Wild Side (remix)

Bjork - Play Dead (remix)

Massive Attack - Sly (remix)

Gavin Friday - In The Name Of The Father (remix/production)

Gavin Friday - Shag Tobacco (production)

David Bowie - The Heart's Filthy Lesson (remix)

Curve - Chinese Burn (production/remix)

Curve - Come Clean (production)

Michael Hutchence - self-titled (co-writer/co-production)

Neneh Cherry - Buffalo Stance (production)

Neneh Cherry - Manchild (production)

Seal - Crazy (remix)

Sinead O'Connor - You Made Me The Thief Of Your Heart (production)

Sinead O'Connor - Universal Mother (production)

Tim Booth and Angelo Badalamenti - Booth & The Bad Angel (production)

Jim Sclavunos (Grinderman) interview: 2012

DONE WITH THE GRIND

The news of Grinderman’s unexpected end at Meredith late last year proved shocking enough to overshadow just about the entire event’s proceedings. Nobody outside of the Nick Cave-led garage rock ensemble’s inner circle knew that was to be their final performance, and the reaction to Cave’s brief, understated goodbye spoke volumes about the popularity they had garnered through just two albums. Indeed Grinderman earned the kind of reverence once reserved for new a Bad Seeds record, and so with his eyes focused on the future of that band - his musical home for almost 30 years – Cave shot down what was shaping up to be a full-time project. The question of ‘why’, at least in percussionist Jim Clavunos’ mind is a simple one, “We were finished with what we had to do as Grinderman, so its time to move on.” Yet with life-long collaborator, Mick Harvey’s departure after the last Bad Seeds album, Dig! Lazarus, Dig!! and much renewed interest in Cave through Grinderman, is all as simple he claims?

“Well, we were so devastated at losing all three of our nominations at the ARIA awards that we decided to quit altogether!” Laughs Sclavunos, his teeth somewhat gritted at the mention of Grinderman’s final show. The fall-out from Nick Cave’s announcement is down to his band to deal with, and Jim is quick to remind me, “My musical life didn’t begin and end with The Bad Seeds or Grinderman. It (Grinderman) is an important component of my life, or rather was if it’s to be no more, but I think the music we made stands on its own merit.”  The 6ft-7 percussion fiend joined the Bad Seeds in 1994 for the Let Love In campaign playing alongside drummer Thomas Wydler before finally taking a leading role on the stool for a ‘muck-about between sessions’ band that had developed in the ranks. Location and accessibility determined which Bad Seeds members were invited to the Grinderman party, and along with Cave, Warren Ellis and Martyn Casey, Jim was simply available. But this side-project quickly became popular among fans - and non-fans of Cave alike - once their thrilling debut album arrived. The danger of it stealing a lot of thunder from Bad Seed activities became quite real, Jim concedes. ”We did kind of neglected Bad Seeds for a long time, I think. It’s been about four years since we've done anything so I think it’s high time we made some beautiful music together, again.”

Ending on a high, or rather enjoying the brevity of a great musical moment and getting out before it starts to love itself too much is something Jim is very comfortable with. The New Yorker’s musical life outside of ‘Cave Central’ had always been a series of short-term hit ’n’ run projects. Besides briefly drumming for core New York art-rock bands Sonic Youth and The Cramps, he, alongside post-punk siren, Lydia Lunch was directly involved in creating the No Wave movement  – a kind of puritan punk scene, directly in opposition to how commercialised punk had become by the early 1980s. The point of No Wave – keep it short and noisy and don’t expect a greatest hits boxset – was never something Jim took lightly. “The whole ‘no future’ mentality was still very much intact.” To this day he is all about the moment of creation and the passion that comes with playing every gig like it may very well be the last, which was often the case. However the young Sclavunos’ foray into No Wave was motivated less by making music than the chance of getting laid, as any band will deny. 

Jim with Lydia Lunch

“That, and getting into gigs for free.” He corrects. “I couldn’t play bass, so when I met Lydia (Lunch) and she asked me join her band - as a bass player - I knew that she wanted to fuck me, and I saw the opportunity to lose my virginity.” He giggles. Lydia Lunch’s infamous caterwauling monologues might have been enough to send most males running for cover, but Jim’s musical life had finally begun, significantly at the very moment his cherry was popped. He never did learn the bass either, but Jim is where he is today because of a natural instinct for what the artists he works with are looking for in a musical accomplice. Making the Bad Seeds his only real full-time band says a lot about both him and the kind of trust afforded to each artist in the service of Mr Cave. Jim was an easy fit for Grinderman, then so it seems relevant to ask was Grinderman an ideal fit for ‘Mr No Wave’ himself?  ”I don’t get sentimental at all about bands that I’ve happened to play in, but Grinderman was such a natural thing when it happened. I guess the end of the band felt just as natural too.” There’s no obvious lamenting over Grinderman for Jim right now though. By the request of artistic director Jonathan Holloway, he is already busy on his next obsession - preparing a contribution to the Perth Festival - a project called The Faustian Pact. Along with musical collaborator Peter Mavrogeorgis, the pair - who perform together under the name The Vanity Set - will construct a live score to the 1926 silent cult film, Faust. 

“Faust is unique in that there is no one definitive version.” Jim explains of his interest in the German noir classic, “It was re-cut several times for different audiences and different regions because of the sensitivity and suspicion people had towards the occult.” Faust director, Friedrich W. Murnau based his film on a story which dated from the 16^th century, and was already a firm favourite in German folklore. The ‘pact with the devil’ plotline has leapt from ancient text, to operas and stage shows over the decades before Faust’s cinematic debut, and proving its enduring appeal, continued its infiltration of popular culture through tales of alleged ill-gotten gifts of musical talent in the blues and rock n’ roll scenes. However Sclavunos’s intrigue with the story lies mainly in how he feels its true meaning was intentionally misrepresented in Murnau’s film so as to appease the so-called god-fearing public. For his part in the Perth festival, Jim plans to correct this. “If people are thinking they’re just going to see the Faust movie as Murnau intended with a live score, they’re going to be bitterly disappointed.” He laughs.

The Devil takes control in Faust

“Every aspect of the Christian ideology and the psychological resonance behind the film has been totally messed with. It kind of transcends the moral and the social and has been whittled down to a more basic study of man rather than a Christian salvation story.” Sclavunos’s re-cut version of Faust will form the back-drop to live performers in costume as well as the band. “It’s going to be part play, part concert and part cinema. I’m sure a lot of people are familiar with what usually happens with live scoring of films; a couple of musicians playing along to what's on screen, but we wanted to approach this in a totally new way.” Jim’s desire to re-cut and re-score Faust is a long-held one, and discussing it is justification for him. “The original film (for me) was a bad influence on my idea.” He laughs, “I liked the aesthetic of the film, but The Faustian Pact is really all about recapturing the story from the original text.” Taking so much care with this story, its clear Jim is in it for preservation purposes, opposed to his own life in music which has been considerably low on preservation. However, the final word he gives on Grinderman hints at a possible first-time feeling of loss over a band in his long career. “I'm sorry there's no big scoop on why Grinderman split up, but what I can tell you is we’ve all really enjoyed having this band, and I am sorry to see it go. It was one of my favourite bands ever to play in, but hey there’s always the possibility of the dreaded come-back tour!”

 

lEIGh5

Trash McSweeney (The Red Paintings) interview: 2011

THE COLOUR OF MUSIC

Red Paintings singer/composer, Trash McSweeney - every bit as self-effacing as his adopted name – was never a musically gifted child, nor a particularly learned one, but rather his ability for intricate song crafting was one that foisted itself upon him late in his adolescence following a seizure resulting in the ability to visualize complete compositions in full technicolour. The condition Trash developed, known as synesthesia, landed the Geelong-born/L.A.-based artist among a mere handful of songwriters currently living with the neurological disorder world-wide. From this unplanned event, Trash and his Red Paintings cohorts have been guided by an ongoing struggle to make the music match up with the visual patterns McSweeney alone sees, often creating seismic tensions and frustrations alien to all who do not share his ‘insight’. It’s no wonder then, that after twelve years as a band, The Red Paintings are at long last set to release their debut studio album. Titled, The Revolution Is Never Coming, this marks the third year since the album was initially set for release, and in regards to its delay, McSweeney, as a synesthesia sufferer, is afforded free reign of the often cringe-worthy explanation; “the people I was working with just didn’t understand my vision.”

 

“This album was mixed eight different times in eight different studios around the world, and I went to some of the biggest and best studios available but what I kept finding was, people had their own shitty vision for my music.” He begins. During the album’s endless recording sessions, The Red Paintings as a collective came and went depending on either their availability or willingness to follow Trash to yet another studio and join him in sleepless, song-tweaking. “The rest of the band quite reasonably walked out and let me do what I needed to do.” He says, “We spent a lot of time writing down everybody’s parts and getting those right, but in the end it wasn’t financially possible for them to live as I was. We were all broke by that stage; I mean my string section were busking on the streets of Brisbane to make $50 a night while I was in Canada sleeping on studio floors.” Trash’s motivation to create a worthwhile album regardless of personal health or wealth seems largely down to a desire to not disappoint his fans as much as himself. “I didn’t want to put effort into something that my fanbase were going to put on and say, ‘oh the songs are okay, but the production’s pretty shit’, you know?” He confirms. “If I say I’m going to put out something – an album or whatever – then its going to be done to the best of my ability. I didn’t sleep properly for over year because I was consumed by just making these songs work.”



Fellow synesthesiac, Bjork, is a reference for Trash. “I listen to her music in a kind of ecstasy. It’s like what she creates is mathematically thought out, and that’s kind of how I approached making this record.” Trash boasts that there were an average of around 180 tracks to mix per song to get the desired result. “I guess I was trying to create a Da Vinci artwork as a musical composition.” He laughs. It’s not Renaissance painters however that inform The Revolution Is Never Coming, but rather literary giant Lewis Carroll. First single, The Streets Fell Into My Window (which was actually recorded in 2005) is punctuated by quotes from the novel, Alice In Wonderland, which Trash defines as a metaphor for passing from life into death. “I wondered if the trip down the rabbit hole Alice takes in the story was in fact the moment of death when the soul leaves the body.” He muses, “When the Tim Burton film came out, I was surprised he had played it so safe and not delved into the possibility of Wonderland being the afterlife, so when it came time to making the video for that song, I worked with this fantastic young director called Clint Lewis, and we were all about ‘what didn’t Tim Burton do but maybe should have’.” The Red Paintings live shows, which are as much renowned for their dramatic aspects as their musical intensity, reflect the Lewis Carroll theme in their current state.



“The live shows incorporate every kind of art-form; music, poetry, theatre, film, painting and narrative to make one whole performance piece which reflects what our music is about. On the last tour, I came out as the caterpillar, our cellist was the white rabbit, our violinist; the queen of hearts and so on - and that connection is obvious, right - but a while ago we did some Dr Seuss themed shows where each song became a different Dr Seuss book.” Trash describes, “The most bizarre thing had occurred to me, I realised that the themes in all of Dr Seuss’s writing were exactly what I was trying say in my songs.” Further explaining his theory Trash reasons, “Seuss could be taken one of two ways; fun, catchy books for kids, or the work of a highly analytical and complex mind.” Much like his literary idols, Trash McSweeney is an example of what happens when an artist loses all interest in convention and allows himself to push away certainty and comfort. Lead wholly by his synesthesia, Trash’s unusually heightened subconscious calls the shots and his trust in it is unwavering.



“It (synesthesia)’s never been a hindrance to me. The Red Paintings have been shaped by it and I’ve never had to worry about writer’s block. The reason the album has taken so long isn’t because I wasn’t able to write, it’s because the mixing never seemed to be the right colour and shape as I saw it in my head. I basically had to articulate what I was seeing jumping out of the mixing desk again and again in the studio, which sounds fucking ridiculous, I know, and when you’re paying an hourly rate it gets even more absurd, but I won’t stop until I get it right.” So The Revolution Is Never Coming’s long delay means fans will be getting an accurate picture of the sound inside Trash’s head, then? “Definitely. I mean I’m not doing this for any other reason than to give people the music best I can. I’m not creating something to sell records so I can buy a big comfy house, I’m making art here.” He deadpans, “I’ll never own a fucking house anyway. The amount of debt I generated for myself making this album saw to that!”



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Cheryl Wray (Salt-N-Pepa) interview: 2011

THE SPICE GIRL

 

New York native, Cheryl Wray claims her 1986, 17-year-old self, knew instinctively Salt N Pepa were going to be huge. Call it a young woman’s brimming self-confidence if you like, but the lady herself prefers to think, “it may have been a spiritual thing.” But whichever force was at play, the now legendary group’s success was anyone’s guess in the male-dominated hip hop scene. Even Wray’s bravado is in sharp contrast to “the very depressed teenager with no direction” she was, but the sassy global-hit maker she would become as “Salt” in Salt N Pepa, happened only once she began rapping when, “something awakened in me and I felt so alive.” Just as well, as there was “no Plan B”, she explains.



Many international stars had already emerged out of New York’s rap scene in the ‘80s, but prior to Salt N Pepa, rap was a chick-free zone, bar Deborah Harry’s absurd jive about ‘men from Mars’ in Blondie’s hit, Rapture. As for what made Salt N Pepa boldly go where no ladies had gone before, Cheryl surmises, “A group like us was needed - there was a gap in the market for some strong female performers who could sell records on the level of the bigger, more established rap groups…  and that’s exactly what we did.”



Wray, along with high-school friends Sandra “Pepa” Denton and Deidra “Spinderella” Roper, were regular visitors open mic venues around New York in the mid-‘80s, where up-coming stars like Martin Lawrence would perform comedy routines to notoriously rough crowds. Lawrence, as with every other performer, would either “make it or break it”, Cheryl says, as judged entirely on the audience’s reaction. “We were really scared, but when we decided it was time for us to perform in front of a crowd, we rocked it.” She smiles, “We did our song, The Show Stopper – which we wrote in response to Freddy Fresh’s The Show – a massive street level hit at the time - and that ended up becoming our first single out here in America.” Salt N Pepa had gained that all-important acceptance among their peers as hot live performers – the greatest level of respect a rap group could be awarded at the time – fueling their already burning motivation for stardom.



"I don’t remember it being that hard for us because we were so driven.” Cheryl recalls, “The harder the challenge, the harder we worked to get around it and we never felt like we were failing.” Moving from open mic nights to cutting records, the girl’s next challenge was getting their music heard. Their Show Stopper had worked as a live introduction to the group, and its follow-up single, Tramp was taking off in the clubs, but it was only when DJ’s started flipping the record and dropping its b-side, Push It, that Salt N Pepa became overnight stars. However, the song, a kind of throw-away dance/rap number, suggested the group were more sugar than spice, a fact that became a bone of contention, particularly for Cheryl, as Salt N Pepa continued to grow in popularity. “There were times when I felt like we were just doing what was expected of us when we should have been expressing ourselves.” She acknowledges.



For Cheryl, a far greater victory for Salt N Pepa was using their profile to address issues rap artists had chosen ignore. In the wake of that infamous HIV/AIDS ad campaign, in which a bowling grim reaper had Australia in fear of all things sex and sexuality, Salt N Pepa stepped in with a perfectly timed, realistic suggestion; Let’s Talk About Sex. “That song made us unofficial spokespeople for AIDS awareness.” Cheryl recalls. It was the right track at the right time, but from a group far removed from any reaper-based fear campaigns, yet Australia identified and agreed - intimacy wasn’t dead. Indeed Let’s Talk About Sex went to number one at a time when there were practically no hip hop acts charting locally, and AIDS was crashing into suburban living rooms on a nightly basis, forcing many an awkward dinner conversation. 

“Let’s Talk About Sex was not an irresponsible song, as some people tried to claim,” Cheryl points out, “but you know, as a celebrity, especially in the US, people are always calling you to account over things you say because you’re a public figure. I mean when we were younger, we just wanted to get our songs played and go on tour and that was about it, but I think that we felt a kind of social responsibility as we got a bit older because our profile was getting a lot bigger and nobody was really saying what we thought needed to be said.” Cheryl adds, “As an artist, you wanna express what’s on your mind, and with the whole AIDS thing we never saw it as shameful but as something that urgently needed to be discussed properly. The information going around about it at the time was really that it was a thing of shame or fear, but in our song we talk about taking responsibility for your actions and knowing the risks.” Salt N Pepa’s frankness and big issue-raising is a detail that is often overlooked in place of the ‘Most Successful Female Rap Act Of All-Time’ tagline publicists like to use. Perhaps though, not unlike the statistic-obsessed media, Salt N Pepa’s own families even had difficulty knowing what to make of a girl rap group being taken seriously.



“Because hip hop was still such a new thing when we started, and no females were having success doing hip hop while we were having massive hits, my family and friends were just confused.” Cheryl laughs, “My mum and dad were in shock for a really long time. Whenever we had a platinum selling single, or won and MTV award or whatever, they would just look at me, like ‘who are you?’”. She adds, “My dad was really supportive, but mum was always more concerned that I was gonna start acting like a super star, and she would say like, ‘don’t come up in here acting like no diva. When you come home to your father and me, you’re just Cheryl, okay!’  That really kept me grounded the whole time.” In 2001, following a bankruptcy claim from their label, Cheryl and Sandra found themselves grounded indefinitely as Salt N Pepa. The two then parted ways as Cheryl shockingly revealed that she had been sick for a long time and her friendship with Pepa well and truly was over. 

“Pep and I were not good for a long time before then.  We were young when we started and basically we were no longer communicating at all, and we felt underappreciated by one another, so getting back to performing as Salt N Pepa again, I had to put right a lot of stuff in my mind that had bothered me up to that point and learn to accept our legacy.” The 1994 single, None Of Your Business, finally earned Salt N Pepa the first Grammy award of their career, but Cheryl who later ‘disowned that song for its sexually salacious content’, was at that stage so unwell, that the win was merely a ‘hollow triumph.’ “It was exciting on one level, but all I remember of that time was, I was severely bulimic and caught up in the whole ‘skinny is beautiful’ thing, and I felt so empty when I should have been elated, I suppose.” She adds, “My career was peaking at the same time my personal life was at an all time low. You always think when you’re young that success is measured in these certain terms, but the reality is a Grammy’s never gonna fill the void I felt when I was bulimic.” Cheryl had successfully beaten her illness by the mid-‘00s, and today is a spokesperson for bulimia awareness in American schools. Then in 2007, Pep and Wray finally burned a few old bridges, “we just needed to grow up away from each other for a time”, and Cheryl took the equally important step to rejoining Salt N Pepa; she stopped fighting with her conscience over the songs, and learned to love both the sugar and the spice. 

“In hindsight, I felt like I was out of my comfort zone promoting songs that I didn’t believe in, but I didn’t say anything at the time, and that’s one of the issues that lead to me leaving, but I’ve made my peace with our legacy now.” Accepting what people love about Salt N Pepa was one of Wray’s biggest challenges, but Cheryl, who spent years distancing herself from what she perceived as the tacky side of Salt N Pepa, now exhibits a softened, almost sentimental approach to past ‘errors of judgment’. “Pep and I were actually talking about bringing out the old chunky leather jackets for fun - you know from the Push It video?” She laughs, “Just the other day my daughter was going through all my old stage clothes and her and her friend decided to dress up as me and Pep as we were in the ‘80s for Halloween!” She adds, “They had the spandex body suits on and everything, and I thought to myself, ‘that’s when you know you’ve made it – when you’re a damned Halloween costume!”



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Jello Biafra interview: 2011

CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN'



Boulder, Colorado-born Eric Boucher began life ‘small-town USA’ style, in front of the television absorbing all the menace and mirth it could spew out into his young mind. Not being the sporty type, he fixated on music, cartoons and news broadcasts in his free time, growing increasingly fascinated - and disgusted - by how atrocious world events were televised and reported on by his country’s media. The anger and bewilderment he experienced, combined with a natural gift for writing and self-expression, ultimately gave rise to Boucher’s notorious - at first on-stage only – persona, Jello Biafra. Whatever life had in store for small-town boy Eric Boucher, it was surely crushed once the mighty Biafra was ‘born’, and to this day, it is the peculiar name of Jello that continues to raise eyebrows, hackles and conservative backs through-out small, big and all-towns-in-between, USA.

The mushy dessert of his name-sake, an easy to swallow, much loved children’s favorite may have been an ironic choice of pseudonym for the one-time Dead Kennedys' singer, but Biafra has always been an unashamed attention seeker. He knew when he chose his tag, that every kid in the USA would at some time or another been spoon-fed that very thing by a caring parental figure. Perhaps he saw his own high level absorption of crass news media as a rather tasteless kind of ‘spoon-feeding’, and so took a punt that if he was going to have a public forum to unleash his anti-establishment woes, then it was gonna come with a sweet and fluffy handle that nobody would forget!

Biafra’s most noted platform came in the form of punk legends The Dead Kennedys – once more, a name that was certain to stick in the public’s craw being a mere decade on from President Kennedy’s assassination – and perhaps for that reason, in their new home of San Francisco, Biafra and his band were treated as a blight on the landscape of a city under the spell of neo-hippie-dom and rising yuppie-dom. However, this didn’t prevent ‘Blight Biafra’ from raising sizable interest in his absurdest campaign to become mayor of San Francisco in 1979, or even prevent The Dead Kennedys from charting with singles like Too Drunk To Fuck and Holiday In Cambodia. Biafra had proved beyond doubt he had enough support to be the voice for a broadening sector of society not content to just ‘suck it up’, and its precisely that voice – one that’s never waned in its convictions despite the trouble it’s bought him and his band - that has earned him a new career as a spoken word performer. The gloves no doubt come off when Jello hits the stage for his Melbourne spoken-word debut in October – they certainly did when it came to answering some of my questions in this rare, but utterly engaging interview.

What can people expect coming to a Jello Biafra spoken word show these days? Well I haven’t done one in a while, so I’m not quite sure what I’m going to discuss at this stage. I’ll just pull it all together at the last minute I’m sure. I mean events and news stories happen so fast these days, and I like my show to be right up to the minute, you know.

Do you see a lot of your – especially political - subject matter as relatable in countries outside of the US?

Yeah, I mean it seems as if nobody is spared the heavy handed moves by the banks and the super rich to step on the gas and ramp up the whole corporate coup, pushing the idea that community is a bad thing, and it doesn’t work. They just want it to be every one for themselves, conditioned to just make more and more money regardless of how and who it affects and that mindset is why you see basic social services suffering. The banks are desperately trying to save their own arses and so its community and environment be damned. I’ve heard rumblings from Australia about a carbon tax, and I’m sure any argument against that would bare more than a passing resemblance to the American Tea Party – a grass roots movement who were actually funded by oil barons and the like. These guys know not to pull out the white hoods, but you can see clearly where their loyalties lie.

The song, Invasion of the Mind Snatchers from your last album, Enhanced Methods of Questioning digs neatly at the US’s problem with insane religious right-wing nutters getting into positions of power, but are people like Fred Phelps and Wolf Blitzer a genuine threat in your opinion?

Well, Fred Phelps hasn’t got a lot of support, but he’s obviously getting money from somewhere. I’ve been to his compound in Kansas, and they’ve taken over an entire block in a residential neighbourhood, apart from two houses whose owners wouldn’t sell, and so excluding them, there’s a gigantic fence around all the Phelps houses, which is floodlit 24 hours a day and it’s covered in the usual ‘god hates fags’ kind of crap, but that compound is really the only place he holds any power in thankfully. He has no political support, in sharp contrast to Blitzer and Sarah Palin, who are just as extreme as Phelps is, the only difference is, they know how to package themselves more cleverly.

What do you get out of spoken word performance that maybe is lacking from fronting a band, such as Dead Kennedys? Well for a start, activism, spoken word and music is all connected for me, but you don’t get the great adrenalin rush doing spoken word as you do playing music live of course, but then touring as a spoken word artist, you can go deeper into ideas and into people’s brains. I mean I never expected spoken word to take off, but I have to thank those fascists at the LAPD and hate-mongers like Tipper Gore who dragged me through court over the Dead Kennedy’s Frankenchrist album. (1985’s Frankenchrist holds the ‘honor’ of being the token reason for banning and censorship of music in the US, resulting in massive legal costs for Biafra and ultimately the end of the ‘Kennedys). That was the first time a charge of ‘distribution of harmful material to minors’ had been brought against a music album in American history.

Frankenchrist - killed the Kennedys?

Are fans encouraged to actively participate in the spoken word shows and enter into a discussion with you?

It all depends; sometimes I have time for questions sometimes not. When people come to see me though, I think they already have some idea of what I’m about and what to expect, and the kinds of things I talk about are what they probably discuss among their friendship groups already. So I’m just offering a viewpoint that can maybe add something to their own conversations. I mean I’m not afraid of being asked questions, but doing just question and answer sessions can quickly turn into a forum for a handful of conspiracy theorists wanting to debate the Roswell space alien or the whole 9/11 inside job thing.

Do you subscribe to any of the popular conspiracy theories yourself?

In my mind, the biggest conspiracy was that America went to war while being governed by Spinal Tap. But in reality, part of the problem was the FBI had all this so-called intelligence and voice recordings in several different languages that nobody in the US government could even understand. Conspiracy theories are great, but I much prefer to make my mind up using logic and fact. 9/11 happened because our (the US’s) powers that be at the time were completely ignorant.

Being in the privileged position of two public forums – spoken word/punk music - do you think you’ve always been successful in expressing your viewpoint?

Well yeah, I mean I’ve encouraged people for all these years to not hate the media, but to become the media. That doesn’t mean living your whole life on Facebook, and sending out little tweets from your phone, it’s about grasping the potential of the new media and saying what we’re being offered isn’t good enough. There’s a lot of people power going to waste on obsessing over pointless celebrity culture. But to answer your question, I’m just one guy and I’m not a mainstream force to be reckoned with, I’m just making a living off my art, and I’ve tried to use my art in a positive way, but now I’m saying it’s up to you to go out and inspire people in the same way I’ve perhaps inspired you.

Do you think running for mayor of San Francisco in hindsight, you were in fact much better positioned to make a difference outside of politics altogether? Yeah for sure, but I was never going to be that guy who put on a suit and went door to door telling people a different lie each time just so they’d vote for me. What I was trying to say is politics doesn’t have to be just that one thing, but as an artist I didn’t have to try and change a whole system to get up there and say ‘this is exactly what I believe in, take it or leave it.’ I’m living off my big mouth and bad attitude, yeah, but that’s gotta be better than bullshitting as a career.

Does coming back to Australia fill you with good memories of your last tour here with the Dead Kennedys?

What comes to mind immediately is, after a show in Brisbane one night myself, DH Peligro (Kennedys’ drummer) and members of The Johnnys were having a few drinks out on the street and a police car pulls up and they arrest Peligro basically for drinking while black! They didn’t go after anybody else and so that to me was a first hand experience of the banana republic dictatorship of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Then after a second show in Brisbane, fans were coming and telling me their favourite stories about Bjelke-Petersen, and I think the most outrageous one I heard was about a dude who got arrested in broad daylight for carrying a concealed weapon in a bag of groceries – it was a pineapple! I mean doesn’t Queensland grow like the entire pineapple stock for the rest of the country? You would think they would know the difference between a weapon and a piece of fruit is all I’m saying.

One of your most interesting ‘projects’ was helping launch the music career of Wesley Willis. Australia has a special kind of love for Willis’s brand of laugh out loud, apparently nonsense tributes to his favourite celebrities; Alanis Morrisette, Oprah Winfrey etc..; I wonder, what do you miss most about him? People say ‘oh such-n-such is a larger than life character’, you know, but Wes really was larger than life. I mean, every single person he came in contact with was just blown away by his energy and his wit, but Wes was utterly exhausting as well. I mean, I would be doubled up in fits of laughter and unable to breathe because of some bizarre observation or statement he would make. Like one time I had to get on a plane with him and make sure he was okay getting to where he needed to go, and this was only in a short space of time after 9/11, and we’re in the airport lounge and all of a sudden Wes just yells at the top of his voice, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”, and I just froze thinking there were going to be all these security dudes come running out and crash-tackle us or something, and I said to Wes, you know, “You gotta keep it down, man you can’t say that stuff!”, and so he went “okay”, and then sure enough ten minutes later, “Hey Jello, do you think if I hijack a plane they’ll put me in jail?”. He was always doing shit like that and that’s what I miss so much about him not being around. I thought a lot about Wes the night Obama was elected and when he got up to do his speech, all I could think of in the back of my mind was how much that moment would’ve meant to him. Wes would’ve been in that crowd at the White House, and even if he was 100 metres back, his booming voice still would have come through, and he would have been singing, “Obama is the greatest, he can really whip Saddam Hussein’s ass! He can really kick a mule’s ass!” That’s how Wesley was man - just a great communicator of emotions. Nobody could sum up the feeling of a moment like Wes.

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Hey Bono, Jello's onto you, you fatuous swine!