Introduction by Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015 Images from the Internet
This interview was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #7, dated 1981. It was written by the Managing Editor of the
magazine, Julia Masi. Part of what the Shirts so special was that they were fun. It looked like
they enjoyed being on stage, and that transmitted to the audience. I only saw
the Annie Golden version play once, and then saw the post-Annie band play at a
reunion concert for the late Brooklyn club Zappaz, which was held at the
now-also-gone L’Amours in the mid-2000s. As for Golden, I saw her perform at
the Bottom Line in a nascent version of the play based on Ellie Greenwich’s
music, Leader of the
Pack (the Broadway version was not as
personal, nor as fun). When the band
reformed after Golden left, it took two singers to replace her. That tells you
something. Of course, Golden went from the Shirts, to the film Hair, to a recurring role in Cheers, to where she is now, a regular on the
extremely popular Netflix series Orange is the New Black, where she ironically plays someone who is
mostly mute. – RBF, 2015
“Guilt through association,” states
Artie Lamonica as re reflects on why the Shirts are so often mislabelled. “We
were considered a New Wave band, but we weren’t really. It’s just a tag. We
didn’t form because New Wave was happening. We were around before the New Wave
and we’ll be around afterwards.”
In their nine-year history, the
Shirts – Artie Lamonica, guitar / keyboards; Ron Ardito, guitar; John Piccolo,
keyboards; Johnny Zeek Criscione, drums; Bob Racippo, bass; and Annie Golden,
vocals – have gone through a metamorphosis from being “the worst cover band in
the world” to one of the more popular bands in Europe. The band began when they
were teenagers in Brooklyn. They played block parties and local bars until they
started writing their own material. By the mid-‘70s, they were headlining
regularly at CBGBs and under contract to Capitol and EMI/Harvest Records. With
three albums to their credit (The Shirts;
Street Light Shine; and Inner Sleeve),
a few cuts on the Live at CBGBs
album, and legions of fans who wait in line for hours to get tickets to their
shows in Holland and Germany, the Shirts still haven’t gotten the recognition
they deserve back in the States, considering they are one of the top ten bands
on the college concert circuit.
The way they see it, the problem lies
in the fact that they are difficult to categorize. All six members of the band
have a hand in writing the songs, and their different tastes and personalities are
reflected in their work. In the past, they have shown their cynicism (“Laugh
and Walk Away,” “Too Much Trouble”), dabbled in science fiction (“Triangulum”),
and expressed disappointment (“Small Talk”) and love (“As Long as the Laughter
Lasts”). Their music ranges from danceable high-energy rock’n’roll to ballads.
“We never felt that we had certain
sound,” Artie continues, “like band that have a whole album based on a sound.
We always felt that we liked to do different things. We try to let everybody be
artistically free, as much as possible. We don’t shun a song because it doesn’t
have the Shirts’ sound. We try not to. We listen to each other. We listen to
the radio, what’s on the air. We try to be as modern as possible. We started
out trying to do things differently to create different types of chords and
just play them. Now we’ve learned how to arrange; how to simplify our music. We
created a base and now we can build. We could be just as popular in America.”
“It’s strange in Europe,” explains
Annie, “because it just seemed to snowball by itself. The very first album we
did had a hit single on the charts in Holland [“Tell Me Your Plans” – JM, 1981]. Our European record company sent
us there to do some kind of public interest stuff and they liked what they saw.
They took us to their hearts and we had mild success consistently since that
first song. And we understand that the Inner
Sleeve album is Number One on the Austrian charts. We’ve never been to
Austria. It’s very close in Europe, very concentrated. The people are very
cultured because the people are so crammed together. Things can catch on a lot
better than they can here.
“I’ve progressed as the chatterbox.
In our personal life, I’m the chatterbox, but in the stage show, I never used
to talk to the audience. We always let our music speak for itself. Now, I feel
more comfortable talking to people. I feel like they want to hear what I have
to say. I never really go blank. I usually talk about the club, or the next
song, or the Shirts.
“When we go to Europe, we’re not
stifled. We just talk less, and we just let the music speak for itself. So, we
don’t really feel uncomfortable that way. It’s funny: you’ll say something,
like if you’re in Holland, ‘You might remember this song from a couple of years
ago,’ and they don’t respond, or some of them might. But once you sing that
first line, then the excitement stirs, and they go crazy.
“Sometimes it’s hard when people are
shouting things at you from the front. You can tell when it’s kind. You can
tell by the delivery. And most often it is; you get so frustrated and you wish
you could understand them” On the whole, Annie finds European audiences
“Anxious and eager; pretty polite. They listen. They don’t stir around or mix
it up. They pay attention to you, which is pretty strange. All eyes are on you.
We’re not used to that.”
But they should be. When the Shirts
take to the stage, their visual presence is almost as strong as their music.
Petite, blonde Annie flutters around the stage like a trained modern dancer as
she sings and vamps with the boys. The rest of the band plays off each other
and sometimes with the audience. They’ve been known to offer their instruments
to fans and invite them to play along. “But it’s not contrived,” says Annie,
who explains that her stage moves aren’t choreographed; they’re just a natural
reaction to the music. She describes them as callisthenic, and admits that
aside from her training with Twyla Tharp for the movie Hair [1979], she has never formally studied dance.
She eschews the preening role of the
prima donna that so many female singers are obsessed with. “I hate that ‘Oh, is
my make-up on right? Is my hair fixed?’” Although her stage personality is very
feminine, she looks upon herself as a mixture of “woman, groupie, and one of
the boys.”
The latter day The Shirts
As entertaining as their live shows
may be, the band hasn’t relied on their stage presence to get by on film. For
their most popular video, “Laugh and Walk Away,” they flew to England and
employed the talents of Brian Grant, the best television cameraman in the
country. He wrote a story that begins with Annie singing as she is wheeled into
a hospital by the band, all wearing white coasts. “We had gone to London to the
video and we were all jet-lagged, and everything. And Grant had this storyline
for us. I was standoffish, as I usually am about outsiders presenting their
ideas to the band. And when I read his outline for the song, I couldn’t believe
he had never heard us perform; yet in his outline of “Laugh and Walk Away,” he
had me playing all these different kinds of characters. Just the fact that a
lot of my physical moves have been said to be puppet-like, and he had me
playing the puppet, with strings being manipulated by business people. It’s so
funny, ‘cause I don’t drive. I’m terrified to drive. And he had this thing of
me driving, and then being terrified in the car. It was really great the way he
was naturally in tune with what we were about, never having seen us.
Realizing that it takes more than a
memorable video and a polished sound to make a hit single, the Shirts have left
Capitol, their American record company. They are hoping to have more input on
the next record they do, so that they’ll go on record sounding the same as they
do at a live gig. “Our sound man’s been with us for eight years. The ultimate
goal would be to have him engineer, or produce or something, because we always
get compliments on our live sound. When we hear cassettes of live gigs, it
always sound exactly the way we feel we sound.”
Text (c) Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2015 Images from the Internet
PostApoc By Liz Worth Now or Never Publishing (Vancouver, BC),
2013
186 pages, paperback
ISBN: 978-1-926942-29-2 www.nonpublishing.com
Ontario-based bard Liz Worth rose above the ranks of being known
as an established poet with a book titled Amphetamine
Heart (reviewed HERE) and a few chapbooks when she released one of the better narrative music
chronicles, Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History
of Punk in Toronto and Beyond (reviewed HERE).
Liz Worth
It is only natural to take a look at her first published novel, PostApoc, named after a song by the
underground fictional band from the volume, Shit Kitten. It’s also a bit
literal for the story as well, since the book takes place after that very
event.
Without religious overtones but with a poetic timbre of the
possible Rapture, or perhaps a global changing environment that has given up,
apparently a large number of people have melted in a red rain or have imploded
from the inside, and who is left are people trying to survive. In this case, we
follow early 20s punk rock fan Ang (pronounced Anj) as her world gets increasingly narrow, striving for food,
shelter, companionship and music.
Occurring after what is known as The End, the novel has a recurring
theme of It’s my body and I’ll die if I
want to. We learn that Ang was not just a fan of the band Valium, she was also
the lover of the lead singer. The band and their followers, much like the Jim Jones’
group, decide it’s time to die. As described in the book:
We obsessed over self-destruction because that’s just what you
did in those days. Even if they didn’t want to admit it, there were so many people
who were ready to die. It was romance for a jaded generation. (9)
They all make a suicide pack, and Ang is the sole survivor, so
music fans being what they are, they blame Ang for living. On some level, so
does she.
In a sense of the more
things change the more they stay the same, even with the hunger and thirst,
there is still the desire for cigarettes and drugs. The most popular in this
group is something called grayline, a mix of hallucinogen, opiate and possibly
the ashes of the dead. While it’s addicting, it’s also not that easy to get, so
the addiction does not gnaw as much as pulse. The cost from the dealer is a
snuggle and a story. Even though Ang and her best friend Aimee live in a decrepit
house with a group, it’s the pangs of loneliness that is as overwhelming as the
one for food. And the grayline. “You’d think no one has anything to hide
anymore, but there are still pills, secret stashes, hidden connections not everyone
wants to share” (31). Or, to put it another way, “Sobriety is exhausting” (92)
While much of the world has changed dramatically, the emotions
are the same. Through Ang’s poetic and possibly mind-altered vision, we see
that, “This is how we live: either constantly on edge or constantly on the edge
of oblivion.” (31) This is more than just Alice falling down the rabbit hole;
it’s more coming out the other side.
Worth’s flowery language enhances the story rather than getting
the way, such as when she is cuddling the drug dealing and free forming:
…I tell him I was happiest when I had forgotten there was a world
before 2PM. I tell him about small crowded stages. I tell him about songs shrouded
in reverberation. I tell him about bands I used to know and love that didn’t
play music: they played our lives, connected knees to shins at all angles. I
tell him about words that nudged and smudged the shine of our eyelids in a
silver preamble, lyrics built out of the gradient of recovered memories and the
breakdown of exposure. I tell him that we wore it all like a shield. Still do,
though mostly only in our heads now, reduced to what we can remember. I tell
him too much, but in the end he gives me everything I want: vodka, cigarettes
and half a sheet of acid. (101)
Ang is frail, and yet she is a warrior, even when things are
constantly falling, failing and flailing around her. We see her world through
her eyes in first person, and over the course of the novel, as the grayline
gets more into her system, her visions become ours. It’s not pretty, and
sometimes it’s otherworldly, such as strange bangs and moans from the basement
and attic that is assumed to be the ghosts of those who went before.
Through it all, there is the core of music, band that play electrically
the few times it’s available or acoustic when it’s not. There’s no Xeroxed
posters, no cell phones, and no computers (none of which are barely even
mentioned through the book). Instead, it’s more technologically basic:
“There’s a show tonight,” Trevor says. We hear of these things
by watching for writing on dusty windows and handwritten posters pegged into
the telephone poles with the stems of lost earrings and old staples. (102)
The book is both beautiful and painfully unflinching. The use of
language is flowery when needed, and at other times minimalist. It envisions a
time when exhaustion, sweat and hunger of various needs has permeated
everything.
Because of the shift of reality from the drugs and hunger, unusual
images are used to throw off the reader in interesting ways (such as a praying
mantis woman with two heads). What is real and what is hallucinated is left up
to the reader.
The book kept my attention until the end, wanting to know what
happens to the characters, especially Ang. It’s beautifully written, and is bound
to unnerve in a good way. Poetic novels can sometimes get frustrating as the
cryptic messages get lost in words and syntax, but Worth knows how to weave the
tangents into a form that keeps the flow going. That’s pretty impressive,
especially from a first published work of fiction.
As a sidenote that I believe Worth will see as bemused, throughout
the book, in the back of my head, somewhere I kept hearing the Diodes singing, “Tired
of Waking Up Tired.”
Is there such a thing as experimental free-form jazz rock? Because if I
had to categorize the uncategorical British native / San Francisco resident Snakefinger,
that’s where I would place him. He found a home on Ralph Records out in
California, which for a while was the center of the strange and bizarre, such
as the Residents (for whom he was also a member under a mask), Fred Frith,
Renaldo and the Loaf, Yello, Tuxedomoon and MX80 Sound.
This interview was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #7, dated 1981. It was written by Anglophile music historians
of the off-center, David G. and Chris Van Valen.
Sadly, Snakefinger passed away by heart attack while in tour in Austria in
July 1987 at the age of 38 years. – RBF, 2015
Time to interview Snakefinger. Chris and I get
to the hotel and it looked just like the Overlook: all endless corridors and
flocked wallpaper! Call Ralph Records if I don’t come out in an hour!
Well, Snakefinger turns out to be
quite an amicable chap, and the difference between mild mannered Philip Lithman
(that’s what his mum calls him) and “Snakefinger,” the wild kimono-clad guerilla
guitar player that led his hand-picked “assault and battery squad” (Carlos
Crypton, guitar; Johnny Jenkings, drums; and Jack George, bass) through a tour
of New York City’s zippier nightspots this past October, when this interview
was done, is striking. At Max’s [Kansas
City], Snake whizzed off manic slide solos and leapt about wildly as the
band punched out rock'n’roll versions of tunes from Chewing Hides the Sound, and the new Greener Postures (in contrast to the heavy electronic bent of those
albums).
A highlight of the set was the
appearance of “Skanking” Ross, a bizarre youth who Snake swears he met right
before the show. Ross subsequently appeared at all of the band’s New York gigs.
FFanzeen: Snake, how do you account for the fact that many of the musicians
you worked with in England in the early ‘70s “pub-rock” movement are now
backing people like Graham Parker and Elvis Costello, and you ended up with the
Residents?
Snakefinger: Well, I think that,
basically, they followed the logical line of what was going on; they all took
the next logical step, and me, being a sort of illogical person, took the next
illogical step and came here (to America). I’d already done stuff with the
Residents. I’d left them six years previously and I’d told them to keep my tea
in the oven – I’d be right back – and six years later I came back and my tea
was still in the oven.
FFanzeen: How did you come to meet the Residents and N. Senada?
Snakefinger: It’s completely fate,
completely by chance, every single bit of it. I met N. Senada in Austria on
holiday. He then told me he’d heard about these people who weren’t as yet the Residents
– they were just some people fooling around with sound – so we came together. I
didn’t know a single soul in the whole of America. We stopped in (the) New York
airport with the idea of stopping in New York for a while. But he didn’t like
the New York airport, so he decided to go straight to California. We arrived
there, went straight to the Residents’ place in San Mateo, where the “San Mateo
sound” was being constructed, added to the construction – basically completed
it – and stayed there for a year; he left to go off and do more stuff in the vein
of work he was doing, and I left to go back and be a pub-rocker in England –
for a while.
FFanzeen: What made you go back to England?
Snakefinger: Well, I was offered a
job with a friend’s group called Mighty Baby, who was like a psychedelic-era
band. They fell apart just as I got back, luckily enough, and my friend went
off and joined a Muslim commune.
FFanzeen: Doesn’t everyone?
Snakefinger: [laughs] Well, I finally talked him out of it and we formed the Chilly
Willies [aka Chilly Willie and the Red
Hot Peppers – RBF, 2015].
FFanzeen: Your friend was Martin Stone, right?
Snakefinger: That’s right, yeah.
FFanzeen: While you were still in California, didn’t you do a couple of
folky-type gigs?
Snakefinger: Yeah, that’s right. In
fact, N. Senada and myself did a couple of gigs with just guitars, piano, and
saxophone in a few folk clubs that completely astonished the people there; you
know, they were all singing, “Here’s a little song me and my chick wrote when
we were on acid, hitchhiking to Oregon,” you know, and suddenly this mad guy
with dark glasses and a saxophone and myself – who was pretty mad, but I won’t
get into that – jumped on stage on audition nights and things like that, and suddenly
the whole place is stilled into silence by the total lunacy onstage.
Snakefinger and the Residents
FFanzeen:
These days, a lot of different people are into sound alteration the way the Residents
were ten years ago. What do you think of that?
Snakefinger: It’s real hard to put
them in a block. There are people that I think are real go-ahead and really
have something, and a lot of people I don’t really think have anything going
for themselves. It’s very easy to make new sounds by piddling around with a few
things, you know. I’m not saying that anybody isn’t entitled to go ahead and do
it – anybody is going ahead and doing it right now.
FFanzeen: Synthesizers are so cheap that every 18-year-old kid is buying
one these days.
Snakefinger: Precisely, and I mean,
you can’t go far wrong; you can do almost anything and have it be art. I don’t particularly
look at things that way; I need a bit of substance. I think the Residents have
a bit of substance and I’ve known the people for a long time and they’re all
very, very clever. I mean, I’d go as far as to saying genii – is that the
plural? [Answered HERE – RBF, 2015.] But they’re not the kind to sit around
and figure out chess games. They’re really down to earth Southern guys who were
brought up in Louisiana, spent most of their lives there. Just hospitable,
pleasant, and as nice as they can possibly be. But I mean, with these great
minds that only come out when they’re doing their work.
FFanzeen: If they’re so hospitable, why is their music so ominous? Is it
on purpose?
Snakefinger: Yeah. It’s meant to be
that way. They are hospitable amongst themselves, and with friends that come by
and everything, but you can’t be hospitable about your life’s work, and they’re
not.
FFanzeen: The music of both you and the Residents always seems designed
to unnerve. When the music is pleasant, the lyrics are not, and vice-versa.
Snakefinger: Well, it varies between
myself and the Residents; we have different approaches. The Residents, I mean
their whole thing, when they started off, was to unnerve; was to wake up people
in deep trances; was to create completely different alternatives than were
available to people. It was very, very stale for the first six years of their
existence. The music scene was really horrid. Then came New Wave, which was a
good little kick in the ass for the whole world, even though 99.9% of it was
just phoney and not really worth bothering with. But it did do something – it
opened up broader horizons and things like that. So the Residents changed
slightly.
FFanzeen: I thought it was funny to see six-year-old Residents albums in
the punk sections of record stores – especially
since they are miles away from any punk or New Wave band; even miles away from
label-mates like Tuxedomoon, who are in infancy compared to what the Residents
do.
Snakefinger: We’re all miles away
from each other. On Ralph Records [d.
1987 – RBF, 2015], there is a label sound for sure, but everybody on Ralph
is miles away from everybody else on Ralph. There aren’t two people on Ralph
that sound even vaguely alike – thank goodness.
FFanzeen: Do you play your solo on the Residents’ “Satisfaction” single
on a slide guitar?
Snakefinger: It’s a slide; I play
slide quite a lot. I don’t do any electronic solos. Everything I play is on
guitar. I don’t play solos on synthesizers. The most I’ll do is put something
through a bunch of effects to get a more interesting sound. What we usually do
for the records is record stuff completely experimentally; we’ll try all kinds
of different techniques to get different sounds, anything but the sound you
expect.
FFanzeen: Most of the stuff is made on conventional instruments and
recorded or reprocessed in unusual ways later.
Snakefinger: Yeah, in my work in
particular. There’s a minimum of synthesizers – just effects. The Residents use
considerably more synthesizer than I do, but for the most part they use normal
instruments, played by the Residents – which immediately makes them abnormal –
but through a lot of electronics at the Ralph studios.
FFanzeen: Getting to your lyrics, is “Picnic in the Jungle” about a
situation like Auschwitz or Jonestown?
Snakefinger: On another planet, yes,
that’s exactly what it is. As I said, you won’t find anything like “No more Dachau! It’s a terrible thing, how
could they do all that stuff!”, but that’s the situation. It’s about
Jonestown and it’s about Dachau and things, basically. I mean, if you want to
put a story to it – which is another thing you can do to any of these lyrics;
just take them as they stand, as a story. I’m into people drawing their own
meanings. The show is a ritual – just like the records – but the story of
“Picnic in the Jungle” is that these people who are taken by aliens to another
planet are experimented on, and one of the prisoners is telling the story that every
day they leave a tray and take one away; a cloud appears and melts away the
skin of some. But basically, it’s symbolic of all the things that have happened
here, and are set to happen again if we’re not really careful.
FFanzeen: Your lyrics are definitely more specific, and less fantastical
than the Residents’ stuff.
Snakefinger: Yeah, my lyrics are more
a part of human life. I deal with humanity. The Residents are more fantasy and
I’m more reality based, and it’s the same in the music. If it wasn’t that way,
I’d be doing what the Residents are doing, but I don’t because the Residents
are doing it and you only need one of those – but I do think you need one of
those, and I think the world needs one of those, and I think it realizes now
that it does need one of those – at least – and they’ve had the most experience
and are doing it best.
FFanzeen: There’s so much out there, in art and music, and people are
just not interested in it.
Snakefinger: Oh, absolutely, I agree
entirely. I mean, there’s discrimination, and being a discriminating person
immediately lets you out of a goodly amount of stuff. I’m real discriminating
and I realize I miss out on a lot of stuff that way, but being as
discriminating as I am, there’s still far more than even I can deal with that I
want to get to.
FFanzeen: How did you get the name “Snakefinger”?
Snakefinger: It comes from N. Senada.
He named me.
FFanzeen: What did your mother have to say about that?
Snakefinger: [laughs] She didn’t have much of a choice. There was a gig, one of
the Residents’ legendary few gigs. It was Halloween, in far Northern
California, and it was a full blue moon on a Halloween evening – and it was
very, very strange. There were a lot of drug casualities around. Everyone was
in fancy dress and people started acting out the parts of their dress, and
started to get a little too into them. And the demons that were dressed up were
beginning to be really demonic and started to freak people out – you know, the
perfect setting for a Residents’ gig. Now, I was playing violin at the gig and
according to N. Senada, he saw my figner jump off the violin and become very
snake-like. There’s actually a photograph of it which is in the Ralph Records
Collection at the Cryptic Corporation. It kind of looks like the camera was
sort of out of focus, but there definitely is a snake there – and N. Senada
told us about it before he’d even seen the photograph. He said, “Your finger
was just like a snake writhing around the violin,” hence, Snakefinger.
FFanzeen: Can anyone get a gander at that picture?
Snakefinger: Yeah, I’m not very
recognizable – I have a gas mask and a trench coat on – but it’s definitely me.
FFanzeen: We’re not leaving until you tell us who the Residents are.
[laughs] They’re probably not anyone famous at all, just a bunch of guys.
Snakefinger: That would be a big
let-down, wouldn’t it? But it could all be a lie. It could actually be John,
George, Ringo and whoever else – or I might just be making this up.
FFanzeen: Paul is making too much money to do something creative.
Snakefinger: No, Paul wanted to be
one, but we – oh, sorry!
FFanzeen: This doesn’t seem to be much of a tour – you hang around New
York for a few weeks, instead of the night-after-night type affair. Is this a
prelude to the legendary Residents / Snakefinger tour?
Snakefinger: Well, in answer to that
question, yes and no. We’re discussing it right now. We’re discussing how it’s
going to get in with all the people what we want to use, and it’s a very strong
possibility at the moment. We might do a few little local things first, to see
how we like it. They feel how I do about being on the road; the actual shows
are exciting and fun, but everything that goes along with it, the whole stigma
– there’s a whole mental attitude that is almost impossible to avoid on the
road, and I mean, why put yourself into one mental bag like that – apart from
selling more records and stuff like that, which is all jolly good I’m sure –
but why limit yourself? There’s no chance that you can get out of a tour
without being a smaller person than when you went in. And without a few months
to recover your scope of vision afterwards, you’re done. People that are on the
road constantly, their scope of vision gets to be so tiny; they can basically
only see the crew of people that they’ve been with, and the world becomes a
terribly small place for them.
FFanzeen: Groupies and journalists.
Snakefinger: Yeah, well, you get to
hate your fellow humans after a few months, and you feel like this little
assault group on humanity, which is healthy for gigging; gigging’s a ritual –
at least that’s what it should be at any rate – to fix something important in
your mind, i.e., the costumes and things that people wear onstage, the
attitudes they get over. It’s a magical ritual. You cause changes to occur
right there in the minds of people that are coming to see you, which is fine,
and you need that assault and battery attitude to do it. And it’s like, Us or Them. It’s not that they’re the
enemy, but they’re who you have to deal with; they’re the consciousness you
have to change. So, to go on like an assault and battery squad might not be the
most subtle way of going about it, but it is necessary to maintain some
attitude of that sort. Just to get it done, as far as performing is concerned,
there’s a middle ground in-between records and live that you have to take because
if you go up there and try to be art for art’s sake, you’re just going to alienate
everyone. I’d like to get through on a mass level. That’s one of my purposes
and one of my points. The more people I can get through to, the better it’s
gonna be, and in the excitement of a gig, you have to solo down a couple of
times, and you have to make it loud and nasty, and there’s a middle road where
you can keep the subtleties in it, but still do things that are semi-expected
at a gig – and also, the things that are semi-expected.
FFanzeen: What kind of band set-up are you using for these gigs?
Snakefinger: The instrumentation is
completely straight. I think the music is weird enough in itself that one
doesn’t have to go to synthesized cow udders and things like that to get weird
music. It’s a basic set-up, with two guitars, bass, and drums. The other guitar
player’s a co-founder of the Dead Kennedy’s. They’re all very young, very
fresh, without time to pick up any heavy attitudes yet about what they are or
what they like. They don’t really know what cool means yet, which I really
like. If I’m gonna tour, I certainly don’t want to do it with a bunch of
seasoned old soldiers; I want it to be fresh and exciting.
FFanzeen: Are you using any visuals?
Snakefinger: No, we’re on the
tightest budget you ever heard of in your whole life. Also, I think the added
extraordinary visuals in the way of slides and films would just help to confuse
the issue.
FFanzeen: People ask you about the Residents so often, you probably feel
like just handing out a printed statement sometimes?
Snakefinger: Yes and no, for two
reasons: one reason is that you take the question and answer it, and then you
can turn it around to take in the subjects you want to talk about; the number
two reason is this – and it’s something I wanted to say to you – I’d sign a
paper and say that everything I’ve told you so far, and every question that I’ve
answered has been the truth and the way I really feel – right now. If you want
to come back and do an interview next week, every answer might be completely different;
my whole concepts on life might have changed. That’s the only real difficulty I
have with interviews, and it’s the only real thing I like to say at the end of
any interview I ever do. This is the way I feel now; tomorrow it might all be
different, so don’t take the philosophical word of the Lord out of what I am
saying. It all changes.
FFanzeen: That’s reasonable, since everything is always in a state of
flux anyway.
Snakefinger: That’s why, particularly
with rock’n’roll stars – or whatever they’re called – rock’n’roll morons –
these big quotes of ”This is my stance,” and “This is my view on life, come
hell or high water,” are just full of shit. I’ve never agreed with it,
whatsoever. I’ve never endorsed it.
FFanzeen: Right, but don’t you ever get sick of answering questions about
the Residents?
Snakefinger: That’s okay. They’re
interesting to talk about. I don’t mind.
I've known Nicole White and her partner Jai Richards since I've been coming to Saskatoon, and especially since I moved here in 2009. A more intelligent, warm-hearted, socially-driven is hard to find (not counting Jai and my own partner, of course).
On August 30, the day before NDP leader Thomas Mulcair was set to speak in the city, Nicole and Jai had an intimate fundraiser in their back yard in the form of a house concert. The performer was the warm and wonderful Allyson Reigh, who is as fun solo as she is in her group, Rosie and the Riveters. The emcee was Brice Field, who also organized the event.
Currently living in Saskatoon (email at RBF55@msn.com for address). From 1977-88, I used to publish a print version of a music magazine in New York called FFanzeen, which dealt with the wide-ranging independent music scene. I also photographed many bands from the period (and since). Now I write this blog. And the beat goes on.
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