WFMU's Beware of the Blog

Q & A with Coil's Drew McDowall

Let me count the ways I love Drew McDowall, half of Compound Eye (with Psychic Ill Tres Warren), member of CSD with Kara Bohnenstiel, and recent collaborator with Emeralds' John Elliott in Outer Space. All cool and great things, sure, but I first heard about Mr. McDowall from his days  as a member of Coil. Hell, he played on perhaps my favorite record of all time, Astral Disaster. He's playing on Wednesday at Death By Audio at the Modular Solstice show*, I would totally go to that if I didn't live 1305 miles away.

What was the first truly strange record you ever heard?
Apart from the countless strange children's records with forgotten names and multicolour vinyl, the first record that I remember thinking "what is this? I really don't understand this" was The Faust Tapes. I was 12 when it came out and I bought it because it was cheap (49 pence) and because I liked the cover art. I can't say that I liked it initially but I was obsessed by it, playing it endlessly, trying to understand it, trying to figure out why some one would do such a thing.  A couple of years later it would become a litmus test that I used frequently: I would ask people what the thought of it (it seemed like everyone had bought it) and try and come to some conclusion about them from their answer. Most of them hated it.

A couple of questions about your time in Coil. You were on my personal favorite - Astral Disaster. Anything you can share about the making of that record, an interesting anecdote?
That record was the culmination of auspicious currents. We recorded on Samhain in Southwark the oldest part of the city. London is a living being (that is not a metaphor) and we were on the bank of the Thames below the level of the river, under the her main aquatic artery. The record is a distillation of all those influences. Unusually for Coil it was recorded quickly and more or less live.

Memorial Day Reflections with Reverend Bruce Howard…. SPEEEEAAAK

Memorial Day, a day to reflect on the nature of man, the nature of war, the nature of sacrifice and what the cost of freedom really means. In this modern era where every thing about an individual is sliced, diced into micro tuned categories I would probably call myself just a hermenaut with intense and passionate Christian leanings. The church gets a bad rap these days, with clowns like Pastor Charles Worley, new Vatican scandals, etc. Yearning for a  shining light in murky faith Spectrum Spools' John Elliot tipped me to perhaps one of God's greatest voices, Reverend Bruce Howard, a man who lives the words of 2 Timothy 4:17: But the Lord stood by me and strengthened me, so that through me the message might be fully proclaimed and all the world might hear it. So I was rescued from the lion’s mouth. Or something, I honestly don't know. Where I see faith and redemption, others see totally BERKO. I'm used to it. In another life I could see myself as one of Reverend Bruce's silent goth krewe, in the shadow of his greatness.

More Bruce

Puff Tube's Quark, Strangeness, & Charm

I always thought it was a bit of a bummer that while I was enjoying myself at Hawkwind's Strange Daze festival somewhere on the other side of the ocean (well, Paris) Princess Diana was being hunted down by a pack of wild journalists. While at the fest I traded some high end beers to the guy that ran Ceres Records for a copy of Assassins of Silence, his Hawkwind tribute compilation. The most astounding piece of music on this disc was Puff Tube's version of Quark, Strangeness & Charm. Enjoy:

SSPS: Video Threat

Thinking about bests of 2011, call me old fashioned but I still enjoy this piece from 2010.

Death Garage and the Unveiling of the Company of Heaven: Technicolor Skull

I've been fascinated by Kenneth Anger's work since I first read Ed Sander's sensationalistic bullshit The Family as a teenager (it took me a few years to actually see one of his movies tho. Thanks Ralf Haussmann for being Cleveland's greatest collector and exposer of all thing weird.) A couple of years ago I was contacted by Anger's manager and bandmate Brian Butler to see if I could track down a theremin for them to use during a performance to benefit the Anthology Film Archives. I did, it was a success.

The Anthology Film Archive benefit was really cool, I drank expensive cocktails all night on my friend Jen's employer's tab. Lou Reed did a noise guitar soundtrack to Maya Deren's Meditation on Violence. Seriously, fuck the Lulu haters. Pop bands played, people lectured, etc, but the highlight for me was Technicolor Skull, Kenneth Anger on theremin and Mr. Butler on guitar. They have just put out a record, a one sided monster in blood red vinyl. I asked Brian about it:

Quintron's Magic House

For a couple of months here in New Orleans there was a house turned into a musical instrument. Built by Swoon, Mr. Quintron, and many others it housed 6 performances which were consistently the hottest ticket in town. Luckily I caught the last show on the last night which featured Michael Zerang, Miss Pussycat, Andrew W.K., Rob Cambre, and more more more (still trying to find a master list.*) I've included a video I shot, but below that is a better quality from a night I wasn't there, then some photos and a soundcloud recording. Explore more here: http://www.dithyrambalina.com

The World's Deadliest Fighter is a Hairdresser! Life and Times of Count Dante

Sea Monkeys aren't really for real, but it turns out that Count Dante was. Remember this guy? World's Deadliest Fighter that was willing to give kids the secret of Dim mak, the touch of death? His real name was John Keehan and he was a martial artist, had a pet lion, sold used cars, consecrated as a voodoo priest (by Michael Bertiaux!!!) and took part in dojo wars! DOJO WARS! Oh, and he was a hairdresser for Playboy Bunnies. Nineteen seventies Playboy Bunnies!

Filmmaker Floyd Webb has been putting a documentary together on Count Dante, preview it here:

Deadliest Man Alive from Floyd Webb on Vimeo.

http://thesearchforcountdante.com

http://www.theblackdragonfightingsociety.com/home.html

Apocalypto-a-go-go: Looking Forward to The Ende Tymes Noise & Liberation Festival

Bringing word of the Ende Tymes here... not the radio preacher last month, his gospel was false. This is the good news about next weekend, where hundreds of sound weirdos from across the planet will descend on The Silent Barn and bring warnings of plagues or whatever the hell else they do...

Here I am doing my part, asking three of the Ende Tymes prophets a few questions, first Bob Bellerue because this is his creation, second GX Jupitter-Larsen, who has performed as or with The Haters since the dawn of time, and Chicago's Jason Soliday.

Bob Bellerue

When you were first exposed to experimental music was it in a live setting or via recordings? Do you remember what it was?

i think it was "Reality Asylum" by Crass off of "The Feeding of the 5000" which was the first extended music techniques i'd heard (around 1984).  i'd been exposed to much of Jimi Hendrix' catalog by then too, and the Electric Ladyland became sacrament to me (it was released the same month i was born).

the first live experience of real out-there music i had was Crash Worship (1988) when i was in San Diego.  i got turned on to some amazing music down there, and scored my first Merzbow record around 1992, and was heavily influenced by running sound for extreme bands like Zeni Geva, Crossed Out, Man Is The Bastard, and Drive Like Jehu. but i don't think i saw any true noise performances until 1998 when i moved back to LA and started witnessing Damion Romero, Bastard Noise, etc.  i'd been making noise starting in 1992 but hadn't ever been to a thinking-person's noise show until then

The life and time of NOizefest 2011

Last week NOizefest came around, a bit of an annual local weirdo fuck you to the commercial behemoth which is the New Orleans Jazzfest. Unlike Yankee counterparts such as Neon Marshmallow Fest or the Ende Tymes Festival, this is more of a free for all everyone make a racket whenever they feel like it. There is a very loose sign up sheet with suggested times, but I really didn't see anyone stick to it, or for that matter stop playing so someone else could.

Founded by the deceased Keith "Deacon Johnson" Moore, Michael Patrick Welch continues the tradition in his backyard. Not really sure what to expect, people had been telling me about it since the week we moved here. Borbetomagus' Donald Miller was going to perform, but the flu got the best of him. Famous inventor Mr. Quintron djed for a bit but packed up early.

My favorite was this nine year old kid that was really going for it... noise trumpets and noise percussion. I had a fun time talking to his mom, she was beaming. Check the video and some random pics. Oh, and my new friend Henry with his 6 panel Serge Modular hanging out in a dusty backyard. Yes.

Text from the Lab of Cosmic Chatter, or I take some time to chat with Bee Mask

Hey, last week I got the bright idea to interview Chris Madak, aka Bee Mask about his new record and a bunch of other stuff. We chatted on phone, text, email and gchat. Check it out:

Wassup. What are you doing. Describe the room you are in.

Usual stuff: drinking some tea, spinning "Upstairs at Eric's", and working on tape layouts.

 

Nice. Always had you figured as  Vince Clark guy.

Yeah, very much so.  Mister Matthews and I have discussed this point at length in the past, so I should've guessed you'd concur.

 

Bee Mask seems to come from a tradition of a specific synthesizer camp. What were the roots, the music you listened to that inspired you to make the music you make?

With regards to the formative stages of Bee Mask?  That's a tricky call as the emphasis of the project has shifted quite a bit over the years...

...which would lead into this question - Bee Mask was set up for certain parameters, did they ever break, change or morph into anything else? What were those original ideas?

They definitely did, and the history of their doing so is -- broadly speaking -- the history of my own ideas about what it means to make "experimental" music evolving.  It's not easy for me to put myself back in the frame of mind that informed the beginnings of Bee Mask, but I suppose I was interested at the time (c.2005) in applying some of the really heady and quixotic ideas about time, presence, formal coherence, etc that I found most captivating in the discourse around the reductive impulse in the plastic arts of the 1960s to the practice of a kind of pure phonography.  Basically, I wanted to make records that one encounters like a gas emanating from the speakers, rather than records that one experiences as a magical world under glass or whatever.

Those concerns come with some baggage about medium-specificity, which made me sort of averse to doing anything that I thought of as "cinematic" on records for a long time.  However, that aversion has ebbed over the last few years in ways that I couldn't necessarily have foreseen as I've had occasion to think at greater length about the ways that records and cinema share an ability to hold a really compelling funhouse mirror to our experience of hypothetical/unreal space and to reveal subtle and wonderful things about the importance of what actually happens in that space.  So, to answer your prior question about records and camps, one pleasant aspect of this development is that I've found myself really getting into a lot of things, like Francois Bayle's "Erosphere" or Fellini's "City of Women" -- or even the way that someone like Grant Achatz really pushes the envelope of his craft in order to really get under the hood of our relationship with time -- that I might have been a bit more ambivalent about in the past, due to some sort of residual angst about narrativising or whatever.  While I have a hard time relating to some of its more utopian and McLuhanesque aspects, the discovery of Morton Subotnick's idea of "music as a studio art" was instrumental in this shift in my thinking.  It also turns out that playfulness is really important.

 

Your roots are in  the Cleveland underground scene. Everyone is hip to Emeralds, but if someone wanted a broader view of what was and is going on there where would you point?
Hmm...I've been in Philly for a few years now and every time I've come back, something new seems to be in the works.  Fragments, for example, only really got going as I was leaving.  Moth Cock (who are actually from Kent, I'm aware) and Synaptic Foliage have both done great things in the past couple years.   As far as the actual milieu that Bee Mask was part of, new projects from old friends -- including Colored Mushroom and Radio People -- have continued to delight and I can't overemphasize the importance of Wyatt Howland and Ryan Kuehn's work in laying the social and aesthetic foundations of that whole scene.  I'd say that any heads who really want to get at the crux of it should start listening to The Record Exchange on WCSB and scouring the earth for Thursday Club cdrs and old SKSK releases.

Chewbaccus Parade/Prosperity/Got arrested at the Mardi Gras for jumping on a float

Chewbacchus claims to be a "Carnival Krewe for the most revelrous of Star Wars Freaks, Trekkies, Whovianns, Mega-Geeks, Circuit Benders, Cryptozooligists, UFO Conspiracy Theorists, and all the rest of Super Nerdom."- About.com

Video provided by our friend Ali -

RIP Excepter's Clare Amory - 1975-2011

Yesterday, the Space Shuttle Discovery departed Earth on it's final mission. Among the cargo aboard, was one astronaut who's name was not publicly announced. My beautiful friend, and band mate- Clare Armory has left our Planet Earth. Her soul has been set free to bless this mad universe that we all live in. I know how difficult that it is to lose a loved one to cancer. I lost my mother nine years ago to the same ravaging disease. It was the hardest thing that I have ever had to deal with in my life. My mother was 57 when she lost her 29 year battle with cancer. Clare was 35. Any age is too young to be taken from us. It hurts so much.

- Jon Nicholson http://the-ssps.blogspot.com/2011/02/clare-armory-1975-2011.html

There isn't much I can say beyond that, so I just want to thank you Clare for sharing your gifts with the world. I hope we meet again some day. All my love to your friends and family, to everyone you touched during your too brief time.

Phil Freeman posted an interview with Clare on his blog, Running the Voodoo Down. http://runningthevoodoodown.blogspot.com/2011/02/interview-clare-amory-excepter.html

I will always regret that I missed this show, I stayed home for no real reason at all. Clare's last performance with Excepter, right before she found out she was sick:

-----UPDATE---------------------------------------------------------

Saturday, February 26 - This was posted on the Excepter Facebook page:

Remembrances of Clare today at the Spectacle Theater, from noon on. Waffles and cheer ... drop by. 124 S 3rd St at Bedford, Williamsburg.

http://spectacletheater.com/

Steven as Little Nemo, Floating in the House of Dance & Feathers, 9th Ward, USA

If my dreams manifested on earth, what would I find? Probably some broken candles lighting the poster from All Things Must Pass, talking ducks and dogs, the SSPS tape I have been listening to constantly would be playing in some phantom unseen stereo. My most trusted High John the Conqueroo roots would line every pocket. Restaurants I went to would all have Jesse DeRosa leading the house band. Endless pizza with no worries about my triglycerides. I would still have the haircut I had when I was 16 (One eyed surfer.) Oh wait, that's reality, sans haircut. What are my dreams?

I walked into another man's dream world the other day. Well, sort of, it is a collection of the amazing things that Ronald W. Lewis has witnessed as a citizen of the 9th ward of New Orleans. Mardi Gras Indians, beads, Skeleton Krewes, mystic orders, it goes on and on. He spins an amazing tale and has a grasp at what really is important in life: Love, family, community. These are the things he holds dear.

Each One Will Be Packaged Inside of a Real Human Skull

Brilliant: Noise robots! The drummer for one of my old bands made this, been laughing about it since he showed it to me:

OO-EE-OO, or My Chat with Timothy Wyllie About Angels, Cults, the Multiverse, & the Entheogenic Impulse

Check it, my Q & A with Timothy Wyllie, ex Process Church art director, general cosmic fellow, writer of new age books about communicating with dolphins and angels. I was going to run this interview on my Temple of Pei blog but thought better of it: WFMU's Beware the Blog gets around 5000 times the traffic, and this is a voice which much be heard. This is a guy that really lives to the beat of his own drummer. Hope you dig, and remember: As it is, so be it.

During the Process salon at the Anthology Film Archives right around when Love Sex Fear Death came out you mentioned that cults could be a good thing, that there were many benefits to you spending time in one. Could you describe examples of what a good cult experience would be?

The biggest benefit is that one gets to experience a kind of life that isn't available under normal circumstances. This especially applies to reincarnates, who require an accelerated learning curve. Most western societies these days are both risk and pain averse. Cults allow those who need to go through their own pain and anger to do it in a safe situation. Cults can become a microcosm of society, so people in cults can experience a far wider array of possibilities like service, obedience, leadership, as well as what it's like to live without personal possessions, money, and personal freedom. Celibacy for a period is also a necessary psychic/emotional antidote in an over-sexed society. Possibly the greatest gift a cult bestows is when one leaves it. One emerges back into life with the opportunity to follow one's own drummer--free of parental etc influences, and understanding the dire consequences of ever giving away one's power again.

If you were involved in the start of a new cult now in 2011 what would change compared to the Process? What would you focus on?

I wouldn't. I feel cults have had their day. At this point in time and in a spiritual sense, it's every person for themselves. Cults in the sixties and seventies were a kind of clean-up contingency. The were so many reincarnates who needed to work on themselves (and be worked on). The kids these days are different--they don't really need cults the way we did.

Over the years you probably have met hundreds of people influenced by The Process. Any surprises there, was there any indication that you were part of something so huge at the time?

At the beginning, for at least the first five years, we all felt we were onto something big and important. I doubt if any of us could have anticipated its importance as it has been emerging recently.

What teachings of The Process have you retained?

Although TP probably took the concept of personal responsibility too far--it's your responsibility if you are under the wheel of an airplane if it falls off; everything you do, or is done to you is your responsibility--I find it's a very useful POV since it returns the power to you. Blaming an outside force essentially renders one powerless to change it. One can of course always change one's response to it and in that way one regains one's personal power.

The concept that the Universe is responsive to individuals. And that reality is mutable in ways yet to be understood. And that the intuition is a far more trustworthy way of approaching the ineffable, than that of seeking hard evidence.

A line that George Clinton picked up from us: "If you don't like the effect, then don't produce the cause."

No Precogs Were Hurt in the Making of this Blog Post!

After drowning in year end wrap ups and best of lists I yearned for the sweet kiss of the near future, the great frontier, no looking back but only forward. We all know 2011 is going to rock, but because I hate surprises I asked some people what they thought was coming next. Here is what they reported back to me. Deuteronomy 18:10-13 be damned, this is compelling internet, yes-sir-ee-bob.

Don't agree with a prediction, or have your own? Hit the comments section, I love hearing from you. 

Jeff Conklin - Avant Ghetto - I predict hipsters now into witchhouse will resurrect the cross colors clothing line, wear leather Africa necklaces and proclaim Bell, Biv, Devoe to be the best musical act ever. possibly wearing their jeans backwards.

John Fell Ryan - Excepter - a resurgence of techno orthodoxy, carnivorous visions

Brian Turner - WFMU - Waxtrax revival continues, Revolting Cocks play You Goddamn Son of a Bitch at Don't Look Back.

Nate Rulli - Abandon Ship Records - Scott Stapp comes out of the closet -Eddie Vedder commits suicide -The Mets win the World Series!

Trumpets of Truth and the Graveyard of Emperors

Somewhere in the back of my head is the spectre of a quote by Neil Gaiman, probably from or about American Gods, where he talks about how roadside attractions are America's sacred spaces. Maybe I imagined it, and true or not, it's something that I think about when I come across places like the Mother-In-Law Lounge, a New Orleans temple and shrine to the self proclaimed Emperor of the Universe, Ernie K-Doe. You know Ernie K-Doe from his 1961 hit single Mother-In-Law, and you can Paul Harvey the rest of his story at his Wikipedia page here.

Under the impression it was still a happening venue I headed over there with Crow Hill Gnostic Temple's Sister Jillian to check it out Saturday afternoon. It was weird, even though the outside is covered with vibrant, beautiful and exquisite murals it seemed like the life was gone. We took some pics (below!), hung out and moved on. Sunday afternoon we happened to bump into a person featured on one of the murals, the world class puppet mistress Miss Pussycat, and she informed us we missed the last show there by just a week.

Attack of the 50 Foot Mary...

...seems a bit obvious to title this thing, but hey, I'm not really sweating it. Apologize, but under the gun. I had this huge plan to post my Best of Brooklyn Botanicas list, but well, had cold feet and thought I would sit on it for another week.There is this part where I explain that I was conceived in a rainforest notorious for UFO activity and I am on the fence on if I want to share that with WFMU blog readers or not.

So yeah, I'll tell the story in the afternoon in the comments, but this thing is beautiful. Giant statue of the Stella Maris in Windsor, Ohio.

More pics inside!

I Love These Tracts So Much... It Hurts!

20+ some years ago I was always going and hanging around the Old Erie Street Bookstore, one of those shops that miscreants go to and sit at the feet of a older guru type and he tells them stories, cool stories about eating acid and sneaking in to the first Bowie concert in the U.S. at the old Agora, stories about being teenagers skinny dipping in the then mayor of my hometown's backyard pond, that sort of thing, and well, more PG ones about selling books to Ravi Shankar. But yeah, he had all these fuck yeah books for sale, the Anarchist Cookbook, all the Re/Search titles, and a shitload of Loompanics.

Meanwhile, across a few states my friend Ed (name changed to protect the innocently guilty) was reading wacky books too, in particular Ivan Stang's High Weirdness By Mail. One of the things in the book was if you sent a postage paid envelope to a guy in California he would send you a stack of bible tracts. Ed made a cross out of foam core and this beauty was born.

Well, Ed is older now, in some ways has mellowed with age and has donated this cross to me. I took it home on the subway the other day and people were freaking out. An atheist got in my face about it and a fundamentalist too. I got invited to a breakfast at a local church and had a long conversation with a guy always hanging on my block. I was pretty happy for that one, his name was Wolfgang and he reminds me of Ozzy Osborne's mini-me.

So yeah, are you ready for my top 13 tracts on Ed's foam core cross? What Shape Is Your God is my favorite, which one is yours?

Sipping Tea w/ Dr. Strange on the Astral Plane, or My Q & A With Neil Campbell, a/k/a Astral Social Club

We headed out to the Neon Marshmallow Fest in Chicago a couple of weeks ago and it was a real treat. Sure, here in Brooklyn my act gets to roll deep with sonic heavyweights like Grasshopper and Excepter all the time, but it was nice to rub elbows with those guys in a different time zone along with 80 other acts. One of my favorites of the others was Neil Campbell, aka Astral Social Club.* He's been in the game for a long time and he was very gracious about answering some questions...
 

You are notorious for having a huge amount of releases. Has there ever been an unproductive time in your life, a time where you just said FUCK IT, stared at a wall and just let time slip through your fingers?
I guess I've been around for a long time, so it's not difficult to amass a vast discography. I was lazier when I was younger, and had all the time in the world. Now I'm older, and have hardly any spare time, it makes me focus a bit more. Also, my social life is almost non-existent so what the hell else am I going to do with my time?

 What is the greatest band you ever saw that you never heard anything from or about after?

Sepopeplel - that lunatic Stewart Greenwood and his (now ex-)girlfriend, Brighton in the late 90s. A huge warm wall of muffled radio interference with the slowest most gorgeous concertina and clarinet woven over the top, with them both wrapped in mummy-style bandages or something. Weird and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. I think they had a release on Chocolate Monk, but then just seemed to disappear.

 
Astral Social Club, Vibracathedral Orchestra, you are always associated with COOL sounding band names. Any you have considered that just didn't make the cut?

Ah, but both those names are appropriated, in one way or another ... I guess I just know the best places to steal from! But how about one of the earliest bands I was in, from 1981-85 - ESP Kinetic ... now that's a TERRIBLE name. Following that, I had a short-lived project called Redemption Inc ... so embarrassing.

 
What is an Astral Social Club? It's a real place right? Is the Astral Social Club in your mind the same as in real life?

It was a real place, in the small town where I live, but it had obviously been derelict for years. I liked the combination of celestial and mundane - there's an intrinsic humour to northern English working men's clubs too, which fits right in with the way I like to live my life. I'll have a pint of bitter and a dose of rainbow juice, with some pork scratchings on the side.

Like, say you went to visit a social club on the astral plane. Who would you expect to socialize with? C.W. Leadbeater?

My old pal MS Turner, 23 years dead ... what a  fucking waste. We could do a great turn up there, after I'd given him some shit for bowing out of here so early.