The Return of Earnest Rock - Featuring Tin Horn Prayer, Only Thieves, The White Soots, and Thee Nosebleeds

It's there.  Can you feel it?

Bubbling up from the underground.  Pulsating from the heartbeat of the punk clubs and rock stages.  Surging from the heart of middle America.  A return to true, earnest rock and roll.  Maybe it's a reaction against the overly-produced drivel that fills the airwaves. Maybe it's a statement about getting back to our roots, to what's core and meaningful.  Shit, maybe it's all in my mind.  All I know is that the Ripple Office has been inundated recently with a barrage of quality, back-to-the-roots of rock and roll albums from a diverse cross-section of bands.  And I for one, couldn't be happier.  They all do it in their own unique way, and they all kick my ass.

So let's get to them.

Tin Horn Prayer - Get Busy Dying

Featuring ex-members of such punky bands as The Blackout Pact, Only Thunder, Ghost Buffalo, Love Me Destroyer, and Pinhead Circus, Tin Horn Prayer come out of the speakers like a methamphetamine-fueled Tom Waits with a major chip on his shoulder and a suicide complex.   Man, does this one kick me upside down of Tuesday!  Major roots Americana here, including banjo, mandolin, and accordion thrown into the mix with the (mostly acoustic) guitars, bass, and drums.  These guys go way outta their way to prove that punk is a state of mind, not a function of electricity.  "Better Living," just may be one of my favorite lead-off tracks I've heard all year.  Yeah, we got that mandolin kicking us off in all it's spartan beauty, bass and drums bubble underneath before the whole band launches into just a monster of an acousti-folk punk song.  One helluva verse melody and just a choral hook that can't help but capture you like a hangman's noose.   I mean one for the ages.  Toss in some ridden-hard-and-hung-up-wet vocals and I'm in roots-punk heaven.  When I say weathered, I don't mean these vocals are whiskey-aged, I mean they're perfectly leather-cracked, barely escaping from the vocal chords. This song saunters and rocks and funks and grooves, and it's all punk, baby.

"Crime Scene Cleanup Team," may be just about the most clever suicide note ever placed to music.  Rather than scrawling a note to those who've wronged him, the author composes his final lament as an apology to the crime scene cleanup team who're gonna have to clean up his house after he blows his brains into a "red Picasso painting on the walls."  Take lyrics like that and drop them over a seriously rockin' uptempo, guitar and banjo raver and you'll get a good feeling where these guys come from.   Earnest?  Hell, yes.  They're like an unplugged Dropkick Murphys,  or a head-on collision between Son Volt and the Street Dogs.  Either way, I can't stop listening.

Only Thieves - Heartless Romantics

Another beer-soaked belch of churning earnest rock and roll, this time layered with a slacker sensibility and a hint of full-on Replacements instability.  Cracking guitar work, layered upon layers bring an old school post-punk indy vibe to this cascading wall of sound.  This is pure rawk and roll, layered with years of grit and road dust.  Hearts are bared fully on their sleeves, and those sleeves dripping with sweat, whiskey, and a touch of exasperated blood.

Back in the day, we had a band called The Call.  Oh yeah.  Talk about earnest rock, with Michael Been belting it out as if his soul's salvation depended on it.  Only Thieves mine a similar roots-angst vibe, with their chiming guitar assault, spraying punk spit, and pleadingly honest lyrics and vocals.  Take a song like "Flood Lights" and I can almost hear Micheal Been's spirit being channeled in righteous indignation (RIP Michael.  You left us too soon).  That's not to say Only Thieves are revisionist, they certainly aren't.  Just take that Call template, inject it full of Replacements rawness, some Superdrag and Lucero punk and indy savvy, and coat that whole thing with the leftover dust from an Uncle Tupelo concert and you'll get the feeling.   "All Sad Young Men," masterfully mixes big indy guitars with exploding percussion, pop smarts and punk energy.  "Discoveries" does the same with massive tsunami walls of churning guitars and zealot vocals.  Springsteen gone punk.  I like it.

The White Soots - S/T

A do-it-yourself effort that literally reached out through the speakers with gripping hands of fuzzed guitars, grabbed my ears in their icy death-grip and pulled me right back through the circuitry into their insanely hip world of retro-fuzz. stoner-fied, acid-garage mania.  A three-piece of brothers Kyle Byrum on guitars and vocals, Kraig Byrum on drums, along with Karl Benge on bass, The White Soots first came to my attention from all the love the fine gents at The Soda Shop have showered on them over the months.  And let me tell you, the Soda Shop boys were right.  The lava lamp has gone and completed exploded all over these guys.

'60's speed-cranked, retro garage fuzz dominates this blissfully deranged psychedelic haze of pop concoctions.   Kyle lets loose hallucination-inducing rivers of guitar solos (as on "If I Go") that are enough to cause cosmic waves to collide in time warped tunnels of psych madness.  The Black Keys are here.  The White Stripes wish they could be.   But don't let all this talk of garage-psych madness put you off, the boys channel enough retro-R&B into their songwriting menagerie to bust out numbers like "Don't Shoot" and "You're Evil," or the pure groovy, gotta-bust-out-my-bell-bottoms hipster-vibe of "Watch the Horizon."   Monster-extended, JPT Scare Band-worthy jams like the 11 minute "Give Me Back My Land," and it's fuzz, senses-shattering guitar assault sit comfortably right next to 2 minute plus primal-garage pop stompers like "Where Did You Go."  No matter how you slice it, you can't lose.

Thee Nosebleeds - S/T

Now that The White Soots dropped us off in the garage, we may as well stay there, crawling way to the back underneath the rusting piles of moth-holed radiators, oil-stained rags, and sludge-crusted carburetors.  Somewhere back there, behind the moldy stack of semen-stained porn magazines you'll find Thee Nosebleeds, doing their damndest to not impress anyone.

Guitars whiz by like drive-by shootings.  Drums dissolve into the mix like acid melting through '70's worn vinyl.  There's a bass there . . . somewhere, or so I'm told.   Probably hiding behind the draino-ate-my-trachea vocals.  And amongst all this chaos, you'll find a freaking gem of cocaine-garage punk like "South Street Shooting Spree," or the bathtub-brewed meth speed punk fest of "As Fast as You Can."   These guys are so grizzled they eat razor blades for breakfast and spit out metal links that they somehow chain together into remarkably catchy songs like the chemical-freak meets The Ramones blitz of "Kill Kill Rock N Roll/Miss West Philly USA."  "Pigfoot's Revenge," works a belligerent blues riff into the mix, while "Motormouth" is simply 440 horse power garage gun metal punk at it's finest.

I couldn't be happier that this album didn't come as a "scratch and sniff" cause there just ain't no part of me that want's to know what these guys smell like.  But listening's just fine.

--Racer

Second Academy – Bohemian Grove

Tsurumi Records just knows how to do things right.  Spinning on gorgeous marbleized grey and white vinyl right now, is the latest long player from Tsurumi’s Second Academy with main man Eric Balaban and his latest masterpiece of sophistico-garage punk, Bohemian Grove.  But before we get to the music (which will make me quickly forget everything else I want to say) let’s get back to Tsurumi.  In a very short period of time, the good folk of Tsurumi have solidified their vision of how to unleash quality music and product onto the music loving world.  Plying their Japan-meets-America-via-Seattle-Silk-Road of inspired primal-punkish rock, Tsurumi may only have 4 releases under their belts, but what releases they are.  Between Eric Balaban’s Beautiful Mothers or Second Academy, or the Japanese art-punk of Golden, each release is done right.  In addition to the gorgeous platter hypnotizing me on the turntable right now, the album comes with a quality pressed cover, a way-cool glossy insert, a glossy poster, and forget the download code, these cats include the entire CD in the package.  How’s that for doing it right?

Ok, so enough about them, let’s get to the music, shall we?  I’ve already expressed my man-love for Eric’s prior work with the Beautiful Mothers and the first, rather stripped down, Second Academy record.  Truth be told, however, I really didn’t know what to expect with this new release.  Joined by Brent Powell on bass, and Troy Lund/and Rob Wheeler on drums, I didn’t know if Eric could continue to captivate me.  Whether his Replacements-stripped garage-punk could continue to elevate itself to new heights.  To grow . . . to expand.

Oh, simple-minded me.

If anything, Bohemian Grove not only builds upon what the lads created with the first album, it represents a quantum leap in maturity, songwriting, playing, production and just about any other aspect of an album you can think of.  Simply put, this is one fantastic record.  If you’re a fan of acoustic-laced, powerpop fueled, amphetamine garage-based rock, (think The Replacements, The Violent Femmes, early Who) then you owe it to yourself . . . nay, you owe it to mankind to check this album out. 

I understand that the album is named Bohemian Grove after the title track, but damn if I don’t want to constantly write Bohemian GROOVE because that's what this album does.  It grooves.  It sways, it rumbles and rocks with a constant, head-nodding, toe-tapping groove of solid rhythm, killer melodies, perfect-scratchy riffs, and damn fine songwriting. Expect a spot on my Top 10 of 2011 for this one. 

Right from the start, Bohemian Grove captured my attention.  The title track trods out of the speakers with an ominous weight, sounding like some meaty 1960’s beat-cool, retro-groovy punk rocker.  The bass and drums are just monstrous here.  I keep getting this image of some darkened ‘60’s Batman theme going on here, as if the Dark Knight existed back then taking on the Joker.  Way cool.  Way, way cool.   Eric’s voice is inspired, harmony vocals bringing everything to the front.  Fuzz guitar wails through the mix as that damn fine GROOVE just tears the song to pieces.   Infinitely cool.

For this album, Eric upped the production quite a bit over the really stripped first Second Academy record.  That’s not to say this album is glossy, it’s not.  But it is full and warm.  A rich sound that really compliments the songs, fills them out.  It works.

“Like the Rich,” is a Jonathan Richman or Paul Westerberg love song classic.  Sung with total honestly, yet tongue in cheek at the same time, Eric extols the virtues of throwing off the drapery of the “poor artist” and getting rich.  “She says I only want to get by/I say Fuck That!/I wanna get a rock for my baby/I wanna get a stick for my baby/I wanna get a knife for my lady/I wana get a house for my baby/and have a good time/like the rich do.”  All played over a slicing acoustic guitar riff and and some killer electric guitar searing flourishes.  Again, the GROOVE is there.  Have I said yet that this album grooves?

“Lullaby for the Divorced” ups the ante with it’s big-time retro, surf meets garage riffage and swing.  Totally retro but current.   The kids are going crazy at the hop or the Go-Go to this song.  Wild bikini’s are doing the swim, guys are acting cool, but everyone is losing themselves in the abandon of the groove.  Oh yes, there’s that word again.

The final cut on side 1, “Perfectly Wrong,” is quite simply one of the best songs that the early Who never played, but wrote with Paul Westerburg and played with the help of the Femmes.  Big guitars fly in Townsend-ian whirling waves, and if that isn’t a melody that should have dominated the airwaves in the mid ‘60’s, then I’ve never heard one.   But listen closely to this one and “Lullaby” before it and you’ll see that these aren’t retro classics, they’re fully modern.  Pete Townsend never wrote about getting drunk in the afternoon or how her avoiding his phone calls was perfectly wrong.  Or the simply purity of allowing two people to divorce because nothing good can ever come from bad love. It all just shows how much Eric has grown as a songwriter.

So, if I was a fan of the first Second Academy album (and the rougher Beautiful Mothers), with Bohemian Grove, Eric has made a true believer out of me.  With any righteous divination, Eric will find his place in the revered ranks of gritty but pretty songwriters, like Westerburg or Richman (or Townsend, for that matter).

In a world where every square inch of my office is covered with vinyl, and I measure an album's worth by whether or not it deserves to occupy my valuable shelf space, this is an album, I’m proud to have in my collection.


--Racer

Buy here: Tsurumi Records

The Remedy for Everyday Music – Featuring Ojm, Ride the Sun, The Heat Tape, and the Fuck Knights

Remedy.  I just love the sound of that word.  It’s so definitive.  Something is wrong.  It will be fixed.  It will be corrected.  It will be remedied.

I don’t watch the Grammys (which pretty much sums up my opinions of them) but I did see the musical debacle, assault-to-our-senses, that some people called the Super Bowl Half-time Show.  And I did hear people actually talking post-Grammy about whether Justin Bieber was robbed not winning the Best New Artist Award.  Two events in a compressed period of time that could make you lose complete faith in the music industry.  Lose faith that there are still folks out there busting it out for the sheer love of music and breaking the shit out of a bunch of guitar strings.  It’s even enough to make me lose faith in whether or not there is a God -- for if there is, he certainly wouldn’t be listening to crap like that.

It’s time for a remedy.

Fast and furious, raw and ragged, dangerous and capable of leading small children way astray of societal conventions.  That’s what rock and roll was way back when.  And just as important, if certain snotty-nosed, chemical-addled, offends-to-society have their way, it’s what rock and roll will become again.

Thank God.

Ojm – Volcano

Despite their 4 previous albums, I’d never heard of Italy’s Ojm before Matt from PoisonTree Records dropped this into my lap.  Hitting me as if I’d just opened a letter from the Unibomber, Ojm exploded out of my speakers in a fuzzed out fury of retro-stonified riff mongering.  I mean huge.   What gets me the most about these cats is that they don’t really follow one mainline path towards their rock and roll fury.  Sure we got some nicely fuzzy stoner riffs, but there’s also a big chunk of adrenalinized garage attack going on here, some neo-epic psychedelic pastiche, a saliva-filled mouth of punk spittle, and even a good eye towards retro pop.  In other words we got a tear-down-the-rules blitz of real rock rowdiness.

With production by Dave Catching (Eagles of Death Metal, Queens of the Stone Age), you can get a pretty fair idea of what awaits.  Kicking off with the good-natured fuzz-meets-surf instrumental assault of “Welcome”, Ojm treat each track here as if it was their own personal canvass on which to paint their masterpiece.  And believe me, when they attack that canvas they use a big, fat black marking pen, no tentative pencil or blue line drawings here.  “Venus God” just rocks.  Simply.  I dig the vocals too; kinda spikey and throaty while still being smooth.  Give me texture.  Swath the whole thing in monster-riffs and an eardrum splattering amount of fuzz and I’m more than happy.  “Rainbow,” brings on an irresistibly warped bong-full of hazy riffing and acrid smoke, all drifting within a kick-ass melody.  But wait, there’s more!  Drop in the 7-minute epic psychedelic excursion, “Oceans Heart,” the totally accessible, near pop-perfect strains of “I’ll Be Long,”, the retro-punk stomp “Disorder,” and the two-ton heaviness of “Cocksucker” and we got us that finished master stoner piece-de-resistance. 

Enough to make you forget Justin Bieber was ever born.  Give it a shot.

Ride the Sun – S/T EP

Riding a stoner-fied, desert-dry riff with the ferocity of a lone cowboy taming a bucking bronco, Ride the Sun burst across the arid horizon in flaming, glowing casts of red and gold.  This is gritty, grizzled stoner fuzz of the highest order.  Yep, all the biggies are here, from Sabbath to Kyuss to Fu Manchu.  I even hear a little love for Judas Priest in the flourishes of their riffs.  Big, mean, and a damn enough good time to keep the men from bathing for months.

I particularly love the vocals here; rough and raw, so far down in the throat you can almost hear a little stomach lining, but smooth enough to carry the damn fine melodies.  To me, the vocals sound a bit like the rougher vocals of BTO if the singer’d been gargling with a leftover jug of liquid plummer.  (Speaking of BTO, I don’t think that band gets near enough credit, they’re way more stoner heavy than you might think, just give one listen to Not Fragile).  But I digress.  We’re talking about Ride the Sun here, and there’s lots to say.

“Evil Reasons,” rollicks and gallops across the audio waves with hyped up passion, terminal fuzz and a monolithic bottom end.  “Livin’ Wrong” is just mean and heavy.  When the boys lock onto a riff they ride that baby, ride it hard and dry.  This is chest-beating, suburb-scaring riff-tense stoner, baby.  Dig the harmony dual lead vocals on this one.  Man, it’s so dirty you can almost smell the desert sand still lingering to the unwashed skin.Solos burst out in appropriate shades of fuzz, like an amp run through a garbage disposal.

I think “Compadre” is my favorite cut here, but that’s picking straws blindly out of the stack just for the sake of picking.  Each track here is megalithic heavy, fuzzy, and all kinds of acrid smoke hazy.  For riff mad stone heads, this one shouldn’t be missed.

The Heat Tape – Raccoon Valley Recordings

So raw, so primal, The Heat Tape is positively primitive.  This is caveman-hit-guitar-and-smash-drums, lo-fi, lost-way-in-the-back-of the-garage, garage rock.  Ok, I lied.  It’s not garage rock.  The CD is named after the trailer park where these “gents” live and conduct all their business.  So we need a new genre here.  Trailer Park Rock.  No pretense.  No gloss, or gleam, or hope of glory.  This is near prehistoric distorto-punk with a hankering for a catchy hook and a turn of a phrase. 

With no song clocking in at even 3 minutes (the average time looks to be about 2 minutes flat) The Heat Tape rage out of Makanda, Illinois singing songs of such import as “Skin” (a love song about McDonalds breakfast), “21st Century Turd” (about being a piece of shit), and “Feel No Good” (which is about being a hungover piece of shit.)  Don’t go looking for Stephen Hawkins expanded theories of the physics of Black Holes here.  Just pop open a twelve-pack, hit something hard, and play this quagmire of lo-fi ditties.  For fans of Jay Retard, The Marked Men, and the Thermals.  Yep, that should do it.

Fuck Knights – The Recorded by Gary Burger from The Monks EP

Perhaps the only thing that could make The Heat Tape sound clean and refined is another offering of demento-destructo garage surf punk from the Fuck Knights.  You’ll notice that the CD is titled the “Recorded by Gary Burger . . . EP” not the “produced by Gary Burger” CD.  You see, that would require there actually being some production on this baby rather than a cacophony of frantic, speaker rattling, oil can rock.  But then that wouldn’t be the Fuck Knights, and I wouldn’t enjoy it near as much as this one.

Simply put, the Fuck Knights can fuck the hell out of just about any other lo-fi outfit who dares step into their garage.  Guitars and speakers are set on terminal fuzz mode, Bass is played through a 1967 rusty muffler, and the drummer gave up on a drum kit years ago, instead assembling a litany of acid-eaten barrels to pound on.  And he does, Lord he does.

Despite all the overblown analogies in the previous paragraphs, at their simplest, the Fuck Knights are sheer brilliant, massively distorted and psychotically warped garage punk of the frenzied and frantic variety.  Yet hidden within the vague psychobilly and surf influences, and around the back of the destructo-wall of fuzz and noise, are some catchy as hell melodies and some serious songwriting smarts.  Each song blasts by before you’ve even had a chance to blow your nose, but in that time, the Fuck Knights have unleashed more melodies, dazzling fuzz solos, and near-manic energy than could be found in that entire 30 minute embarrassment of a Super Bowl Halftime Show. 

You want your rock loud and raw, dangerous and illegal in several states?  Then the Fuck Knights are your band.  They may never get a chance to take the stage at the Grammys, but they just may be the saviors of rock and roll.


-Racer

A Sunday Conversatin with Green Monkey Records

Don't get me wrong.  It's not that I'm jaded, but having been doing this Ripple thing for the better part of three years, I've heard a lot of music come through the Ripple doors.  And while a good chunk of that music's been pretty good, not much of it has been surprising. Most of it just fits nicely into the preconceived notions of genre and category.  That was until the Green Monkey Anthology came through my door.  To put it bluntly, I expected one thing and got another thing entirely.


And what I got was good.  Very good.  Garage, psych, powerpop.  Keen original post punk pop the likes of which went right to my happy zone.


With that, it was only a matter of time before we had to get Tom Dyer, the main monkey, to stop by the Ripple office, plop on down on the red leather couch and spill the beans on all things green and monkey.

You detail the entire history of Green Monkey Records in the insert of your excellent CD anthology, but for our readers, let's refresh.  How did you get started running an independent record label?

Well, traditionally there are two main ways people start labels. Either as business to make some dough off artists or as artists to get their skwak out. Occasionally there is something in between. For me it was definitely case #2. I was a late bloomer. Though always a music lover and a singer of sorts, I didn’t start playing guitar until I was 25. Had an art/punk band in Seattle around 1980 that was pretty cool in a tortured sort of way that really didn’t get too far – couple demos –but enough to convince me I needed recording gear. Did a bunch of one-man-band (me) recording and started recording my friends’ bands. By ’83 I had enough stuff of my own and other peoples’ that wasn’t getting put out anywhere I decided to start putting it out. Green Monkey was born and the next level of personal entertainment was up and running.


What motivated you? Did you tap into a particular local scene or were you aiming to capture a sound?

We were mostly limited to the sound we could get by the kind of gear that we used and the dinky studio space I had. That said, there was and is now an esthetic to my work. I have always had a greater leaning toward dissonance than your average American. When we were kids my brother bough Beatles and I bought Stones. When I was 17-18 it was all about Trout Mask Replica (drove my mom nuts). Later I was more interested in Ornette and Coltrane than Miles (Miles is great!), way more interested in Harry Partch and Stockhausen than Beethoven (z-z-z-z) and at one point I definitely wanted John Lee Hooker to be my personal savior. He was a guitar genius and had an even cooler voice than Johnny Cash.

Back in the 80’s when I had a little 8-track studio, I mostly got my clients word-of-mouth. Some of them like The Hitmen or the Fallouts became GMR artists for a while. Some folks I sought out like the Green Pajamas (after I bought their cassette) or The Life (got told about ‘em). Some would send me stuff like Glass Penguins that I liked and we would try to get something done on the cheap. I think the music we put out at that point was fairly inconsistent stylistically. It was just whatever was around that I liked.

I will say that over time there is a certain sound to my work that moves beyond the gear. It has something to do with intent and will.

Which was your first release?

GM001 Local Product (various artists) and GM002 Tom Dyer – Truth or Consequences were released simultaneously in ‘83, in a no doubt calculated manner to seem more important than we actually were. Both were totally recorded on Tascam 2340 4 track reel to reel with a little 6 channel Tapco board, a spring reverb, an analog delay and crappy mikes. We were totally living. We could overdub for crissakes! Kids in the Garage Band world have no way to understand how totally fucking cool that was to be able to do at that point.  Put ‘em out on cassette – 150 copies each – off to the big time.



Who's been your biggest selling artist to date?

The Green Pajamas by a mile. Book of Hours by the PJs is the top seller at around 5 thousand copies worldwide. It was released in the US, Germany, Greece and Australia – each version with different tracks. I just reissued it on CD after 24 years with all the tracks from every version, plus an unreleased track. Made me very happy. Still work with Jeff Kelly (PJ #1). I think he is doing brilliant stuff at the present.



There's so much to learn about running a label, share with us some of the lessons you've learned along the way.

Well, lesson one is it was always hard to get paid and still is. I became pretty conscious of cash flow back when as it really became difficult to keep funding the next project. I think it is a lot easier to get your music out to an audience in the internet age, but don’t kid yourself – it’s still work. As Andy Warhol said, it’s all about work. I like to work. I like to do things that I think have artistic merit. I think the trick is to know what you want to do and not get too sidetracked by all the silly extra stuff that will suck up all your time.



What's been your label's high point? Low point?

Two high points, one low point. First hight point, 1987 when we did the Green Pajamas - Book of Hours and The Life - Alone. It felt like we were in the verge of something in regards to commercial success. Wasn’t able to get it to go to the next step, which led to the low point, ’91 or so. It had become a chore. At that point I had put so much time and energy into it with diminishing returns, I was a dad, needed to back off, make a living and take care of life. Had to let it go.

Second highlight is now. I am at a place in my life I can do this at a level that I find satisfying. I am putting out my music and other peoples’ music I like. I don’t really care if somebody thinks it is crap or not, it is just what I am doing and I will let it get to whatever level it can get to.

What's inspired you to jump back into the ring and relaunch the label?

In the period after the initial output, I went back to school, got my bachelors, masters and doctorate while working full-time and raising kids. I never stopped recording (thus Songs From Academia, Vols. 1 & 2), but it was a lot smaller part of my life. Have my doctorate, have a job, kids are out of the house. Time to rock. Beside my gig as president of a small college, this is mostly what I do with my time nowadays.


The music industry has changed significantly since the pre-grunge days?  What changes have you seen and how are you approaching dealing with this changes?

Obviously the biggest change is the internet. It used to be that record companies were the filter to decide what was “good music” – people that were too crummy couldn’t make records. That started changing with the whole DIY thing in the 80’s – then the internet blew it up. Record labels don’t matter anymore. Anybody can get their music in front of the world. The filters used to be at the front – can you get stuff released – now they are at the end – how do you differentiate yourself from the 2 million crummy bands on MySpace. It is about reviews, PR, social networking and as always playing live, which by the way, I rarely do.

 

What changes do you see ahead for the music industry?

Well, the death of plastic seems pretty inevitable. There is still a shrinking market for CDs and vinyl, but your average person is pretty happy with their iPod and that seems irreversible.

On a more musical note, I see no more significant changes in popular music. Ever.

In the 20th century music changed as the technology to make it changed. First, there was the ability to record music. Changed everything, Then the ability to overdub made it possible to record music you could not perform live. Then the electric guitar changed everything again, making sounds that were previously impossible to make. Analog synthesis created the last batch of new timbres that popular music would require. Digital sampling was the final piece, as the hip hop guys brought John Cage’s notion that all sounds have musical validity to the mainstream.

In the past technological change in making sounds drove new music. I do not think there are any significant departures left on the kind of sounds that can be made. We can make them all.

I think what you have going forward is simply differing combinations of styles – personalization. Jazz is a great example. It runs a progressive course from New Orleans Jazz in the early century and by the end of the 60’s it has hit avant garde squawking and fusion. Sweet to scratchy – all been done. Everybody in jazz now works somewhere within that range. No place new left to go.

By the way, I hope I am completely wrong about this.

What's the biggest challenge facing you today as an independent label?

Just finding time to get things done. I’m pretty much a 1 ½ person operation. If I had greater ambitions there would be larger challenges, but at this point I am pretty happy to put things out at small but consistent level and let thing go where they go.



Are you working now primarily with your old catalog of artists?  Will you be looking for new artists?

My plan is to do a few things.

First, put out my own TD music. I’ve mostly got the old stuff out that I want out, so from here on it will be pretty much new. Second, is to re-release old catalog, just cuz I think it is great stuff that should be heard. Third is to put out new music from some old GMR folks, mostly Jeff Kelly/Green Pajamas, but we’ll see. Fourth is to put out completely new stuff by people that I’ve never done anything with. I’ve got a new band, Sigourney Reverb, that I like and may do some stuff with.

As time goes on I expect I will shift out of old stuff entirely. It will be all done. Probably take a few years though.



Are you a club rat, constantly searching live venues for cool acts?

Nope. Never was, always was a record guy. If I go out and see a band, it is very deliberate; I know about them from hearing something and check it out.



What are you looking for now?

The ecstatic experience. Music that makes me feel. Someone that can replace John Lee Hooker as my personal savior.



What would you like to see happen for the future of the music industry and your label in particular?

Well, I am of course perfectly fine with becoming an international superstar and having Jeff Kelly be bigger than Lady Gaga.

As for the industry, I think the decentralization of popular music that is ongoing is an unstoppable trend. I think digital music is here to stay, but I think due to increase storage crappy MP3s will go away.



Any final words for our waveriders?

Buy all our stuff. It’s better than everybody else’s.