Seven candles on our cake. We wanted one of those huge ones so everbody could have a piece, but Jeezuz, that gets expensive! So just imagine us sitting back having very, very thin slices of plain white cake with no frosting here in the plush Cosmik Tower while you read the 7th annual Cosmik Conversations montage. What's that? This is your first time here and you have no clue what I'm talking about? Okay, it's like this: every year, instead of doing like many magazines do and dedicate an entire issue to ourselves, we just have a montage. Chunks of interview in a seemingly random order (ah, but is it REALLY random? ... um... kinda, yeah) that gives you a taste of every interview from the year just completed. Our seventh year. Did... did I mention that? We've been online seven years. Longer than any other web-based music magazine I know of. Look, I've got baby pictures in my wallet. Ah, oh yeah, this is Cosmik Debris when it was two months old... Hey wait, don't go! Okay, forget the pictures and I'll leave you alone to enjoy another year of Cosmik Conversations.

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BRICK LAYER CAKE
Interviewed by Holly Day
Speaking of birthday cakes, Todd Trainer, drummer for Shellac and the sole human behind Brick Layer Cake, is one unique dude. For one thing, he likes cake. A lot.

Cosmik: The titles mention "cake" and "icing" a lot, enough to make one think that might be part of a theme.

Todd: Yeah. Icing has definitely always been a part of the visual aspect of Brick Layer Cake. All four records have had icing on the covers, both front and back covers - literally all the artwork that has ever appeared on my records is icing, so that's a theme, an aesthetic theme.

Cosmik: Actually, when I was looking at the back cover, reading the titles off, I thought there were supposed to be 12 songs on it because the last four credits on the album kind of run in with the song title list.

Todd: My records have been very confusing because of my use of icing in the artwork. Icing is a rather limited medium - I shouldn't say "limited." It's an unforgiving medium to work with, because you only get one chance to really do it right. I'm happy that my records are not loaded with information, not overwhelmed with unimportant information, and that has to do with using icing as a writing tool because it is a very difficult medium to work with. I just try to put the essential information in the liner notes, but I realize that in icing, sometimes, it's tough to differentiate the song titles from the credits. But anyone who hears the records more than once that pays attention to the song titles should inevitably be able to make sense of the album.

Cosmik: So is it an actual cake on the album cover?

Todd: It is actual frosting. It was freshly-made icing, prepared by myself, covering a large cardboard box. I used cakes to begin with - I think I used cakes on the first two records, but it just got too expensive having a front cover cake, and a back cover cake. And when I was making vinyl records as well, each side would have another cake pictured on them, and I was making all the cakes and icing them myself - although I did have help at one time, a friend named Flower (Flour?) helped me with the first cake. But from that point on, I've been doing it by myself, and, like anything, I've gotten better at it. But the cardboard boxes are less expensive.

Cosmik: Plus, you don't end up with a whole bunch of cakes.

Todd: Oh, that's not a problem. That part of cake-making is always rewarding, the leftover cakes from the photo shoot.


PORTERHOUSE
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
Out of Portland, Oregon comes a funk band that's starting to get attention. They've been labeled a jam band, but that doesn't tell the whole story. Porterhouse's Joey Porter writes good songs to hang jams off of, but first and foremost he writes good songs.

Cosmik: Joey, you write all the material, and, how many keyboards are you going to use tonight?

Joey: Three.

Cosmik: Three. And you used something like eight on the album. You get a lot of colors out of your keyboards....

Joey: Well, when you don't have a guitar player, you have to play two different keyboards at once to make it sound full.

Cosmik: It makes me wonder, when you're writing, how conscious do you have to be of leaving space for the other players so it doesn't become Joey Porter, One Man Band?

Joey: What I do is write the drums and the bass first, then I look for where the spaces are and fill the spaces with keyboard parts, then I write the horn line after that. So nobody's stepping on anybody's toes, you know? It's better if one guy writes the music, because if everybody's jamming they'll step on each other.

Cosmik: But not all the parts I hear on the record are written...

Joey: Not the solos.

Cosmik: So you consciously create space for that.

Joey: Absolutely.

Josh: It's a jazz formula.

Joey: Funk music is a lot like Afro-Cuban, like salsa. Everybody's got their part. If everybody decides they all want to jam at once it's going to sound like shit. Funk music is not about "look what I can do." It's about "look how I can make you feel." So if you keep it simple, it's going to be more funky than if you try to be Mr. Fusion Guy.

Cosmik: Well, there are a lot of jazz formulas. In, like, your basic bebop group, you've got a front line of a soloist or soloists, who are blowing, and everything else is done to support that, but funk is busier, more an ensemble music...

Joey: It can be.

Josh: We try and mix that. We try to mix the ensemble playing of funk with the improvisational soloist taking charge, but it's still ensemble funk.

Joey: I think it's a pop song form. You know, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, like a regular radio song.

Cosmik: Well, that's it. Songs are real important....

Josh: Oh, songs are very important.

Cosmik: Which may be one of the places you diverge from the jam band stereotype, where songs are too often just a vehicle to get somewhere else, while for a band like Porterhouse, songs are central.

Joey: Absolutely. We're not a groove oriented band, we're a song oriented band.


WILLARD GRANT CONSPIRACY
Interviewed by Holly Day
Former Flower Tamers Robert Fisher and Paul Austin have now teamed in an Americana outfit known as the Willard Grant Conspiracy. At any given time the group can consist of one to 14 members, depending on who is available and wants to play. In this clip, singer/songwriter Fisher talks about going on tour and performing music that involves the listener.

Cosmik: Who's in your touring ensemble this time around?

Fisher: Well, I'm still trying to decide that, to be honest, because--and this is something that no one really wants to hear about, but it's the truth--there's an economic issue that is whether I can afford to bring people or not, and at this particular stage in the game, there's not very much money in this tour. I just got off a tour--actually, I just got back last night--of England, Ireland, Slovenia, and Italy, and we started the tour with eight members in the band, and then some of them had to go home after five shows. We did another fourteen dates with five members in the band, and then some people had to go home after that, and I ended up doing a bunch of shows in Italy either with two people or by myself. So the economics of the situation sort of depends on who's able to come and who isn't. It's probably not going to be more than two people. But that'll be fine, though, because the Handsome Family are a duo, too, although they're talking about bringing a drummer with them and becoming a trio this tour.

Cosmik: What do you like to do to pass the time between shows when you're touring?

Fisher: Well, one of the things that I try really hard to do is get out and see where I am, because when you're touring, even when you're in Europe, the inside of a van, and the inside of a club, and the inside of a hotel room kind of look the same, whether you're in Ohio or in Italy. They're not that different. So, one of the really important things to do, I think, is to just get out and walk around the city and get a sense of where you're at and who the people are. Maybe it's just sitting in a café and doing postcards and listening to people talk around you, or whatever it is, but just to get a sense of where you are. I think that's really important.

Cosmik: Your songs seem to have a kind of universal quality to them, as though they could be set in Small Town Anywhere.

Fisher: Well, even Big Town Anywhere. It's not necessarily just small town stuff. But I think I try to do that. I guess, in my mind, writing a song--it's not just about the story that you tell. It's also about what you don't tell, because oftentimes, what you don't tell is the place that the listener has a place to involve themselves in. I don't know if I'm saying that the best way I've ever said it, but what I mean is that there should be enough of the story there that it engages the imagination of the listener, but not so much there that the listener can't actually put themselves in the story. And by putting themselves in the story, they sort of complete the story. It's kind of like when you're with three or four friends, and you go to the art museum, and you're standing in the gallery, and there's about ten other people standing around you, looking at the same painting, and you're listening to them talk--everybody has a different interpretation of what they're looking at, and none of it's wrong, all of it's pretty much accurate based on people's experiences. And I think songs, and short stories, and things like that, gain their own characteristics and personalities because the more they live on their own, the more people sort of interpret them and bring their own experience to them. And that's interesting to me.


SUGARCULT
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Many dream of writing the perfect powerpop song. Many fail. Every songwriter has their own method. I don't know how many hits were penned using Tim Pagnotta's method. I don't think I want to know.

Cosmik: I'm always interested in process, how a song gets from here to there. How did something like "Stuck In America" get written?

Pagnotta: "Stuck In America" came together so fast! [It] was written one morning. I guess I really wrote it in a couple minutes in the bathroom. It was written so fast, sometimes you take a guitar into the bathroom [when] you know you're going to be in there for a couple of minutes. I think from the time that I strummed the first chord to like the finishing, exact same arrangement and everything that's on the record, was like fifteen, twenty minutes one morning. I was so pissed off that was the single because as a songwriter some songs come together over a period of a couple weeks with bits and parts written here and there, and the band and I work our asses off to make them what we thought would be perfect songs, you know, with fine tuned little segues. We'd really spent a lot of time on them, a lot considering we were a garage band.

Cosmik: One of the things I like about a song like that is that it's really crisp all the way through, it doesn't waste any energy at any point, it's always pumpin'. Something that bothers me about a lot of songs that are designed for radio, I hate fade-outs, and yours has that nice crisp ending to it. It's complete and there's nothing that needs to be added to it.

Pagnotta: Fade-outs can be a little Daryl Hall and John Oates. You listen to a Rick Springfield record, actually I like him a lot, Working Class Dog is a pretty cool pop record, but I think every song is a fade out.


KEVIN SALEM
Interviewed by Bill Holmes
Guitar player/singer/songwriter/producer... Kevin Salem is all of those things, and all of them come together in his album Ecstatic, which took 5 years to come into being. You also get a sense of where he's going from this album...

Cosmik: ...you mentioned Freedy writing complete stories...a lot of your songs are like scenes, for me. It's like I'm walking in at some point, opening a doorway, catching something, but then I'm the one backing out. It's not like it's over or hasn't reached its natural conclusion, but I've had a little window on it for a while. I mean "1000 Smiles" - and it was the music as much as the lyrics - reminded me of the movie Magnolia and the way Aimee Mann's songs were fleshed out into the narrative of the movie. Your songs are both poetic and pensive in much the same way. Have you had any interest in working in the film medium?

Kevin: I do score films, actually.

Cosmik: Well, that shows how stupid I am! (laughs)

Kevin: No, I mean no one would know that, because it's something I just started to do. I finished my third film this week; it was a western. And it is...amazing! I mean when you write lyrics and sing, and then all the anxiety that goes around that...the more personal the lyric the more anxious the moment. Then someone says "okay, your job for the next two hours is to make someone feel something, and your lyric is going to be whatever noise we recorded."..and you have some dialogue and the sound of a car. And I think that focus really helped this album tremendously because I looked at the songs in a whole different light. I was a little less intimidated with the sound of a piano or any other instrument that I played, because I had just done this film in that way. I mean I love that you see these songs as scenes, if there was a response that I would hope for that would be it.

Cosmik: Well to be able to have so much imagery in the lyrics, but also be moved by the music, that's why this record works for me. I could focus on the lyrics or you could take them away and the music would almost take me to the same place.

Kevin: It's interesting now because of all the film work I've done over the past months. I mean I produce the band now, I insist that the band play live, no sampling...a reaction to my initial reaction, I suppose. It's fun, it's really fun. I mean you can't do music the same way for too long because you get bored. But I don't know how much people focus on lyrics. Do they focus on them?

Cosmik: I don't know...good question. I do and I don't sometimes. "Hang On Sloopy" is a pretty stupid song but I love it.

Kevin: Yeah, like last night we played a bar and I love playing there because of this great jukebox. Right after we get offstage I have to be the first one there and play like the whole Fun House album. I mean the lyrics don't really mean anything, but they exhibit this attitude about the world, being rebellious. If you could make one word, you're lucky. I don't really feel when I write that every word means something; honestly sometimes I go for the sound of the word. If I had to do one or the other, sometimes I'd make sure it sounds good. With "Magnetic" I wanted to have something strong and personal. And "The Medicine Down."..well, a lot of the songs dealt with feelings of adolescence. They sort of dealt with my adolescence, or how I thought. But some of them took five minutes (to write) and others took two years. I still consider myself sort of an apprentice with this -

Cosmik: It's like cooking. It's done when it's done.

Kevin: Yeah, yeah! I mean there's no way to say when it's done it's done, and there's no real way to...well, for example I just wrote this song for a film called "The End Of Love." And the director emailed me with some lyrical suggestions. I collaborate a lot, and I pride myself on being able to work with other people, but for some reason - and the suggestions were really kind of good - for some reason I bristled at it. I mean just because the words sounded good in there, it wasn't the intent that I had for the song, and I really had to think hard about whether I cared that the lines were better or that the intention was clear. And in the end I came down on the side of intention. I think it's the most important thing with a lyric. It's what the writer means. And if I did my job really well as a singer and a producer and a songwriter, when you get my record hopefully you'll feel what I felt and meant the moment I wrote the song.


FUGU
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
French pop band Fugu's debut album in the US featured exquisite arrangements that included 25 listed players. Somehow Mehdi Zannad managed to translate those songs into a stage show that is different but still superb. Jerome Didelot, the bassist in the band, is also Medhi's chief co-conspirator and was present for this interview.

Cosmik: Jerome, you were part of the album with 25 players, and now you're a part of bringing it to the stage with five people. What's that been like?

Jerome: It was an important role on the album, because I gave advice on the recording, and some of the players, like the horn players, were just around for a few days.

Cosmik: And the two of you have a real partnership since the beginning of the album. You're the only one who's really carried over to the road.

Jerome: Well, Mehdi and I are neighbors and we can talk about music all the time, when we meet on the street or wherever. So it's important that we talk about songs, not only playing them but talking about them, because we get a distance from what we are doing and can see ways to make it better. I have a feeling that my role has been like this, Mehdi was really into it because this was his and I was involved in it from the beginning, making some demos and I could say that's great, that's great, that's great, it was often great, and then say, well, you know....

Cosmik: Well, composers, even if they get sole credit, rarely work truly alone. You need a foil.

Mehdi: Yes, working as just one person can be very claustrophobic. I don't like it.


TRANSGLOBAL UNDERGROUND
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Over the past decade, Transglobal Underground have done more than just follow along with other world music groups, regurgitating the innovations of others until they're cliches. Transglobal are leaders, arguably founders of an entire genre of music and one of the longest-lived bands still making vital music and pushing the envelope today. Co-founders Hamid Mantu (percussionist) and Tim Whelan (keyboards) have been the mainstays while others have come and gone, the new blood bringing flavors of this country or that, this culture or that, making Transglobal Underground a constantly evolving ethnic musical experience. In a genre where familiar samples are overused, Transglobal is a curiosity for the samples that they choose. It's a choice typical of the kind of thought process that keeps them at the head of the pack.

Cosmik: You know, I've never heard a sample that I recognize as being someone else when I listen to TGU. I admit I haven't heard every single thing you've done, but I'm not hearing blasts of other bands. Do you sample?

Tim: We largely sample ourselves these days. The thing is, when you start you think "wow, you can put this sound together with that sound and it makes a third sound that isn't any of the first two sounds," which, incidentally, is probably why you don't recognize any. Occasionally, on some of the other albums, there's been a clear sample, and then you credit it and it's as simple as that. Everything else has been distorted and we can't remember where it came from ourselves, but a lot of what we do now is sampling the people around us. Because obviously that original excitement is gone, you know? I mean, sampling has become a sort of cliche in that sense. Also, with the growth of digital recording, it's very hard to tell what is a live recording and what is a sample. The barrier between that is gone. You know, you can record a drum track or a vocal and muck around with them and change them all around. You can take a five minute drum track and do all sorts of odd things with it. Which, in fact, is the case on "London Zulu." That's a straight live drum track, but it's been changed around quite a bit.

Cosmik: Is this why there is no "typical" Transglobal Underground song?

Tim: Yeah. I think the growth of technology has so many possibilities in it that you keep on expanding what you can do. The important thing is not to let the technology take over too much. We come to a point where that gets chucked out the window and it gets switched off and we just get on with mixing it, you know?

Cosmik: But... I really hate to say "in your genre," because your music covers so many genres, but in what you do and the way you do it, it seems to me that trying not to let the technology take over would be like trying to keep a lion back without a whip. How do you go about not letting it take over? [Author's note: After seeing the band live a week after this interview and watching them dazzle the crowd during one of the four power outages, using only acoustic drums and the energy of their own motions on the stage, I realize I was young and naive when I asked this question.]

Tim: Well probably not being very good at knowing how it works in the first place. (laughs). We've been fiddling about with this Apple Mac for about two years now and we still can't work out what the fuck we're meant to be doing on it. Maybe we'll get there one day, but we make more mistakes than get things right, and it's the mistakes that get in there, largely. We're not huge tech-heads, let's put it that way. We use what we use because music comes out of it, and generally, if there's some fascinating aspects of a computer that we can't understand the instructions, we just never get around to learning it, and we go off and do something else instead, like hitting a bit of wood.

Cosmik: (Laughing) Well, see, that's healthy! Even in the 70s, the rockers said they didn't want the technology to take over, so a lot of them pulled the cables out of the stomp boxes and plugged straight into the Marshall. I guess the beat goes on.

Tim: And everybody you meet has a different way of looking at it -- what works and doesn't work for them -- and in the end, it's an instrument, like any other instrument.


JASON NOBLE OF SHIPPING NEWS
Interviewed by Holly Day
Sometimes when getting into the music business musicians become pretty technically sophisticated. For Jason Noble, learning the technical aspects of sampling and electronic music was inspiring and fun, but when it comes down to it he'd rather pick up a real instrument and experience the spirit of the music as part of a band.

Cosmik: So what was your first band?

Jason: The first band that I was ever in was actually a rap band, with Jeff, called King G and the J Crew. We played our first show at a talent show at our high school, and we actually, eventually, put out a record. That was kind of the first really big recording project we ever did. It was actually quite educational, and we still listen to it, to this day. It's one of the few records from our past that we can listen to consistently. Go figure. It was kind of a Louisville-specific kind of thing, and had all our friends involved in it. It definitely had the same philosophy of, like, let's experiment, let's have a lot of different people from different bands contribute, all the same type of thing we do now. It was a blast, actually.

Cosmik: Can the record still be found?

Jason: Yeah! It can, actually. It's available through a few small indie distributors, and sometimes we take copies on tour with us. People are vastly confused by that record. In fact, Jeff and I frequently, to this day, send each other raps that we've written, and we also frequently discuss the fact that we somehow need to find the same amount of energy that we used to have when we played those first shows, because we used to freak out. Now, we have to stay still just a little bit more so that we can actually play our instruments, but it was somewhat customary for there to be a lot of dancing at those King G shows. I don't know if people generally associate lots of dancing, and/or dancing on tabletops, with Shipping News, but that's something we're trying to bring back to our shows.

Cosmik: So what were your rap songs about?

Jason: They were about all kinds of things. One thing we didn't try to do was to posture ourselves as gangstahs. A lot of it was based on stuff that we liked, and what we liked was Run DMC, and Public Enemy, but we also liked stuff like Curtis Mayfield, and Sly and the Family Stones-stuff that had a strong instrumental arrangement background to it. So we got into these unusually dense arrangements, and had a lot of people playing with us at shows, and the stuff that we sang about was taking road trips with our friends, and a lot of political things that were egging us on at the time. There was a fair amount of humor in it, too. We were sort of aware that we were pretty goofy. But it was a serious thing as far as trying to really pull it off. Some of the technical end of it, like learning how to record stuff, and working with the samplers, and the really rudimentary, early drum machines that we still use a lot today-it was sort of like our class in recording. We really look up to a lot of the engineers and producers for dance and rap and hip hop stuff, because some of the music is still some of the most inventive stuff that you hear, because there's really no boundary to what you can do. I think it gets viewed on a very surface level as not being really technically sophisticated, when in fact it's incredibly sophisticated and really hard to make well. I don't know how good we were at doing it, but we definitely have been inspired by a lot of it.

Cosmik: Do you to prefer to use "real" instruments or samples?

Jason: I definitely have a really big preference to "real" instruments, just because the community and the human element of playing with other musicians, especially like in Shipping News, it's the three of us trying to communicate as much as we can by playing off each other. I still make a fair amount of music that's electronic music, or sample-based music, and a lot of times, it is actually nice to have that sort of control and build this music collage exactly however you see fit. But it's a totally different thing. It's like the difference between theatre and filmmaking. The same sort of basic elements are there, but it's a totally different, human thing when you play a show with other people. It's your body, and a couple of other people trying to generate something that's got spirit to it. But I do like having access to recording as a creating medium that sort of stands alone. And Shipping News, we use the studio quite a lot, but I think we're still a trio, and everything in the band kind of functions in that way.


THE WESTSIDE DAREDEVILS
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Knoxville's newest band, The Westside Daredevils, may be one of their very best. Though they are young, these guys are already mastering the intricacies of pure pop, from alluring musical hooks to brilliant lyrical metaphors. In this exchange with Brett Cassidy, we examined a juxtaposition of music and lyric that, in a way, served as a bit of camouflage.

Cosmik: These songs are fun to pay attention to. The first time around I totally missed the story in "London Forces." I'll bet you just kind of slipped that little 3-way affair scenario past a lot of people because the music is so whimsical and happy.

Brett: Absolutely. I was being a bit devious. Actually, "London Forces," the opposite of ionic bonds, is the molecular bond that forms water, H2O. So, I had originally conceived the song about a love triangle with a female chemist, sort of Maxwell Silver Hammer type thing, you know, there just has to be a hot chemist out there somewhere. But I was listening to The Zombies' "Care of Cell 44" and was struck by the incongruity between the music, which is about as pop as can be, and the story, of a man writing a letter to his girlfriend who's in prison. At the same time, Jeff was trying to get me into Crosby, Stills and Nash, and he played "Triad" for me. It just clicked. I mean, I don't have the Masters and Johnson study handy, but I'm pretty sure threesomes are far up there on guys' wish-lists. I'm surprised everyone isn't writing songs about threesomes.

Cosmik: I'm surprised I haven't made a comp tape of songs about threesomes. There ARE a lot of songs, actually, but what's great about yours is that it doesn't come off like a dirty joke in a bar. As you continue to learn as a songwriter, is metaphor something that's important to you, or does it just happen as it happens?

Brett: I'm a pretty verbal person, so word play and trickery are just kind of inherent in anything I do. In songwriting I try to keep the composition in mind, verbally and phonetically. For instance, more aggressive songs need more hard consonant sounds and long vowels. The melody sometimes will dictate where accented syllables need to be, and playing with that can increase tension. But, as far as meaning and metaphor go, again, compositionally speaking, you just want to have more than one thing going on, so maybe the implicit meaning can be a natural counterpoint to the feel of the song. It's easy to work in opposites, like "London Forces," but you don't need to. "Miner's Short Wave" is a good example. The song is literally about a miner with a short wave radio broadcasting, but it's also about freedom of expression and the solitude of self, universal ideas. So the song's somber, but, yeah, being able to express yourself while being utterly alone is somber. Jeff did a good job on that one.


TUNGSTEN
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Chalmette, Louisiana's best kept secret is a metal trio known (or not so known) as Tungsten. Guitarist/vocalist Al Hodge is aware of the situation and does nothing to change it. The three of them have careers and families and no desire to do the tour grind, even though it could bring them acclaim. They've made four CDs and, even though they're not household names here, Europe's caught on. They like their metal played with sincerity there, and Tungsten plays for the love of it. Can't get more sincere than that. Euro metal mags regularly mention the band and carry interviews. We decided it was time to ring a few bells in the states.

Cosmik: "Who's Drinking With The Devil Tonight" is two and a half minutes long. Another Tungsten special, you know? Get in, beat 'em up, get out. Is that an accidental writing style or a philosophy?

Hodge: That occurred by accident. When we first started I didn't play guitar solos. This was back in 1985 when everybody wanted to be Yngwie J. Malmsteen. I wanted to be James Hetfield. Just a chug-a-lug heavy rhythm dude, you know? The other guitar players around town played circles around me. They could play everybody else's stuff, but they couldn't come up with anything that was original. I focused on making up my own junk, because I didn't want to learn how to play somebody else's songs. I think the reason that the songs are always so short is because I just felt that dragging on something too long would bore people. Because I got bored easily by songs like that. We followed the metal structure codes when it came to writing, but clearly followed the hardcore/punk vibe when it came to the lengths of the songs. So that accident became our philosophy that still sticks to this day.

Cosmik: Are there times when you struggle with yourself to leave out an idea because you don't WANT to go over a certain time with a song, or because you feel it's said enough?

Hodge: Steve Talamo complains the most about our songs being too short. He's a few years older than us so he grew up on Saxon, Tygers Of Pantang, Riot, Scorpions and Iron Maiden. Those bands would drag shit out for hours with tons of lead guitar. Steve is a lead player, but plays bass with us. So I understand where he's coming from. He has a side band where he plays lead guitar, so he can take care of that urge that we can't fulfill for him. They don't have a name yet, so I can't plug it for him. But as far as Tungsten goes, I think as a whole, we agree for the most part to keep the songs short and to the point.


JIM ROLL
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
Something very unusual has come out of Ann Arbor, Michigan in the recent past - Jim Roll teamed up with two novelists and a literary journal to put out a totally unique album, Inhabiting The Ball. That first track is a doozy...

Cosmik: ...that's one of the hallmarks of the new record, that eclectic sound, both instrumentally and stylistically. Do you have a name for the kind of music you're doing?

Roll: Not really. I used to think of myself as a kind of garage folk band, but on this record we had a little more fun with it. I think what tied it together is working with my producer, Brian Deck. He's really good with making electronic noises sound organic and vice versa. But I don't know. I really don't have a name for it.

Cosmik: Well, there are some folk things, some garage rockers, some stuff that's uncategorizable. Did you do the sequencing, did he? How did that work?

Roll: Well, I did some of the sequencing, at home, actually, and he did some at the studio in Chicago. It was kind of a split. We mixed everything together, except for the last song. The way this record fell together, with the authors, I was doing demos. A few of the songs with Denis Johnson were for a play he was doing, so I would work them out and send the demo to Denis and he would send me feedback. He liked them all, but I had this stuff that included drum machines and shit, and then we went into the studio with Brian Deck and he's a master of that stuff. He was able to manipulate the sounds, whether it was a real person or a drum machine or something. He was able to take it and give us all those kind of cartoonish sounds behind this routine music.

Cosmik: Well, to be honest, when I first listened to the album, having read a little bit about your music, the title track, which leads the album, was almost a little off-putting....

Roll: Right. (chuckles)

Cosmik: It wasn't really what I expected to hear, and I almost thought "Should I take this off and put on something like what I expected to hear?"

Roll: Right....

Cosmik: But the more I've listened, the more I've realized that that song serves a purpose. It throws you into an alternate universe where almost any kind of noise can happen in the context of almost any kind of song...

Roll: Exactly. I have two other records, and on each of those we kick off the record with probably the most representative, catchiest song, because it's such a competetive world, this music thing. I wanted come out of the gate strong with something people could grab ahold of, because if you're an indie artist a lot of people will judge you by that first song. But on this one, I just said screw it. I wanted to do exactly what you just said. Exactly what you said. I have nothing more to add. It creates a doorway to this other universe where anything can happen....

Cosmik: Like the first track on a Firesign Theater album....

Roll: Right. Exactly. I'm sure that to a second degree people will have to get past the first song, but it's short and at least the second one comes roaring out with kind of a low-fi pop thing.


THE INCREDIBLE MOSES LEROY
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Ron Fountenberry named his musical entity when he was still solo, and in looking for a name that conveyed that feeling he chose that of his activist great grandfather. These days Ron's music is not very political, but if that changes he'll take his music along the paths Moses Leroy tread.

Cosmik: The name of the band is after your great grandfather who I understand was a longtime activist in Houston. Did you know him that well? Is he a particular hero to you?

Ron: I did know him really well. He died when I was eighteen, so he lived into his nineties and he was really active all the way to the end. He was a really incredible guy. It was more an issue of when looking for a name for a band, I wanted it to be a solo [name], because initially it was really me just by myself in my bedroom. I wanted it to have that kind of feeling, like this is a person and not so much a band and I didn't want to use my own name 'cause I don't think my own name is that interesting. So I [thought] Moses Leroy sounded interesting because it's such an old type of name. You don't hear of any like that, an old Southern Black kind of name, and then I thought about [putting it together with the names you find in] the circus. These people always have The Amazing This and The Incredible That and The Stupendous and I just stuck the two ideas together and that's kind of how it happened, The Incredible Moses Leroy. Eventually of course it became less of a one man show. I still do pretty much everything but now I don't have to play the bass or whatever, I have someone to do that. It's definitely more of a band situation.

Cosmik: Do you have a song that's about Moses Leroy?

Ron: No I don't. I shy away from writing songs about like family members... I do write a lot about myself and about my feelings and things but I try to shy away from writing stuff about that, cause it seems to get kind of shlocky, kinda cheesy. I write in abstracts; it's a little bit easier for me.

Cosmik: I also got the EP called Growing Up Clean in America (containing five songs from the first album). It seemed like there was a little more touch of political awareness in it somehow, more than Pocket Radio. We're suddenly living in a very political time, has that affected what you're writing now?

Ron: I'm still writing the same kind of stuff. I generally just write from my own perspective, in terms of things I see or perceive and I kind of mutate them a little bit. I try not to be very direct because sometimes I find it's really hard to say things. I use more metaphor. I may know what I'm talking about but no one else may, but that's OK. I'm doing it for myself. There's a song I wrote like about four months ago and I don't have a complete title but basically the main idea of the song is that New York is the center of the world. I've been playing in New York a lot and I started writing this song. It actually was becoming one of my favorite songs and I was looking forward to trying to put it on a record. Now with the lyrics that I have, I'm not sure that it's going to be appropriate even a year or two years from now. That's kind of disappointing. I may do it anyway, but I'll change the city or whatever. We'll have to see. But all that stuff has definitely affected me, in terms of that particular song. If I am going to be writing protest things, it's not going to be about a war, it's going to be about being black in this country and the way I feel about I'm perceived and treated and stuff like that, because that's more important to me. I think there's plenty of things to work on here at home, and there's a lot of issues that I think are unresolved. There's things I experience on a daily basis, so if I was to write something more political it'd probably be something like that.


STEEL PULSE
Interviewed by Eric Steiner
Selwyn Brown of the conscious reggae band Steel Pulse talked with us about the musical mission his band has taken on and offered some wisdom and hope about racism, still a very prevalent social issue today.

Cosmik: Steel Pulse continues to sing about some pretty difficult subjects. How has the band been able to keep the sound fresh for nearly two decades?

Brown: When we originally started this band, we wanted to create music that would inspire people in the same kind of way that we felt inspired by the music we were growing up on. Music by such artists as Bob Marley, Burning Spear, and all the conscious reggae singers like the Abyssians, Gladiators, Peter Tosh, Wailing Souls, Bunny Wailer, and Third World. We were inspired by them, and we wanted to create music that would inspire people in much the same way. Fortunately for us, even though that there are only three original members of the band left - we have musicians that come in and out of the band - these musicians have adopted the same philosophy toward music, whether they are with us for six months or ten years, and basically, they contribute to Steel Pulse. Many of our musicians were fans themselves before they came into the band so they knew what we were about. I think because of our message, we deal with the realities of the have-nots of the world. We also deal with environmental issues, political issues and religious issues, difficult issues all over the border.

Cosmik: It breaks my heart that we talk of racism today. I thought that stuff would be all behind us.

Brown: It is very, very unfortunate, yes.

Cosmik: In this region, here in the Pacific Northwest, we've had the World Trade Organization protests that you may have seen in the news. Racial profiling is a reality, you just have to look at the headlines.

Brown: I've seen that. It is very unfortunate. We still have to talk about it because these things are still happening every day all around the world. Certain things have improved over the years, though. One thing that has improved is that people are mixing more. Your kids and my kids are all growing up together. Therefore, if our kids grew up on the same block, my kids would eat the food you eat and your kids would visit our home and eat the food we eat. They'd come to my house and see pictures of Marcus Garvey and we would all talk about that. Same thing would be true of your house, too. It is a generational thing, really. The roots of racism are so strong; it has taken many generations to break them down.


THE SOUTHERN ROCK ALL-STARS
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Going to see The Southern Rock All-Stars is money well spent. Four guys give 110 percent each up on that stage, and those guys just happen to be... well... all-stars. The drummer is Jakson Spires of Blackfoot fame, the lead guitarist is Dave Hlubek, formerly of Molly Hatchet, the lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist, Jay Johnson, has played with a who's who of southern rock bands including Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Rossington band, and bassist Charles Hart has been in the producer's seat with just about all of the above and a member of Radio Tokyo. After spending the day with them, the first thing one notices is that there aren't any of the ego clashes one would expect. These guys respect one another and have a good time. They also don't necessarily go in for that whole "supergroup" tag.

Cosmik: SRAS has some heavyweight names. Supergroup. Do you find some danger in that?

Dave: Well, there are drawbacks, of course. It's just like when a company puts a product out on the marketplace and then you put out the new improved model. "Thirty percent improved!" Is it? Or is it only nineteen percent improved? Because we're all players. The anticipation and the expectations of the people can be pretty high. Myself, I'm the only one of the original six members of Molly Hatchet that's currently touring in any capacity, so there are a lot of people, curiosity seekers, who want to come see me up this close instead of seeing me up on the stage in a coliseum, where they've seen me before many times, and if they got close it was maybe for a brief moment slapping their fingertips with security all around me from up above them. A whole different thing than it is now.

Cosmik: I used to be in the front at those shows, man, squished against the plywood. You guys were already a supergroup to the people. The summer tour in 1980 in particular. That was an outdoor show in Seattle, about 40,000 people, all pushing against me to get closer to you. You guys had it going.

Dave: We found out then that there were hazards that came with being a supergroup. Talk about going full circle: We started out playing just to play, then we played small rooms like this, and before we knew what was happening we were graduating to the coliseums and then to the stadiums and then the mega-stadiums and playing with The Who in front of 800,000 people. It's all just so fast. But some of the best shows I've ever played are in these small, informal rooms. You'll find a lot of entertainers who'll agree that it's much more intimate. It's personal between you and the audience. You can get in touch with the fans. We've got a real strong fan base.

Cosmik: That shouldn't be surprising, considering how hard you've toured. You've earned it.

Dave: The drawbacks are there, though. Some people come up and treat me like a god. They'll say "oh you're the best thing since sliced bread," and I have to live up to that image they got when they saw me 15 years ago when I was on fire one night, and I'll think "God, I hope I don't let them down," because I'm older and slower. I'll turn 50 this August 28th, and I'm feelin' it. I'm not 26, 27 anymore, flyin' by the seat of my pants with my hair on fire and something to prove. I've got triple-platinums, quadruple-platinum albums from three continents, I've got a room full and a hall of gold and platinum albums adorning my home and my mother's home, all just things to look at and remember, the highest achievements, because they don't just give those things away.

Cosmik: What made them stop coming in?

Dave: I went as far as I could go... as far as I felt I was prepared to go before I left Hatchet in '87. I fell prey to all the trappings that go along with the fame and fortune, and I used my body as a garbage can for all those years, and to be perfectly honest with you, I'm surprised I'm still here after what I put myself through. I had to get out. But now it's a different pace, and I'll tell you what, the audiences we play for, by and large, make us feel real t'home.


JAMES EMERY
Interviewed by Glenn Ito
The String Trio of New York's James Emery is an original. Ask him about what he does and he talks about colors and textures and tingling as he walks offstage. There is a sense of sheer joy here that comes through in his work.

Glenn: What would you say are the key components in your approach to composing and performing music?

James: It's hard for me to look at what I do objectively and come up with a coherent answer. I know that I place a lot of emphasis on sounding original, both in tone quality and in the musical content. I have always sought to have my own sound - to speak with my own voice - and it's always a great complement to hear that I don't sound like anyone else. So I try to let my own touch, ideas and energy come through at all times. In fact, I really can't do anything but that. In terms of musical content, I draw on a wide range of materials without trying to limit or restrict what I'm using. Harmonic concepts and devices, melodic configurations, rhythmic ideas...ways to juxtapose forms...sound colors and textures...there's no end of possibilities in each of these areas. In terms of writing, I've been trying for at least ten years now to include a substantial amount of written music - through-composed material - in order to sustain a balance with the improvised material.

Glenn: What is your most memorable musical moment to date?

James: You must allow me several moments. I'll start with the most recent first: the last concert by the String Trio of New York, Dec. 15, 2001. We started at a very high level and went higher with each successive piece. By the end of the night, we were way up there...over and out. It was our best concert, in my opinion, in 24 years. So it's always good to know that your best work is not behind you. Next, my two experiences with orchestras. The last was in Vienna in Sept. 2001. The orchestra is, in the opinion of some, the most highly developed example of technology available to humans. Whether or not that is true, it is an awesome entity, staggering in its power, grace, complexity and subtlety. I wrote a 45-minute work for Klangforum Wien, a truly gifted ensemble, with Franz Koglmann, Tony Coe and me as improvising soloists. It came off very well. The whole experience of writing and orchestrating for the orchestra is a complete and total experience in every sense of the word. My first piece for orchestra, Cobalt Blue, was for the String Trio and the Air Force Symphony. When I walked off the stage after that gig, my body was tingling all over. Other memories...playing with Sam Rivers! Wow! Playing with Joe Lovano! Wow!...Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, Marty Ehrlich, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Lester Bowie!...so many others.


FRENCHY
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
In the French Quarter of New Orleans you can find some mighty fine art in gallery windows. It's one of the things that area is known for. In one gallery window you'll find art that will either baffle you or change your perceptions of art and music forever. The paintings depict bands on stages with ribbons of energy in various colors swirling around them, and if you're a person who is truly into music you look at these paintings and know they tell the truth, that this is what you've felt but never seen. The artist who dances in front of an easel in the crowd and paints as the band plays does see it, or at least senses it and knows how to get it to the canvas. His name is Frenchy, and in this exchange he explains the phenomena of the ribbons of light.

Cosmik: I've wondered if a musician's aura changes during performance.

Frenchy: Definitely. It's like every color you can imagine and then some. I'm still looking for those colors. I don't think man can make those colors. Not physically. (Laughs.) Yeah, I believe that. If I'm just going to a gig, I'll just sit there and stare and take all these visual sketches, you know? Then I have all this visual imagery that's subconsciously in my head from all the thousand-plus gigs I've done, and when I'm painting in the studio, it's easy for me to tap into that, too. Now, in my studio paintings, I'll be doing the AcoustiOptics abstracts, which have no bands, but to me, they're my interpretations of sound waves floating through space. There's usually a vortex in all the paintings somewhere, or the shapes, if you look at it in a certain way, will twist into a vortex.

Cosmik: I'm thumbing through the dictionary here and I can't find AcoustiOptics, so maybe now would be a good time to explain what that is.

Frenchy: AcoustiOptics... Pretty funny story. I was new to New Orleans, and I was painting at the Funky Butt. I was the new kid on the block, and I was painting [saxophonist] Earl Turbinton, [Trumpeter] Terrance Blanchard, this dude named Matt Dillion, and Walter Payton, the famous bass player. Walter and Earl, the two oldest guys, came back to me at the end of the gig and they were looking at the painting, and one of them said "You know whatcha doin', right?" I said "Whatcha talkin' about?" He said "You know whatcha paintin', right?" I said "Uh... Paintin' ya'all." He said "NOOOooo, baaaby! You paintin' AcoustiOptics!" I thought "What?!? I've never heard THAT word before." He said it was about the relationship between sound and color, and how brain perceives the two, and I thought "Well, shit, that makes all the sense in the world!" It started to make sense to me all the crazy colors I'd been using. So that was that. Then I went out and checked every dictionary, every thesaurus, every science book, and I could not find the word AcoustiOptics anywhere. (Laughs.)

Cosmik: But you should lobby for it. (Laughs)

Frenchy: Oh, I'm going to! It makes all the sense in the world.


The VAMPIRE BEACH BABES and
ELECTRIC FRANKENSTEIN
Interviewed by John Sekerka
Halloween is one of our favorite - ok our favorite event of the year. This year John Sekerka got to talk to two very Halloween oriented bands - the Vampire Beach Babes and Electric Frankenstein. Exerpts of the results follow:

John: Goths have been getting a bad name from day one. Why is that?

Horny Babe (Vampire Beach Babe): Day one ... do you remember that Ricky?

Whiskey Babe: Oh yeah, that was quite a day. I don't know why Goths get so much grief. I find them to be typically of above average intelligence, and for the most part harmless.

John: What do Goths do during daytime hours?

Trashy Babe: Sit around watching Jerry Springer?

John: What are vampires doing on the beach?

Horny Babe: When it all comes down to it, is there anywhere else to be?

Whiskey Babe: Marc and I have always loved old school forms of rock and roll: Jerry Lee Lewis, Chuck Berry, and of course surf. And both of us love a lot of things about the Goth scene: the music, the image, and a lot of the people. But the problem is that Goths take themselves way too seriously. So on one had you've got this Goth mentality, which is like "Look at me - I'm so dark and sad and Victorian." Then there's the surf mentality, which is just like "Hey, it doesn't matter what you look like, it's all one big party, so just grab your board and catch a wave." And when you put them together you get something that is just so beautifully twisted.

...

John: The b-movie horror image is a good one, why don't you exploit it to the gills and wear costumes and masks?

Sal (Electric Frankenstein): Well, then the music would become secondary and never taken really seriously. Even Kiss has had a hard time being taken seriously in their history.

John: What about Halloween, surely EF does something special.

Sal: Well, we get asked to play at horror film conventions and all that stuff, and those are fun to do, seeing the audience all in costume is cool.

THE WITCHES
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Halloween was better than ever this year, thanks in part to this meeting with a true All Hallows Eve fanatic named Troy Gregory who happens to front one of the best bands you could possibly choose to listen to on that night (or any other night you feel like being creeped out). The Witches have the sound because they play for keeps, and Gregory just plain isn't playing. For him, Halloween is every day. It's an attitude and it's even part of his surroundings.

Cosmik: The sound that you make is hard to define and label and stick in a box, but I have a genre of my own called Halloween music, and Blue Oyster Cult's there and Sabbath's there and Johnny Dowd and Harmless, and you're definitely there. Halloween isn't just another day to you, is it?

Troy: That is an honor to be called Halloween music. Would you call Roky Erickson Halloween music as well?

Cosmik: With AND without the 13th Floor Elevators, personally.

Troy: Joe Meek to me is very Halloween. Played a loop of Penderecki and the Disney Chilling Thrilling Sounds of The Haunted House record at different speeds for the trick and or treat beggars one year, it scared the hell out of them and it sounded amazing.

Cosmik: Man, I'd love to hear that sometime. Maybe on a Witches album.

Troy: I still put that together every now and then and really dig listening to it. Halloween has never been just a day for me, the calendar just satellites Halloween.

Cosmik: How do people react to the way you keep Halloween alive all year long?

Troy: I don't know, they probably think I'm a dope. We lived on this street where we were an Ed Gorey comic placed directly into a panel of Family Circus. The neighborhood guys would all work on their cars and see me walk with my guitar into a house with orange and black spiders and pumpkin garland all over the porch and they would just shake their heads. Although we do have friends that come over and really admire some of the neat junk that we have too much of.


THE BLASTERS
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
In the 1980s, when it seemed like everyone had pawned their guitars and purchased synthesizers, things sounded pretty bleak to anyone who loved roots-rock. The lessons of the punk movement - pare it down, turn it up and blast it out - had been forgotten. Well, not by everyone. In Downey, California, "blast it out" was practically the motto of a smokin' little rock band called The Blasters, which featured brothers Phil and Dave Alvin on guitars (with Phil on lead vocals). Internal pressures and sibling squabbles cut short a promising career, but recently the band reunited for a few shows to celebrate Rhino Records' 2-CD set collecting almost all their recorded output. For Dave Alvin, this reunion wasn't a decision made or taken lightly.

Cosmik: So starting Sunday you get on the merry-go-round just for a little while. What do you want from this?

Dave: I just want to shed a little light... Not that we were there first, but that we were there. I got real pissed off at that PBS show on American roots music. I only watched a minute or two of the show because I was so pissed off because I saw the book in the store before the show came out, and in the last chapter, they're sort of "where it's gone from here, where it's going," it went right from The Grateful Dead to Gillian Welch, and it was like "WAIT A SECOND!! You just skipped 20 years!!" I didn't see any mention of the original Thunderbirds, I didn't see any mention of The Blasters, I didn't see any mention of the people who kept this music alive through a period when no one else was. So I got a little pissed off about that. For good or bad, whether or not someone liked The Blasters, or whether they hated us, or hated us as people or hated our hair styles, you can't deny the fact that we made this music viable again. And again, I'm including us with a group of other bands, but I didn't see them mentioned in that book. As for the show, unfortunately for it, it was airing on September 11th, so more people were watching CNN than PBS at that point, but still it pissed me off to go from The Grateful Dead to the modern alternative country scene as if nothing happened in between. That was a gross historical error. Even to not mention The Stray Cats... To not mention a LOT of people from that period was [wrong]. Hey, we may not have sold 8 billion records, but on a certain level we made it okay. So when the history books are being written, don't forget about The Blasters.


OTTMAR LIEBERT
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
There's a new trend in the music business, which you can read more about in this month's Music Business Microscope. More and more musicians are forming their own record companies, signing themselves, and securing distribution agreements that they control. Ottmar Liebert is taking this one step further and forming three entities to do three different kinds of music that interest him at once.

Cosmik: So this is the last album for Epic? You've found a new home, a new contract?

Ottmar: No contract. It's my own company. I've had a bunch of offers, but I thought this is really time to do things myself. I want to split into three different entities and do some things that I'm not sure record companies would go for. I'm going to record for my own label, which is called SSI, and we have a website being built right now at www.lunanegra.com.

The three entities will be one, solo, which will have no drums or percussion. The second will be Luna Negra, which will be following the nouveau flamenco theme, more acoustic bass, more acoustic percussion, then the third will be Euphoria, which will start where my albums Euphoria and Opium left off, a lot of remix stuff, dance beats, sequencers, all that stuff. The first album will be a lullaby album, because I think there's a need for some original lullabies out there, and it's been quite challenging to work on them and to make the music relaxing but not boring. I'm trying a lot of different things so that even with repeat listening it won't get boring. So that first album on SSI will be out sometime next year, and we'll also start working on a Luna Negra album sometime this summer.

Cosmik: Have you arranged the distribution?

Ottmar: Yes. The distributor we're going with, Valley Entertainment, which is one of the two or three largest ones in the United States, happens to be in Santa Fe, so I can show up on the doorstep and say "Hey, what's going on? Where are the records?" I don't actually have to fly to New York or LA or anything, it's all right at home.

Cosmik: Before you're done, you'll have people calling Santa Fe "Music City."

Ottmar: I hope that won't happen. There were people talking about turning Santa Fe into Hollywood a few years ago, and luckily that didn't happen.

Cosmik: Well, it would be much better to be Music City.

Ottmar: Yeah, no shit.

CURVE
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Toni Halliday and Dean Garcia are no strangers to record label problems. The duo known as Curve became so familiar with them that they chucked their careers to stop the madness. Or so it seemed. They kept up with their fans by running their own web site (a very well done site at that, which you can find at www.curve.co.uk/) and even gave those fans a collection of MP3s, scattered songs that were good enough to make it on previous albums but hadn't only due to space limitations. By giving the collection a name (Open Day At The Hate Fest), Halliday and Garcia inadvertently gave the impression that this was an official Curve release, and despite their repeated pronouncements and proclamations, many people still consider it as such. These things trouble Toni Halliday, though she's still trying to live by a code she adopted after their Come Clean album was mishandled by the record label, and that code is: stay cool and don't let it get to you. If it stops being fun again, that might be the end of the road for Curve, and if the quality of the music on Gift is any indication, it would be quite a loss. Here, she discusses what she went through and the scars that remain.

Cosmik: Some of the long gaps between releases have been legal issues, problems with labels and such. Are those same headaches still with you now, or have they been fully resolved?

Halliday: They're long gone for us because we've just stopped caring. Not stopped caring about what we do, or anything like that, but we just stopped really caring about things like "are the label doing this," and "are the label doing that," and "if they don't do that we don't stand a fucking chance," you know? Fighting this battle that you can't win because Sonique's record is coming out this week. That's what the battle was for us. We thought our record was better than a Billy Meyers record, but someone at the label didn't, so you just start bashing your head against the wall and having a war that you can't win because someone has decided to prioritize a Billie Meyers Kiss The fucking Rain record, a woman with a terrible voice, I'm sorry. Absolutely pedestrian, MOR, fucking bollocks shit, basically. And someone thinks that's better than your fucking masterpiece, as far as you're concerned, and that someone is really important in the label. Because that's what they like: bland, horrible shit.

Cosmik: Because you don't have to think about it. It's disposable.

Halliday: Yeah. So when you actually stop giving a flying fuck about any of that, you start again. We made Come Clean, we had a really great time, really enjoyed ourselves, it goes to a major label and then you start going "oh, fuck," and you start not enjoying yourself again because of all the stuff that shouldn't even warrant you thinking about but you have to think about it because this is your precious baby, you know what I mean? Then that happened. When decisions like that were made about Come Clean, for instance, we had to stop thinking about what this industry was, could do or could not do for us, because it was just going to kill our love of music, so we had to stop caring about stuff like that. Whether the label was going to do this, or whether the label was going to put enough money behind it, whether they were going to [get it played on] radio. We just stopped caring about all of that. And then we just really started having a good time again, but we almost lost it again straight away on the first record we'd made after five years. It was like back - straight back to this really worrying, not enjoying yourself stuff.

Cosmik: But you control the degree of that, don't you? Isn't some of that self-induced?

Halliday: I suppose it is self-induced, but when you've toiled over it and put your heart and soul into it, of course you're going to care for it. You don't just then throw it to people who've had nothing to do with it, and the first time they hear it is when they get a CD-R that some manager is playing for them and saying "what do you think?" That's the first involvement they've had with your record.


THE BEARS
Interviewed by Karl Cable
The guys in the Bears started playing music together in the late 70s. They almost "made it" as the Raisins but a major label exec decided they weren't marketable and declined to sign them. Ten years later, as the Bears, they made a couple of albums. Again they had label trouble - it went under - and they disbanded. Now they're back, with a brand new album, and no distribution. They're doing it themselves. They've made enough to put together another album, and according to Rob Fetters that's good enough for the moment.

Cosmik: You still don't have a U.S. distributor for Car Caught Fire.

Rob: As we speak, three companies are calling me and want to distribute the record. To do that, we would have to act more as a record company, and really you need a staff for a record company. We don't have it. Because it's just me. And it ain't me! So we're still trying to hook up with a smaller label, that can deal with it. I don't think any major label would want our band. We're just not... I don't know what it is. We're just too fucking good for a major label. We're the Bears. We're a unique American band, and I think we need a unique label to deal with it.

Cosmik: Well, how's it going just selling it yourselves?

Rob: We've sold thousands of records on our own. I don't have an exact count. We haven't sold ten thousand on our own, or we haven't received money for that. We've sold enough to pay for making the record, put some money in our own pockets, pay for the manufacture of it, and pay our expenses. The band is in the black. And I would kind of look at the band as: we're not trying to hit home runs; we're just trying to hit a single and keep a flow. If we can make an investment here, you have a chance of hitting a home run, and I know that if we put all of our capital into some long shot and blow it, we will not be able to afford to make another record. And we want to play together. We want to be able to make music together, and by getting rid of a lot of ten-percenters, we can afford to do that. It would be a lot easier if we had people collecting commissions and things, but we're trying to do it on our own. I think if we make our jump, somebody's going to have to jump with us.

Cosmik: You do have a distributor in Japan, right?

Rob: Yeah. Pony Canyon signed the record, licensed the record, and they're selling it there. And that really was a catalyst. We were just going to shop our disc and not put it up, but Pony Canyon actually had a release date. We just figured, "God, people are going to buy this, or bootleg it actually." Cause they didn't have the rights to North America or Europe, so we better just make it available. So people could actually buy it. And then bootleg it!

Cosmik: Why all the Rickenbackers on the front cover?

Rob: Well, they just look good! We had 'em all. There's really just three and the other's a Washburn acoustic. But Adrian brought his. It was really just kind of serendipity. We had the guitars with us at Michael Wilson's photo studio, and we're all sitting there. We're all thinking, "We're all just middle-aged guys. Is there any way we can dress up this photo? Oh, I got it! Let's cover our faces." I thought it worked great. Michael's a good friend of ours. Everybody involved in this, in the Bears, there's a friendship that goes beyond any sort of business dealings. People really dig the music.

Cosmik: And I'm one of those people, too! And I was just overjoyed to hear that after fourteen years there was another Bears album out. It was worth the wait.

Rob: Well, we think so, too. All along, we've stayed friends, and I toured with Adrian on his solo tour, and psychodots appeared with him on another tour. So we've always stayed in contact, and been fans of each other's music. Adrian made some records in the 90's that were sort of lost in the shuffle, like Op Zop Too Wah, and there's just some incredible music on that.

Cosmik: I have The Guitar As Orchestra, which is mind-boggling.

Rob: Oh, yeah! Everybody's churning the stuff out. None of us ever stops. I can't imagine ever stopping.


STEW
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
Mark "Stew" Stewart is a musical genius. He doesn't think so, but he is. That doesn't mean he's putting out a necessarily commercial product. But that's OK. Stew's not trying to be popular with the masses. He just wants to keep adding members to his tribe.

Cosmik: ...it's interesting that you're playing for a writer's workshop, because there's an element to your music that's not exactly literary, but it's very literate. It's not just "I love you, you love me, oobla oobla di."

Stew: Right. I'm starting to think that all music is basically tribal, because even if you don't realize it, when you write something and you play it, that music is going out and it's only hitting the people who are sort of in your tribe, know what I mean? When I'm writing, I know there's a certain section of the crowd that's not going to be there for me, but it's actually OK because the point isn't to make them happy. The point is to keep playing to find people you make happy. That's why touring is so important. So to me, one thing we're trying to do at Smile, at Image Entertainment, is to find those people. To find the 42 year old guy, the 50 year old guy, who does listen to cool stuff, who wants to keep expanding his or her collection of interesting stuff, to find the other members of that tribe. They're out there, it's just that other people don't want to spend the time trying to target those people.

Cosmik: Well, it's a lot of work, and it's not a good way to get rich in music.

Stew: Exactly. But we're trying to approach this from the point of view of if we get these people, not the fickle people, but we don't get too many U2s or REMs anymore, and I'm not a very big fan of either of those bands, but we don't get too many bands anymore where they actually get to have careers. The people who are going crazy about the Strokes now, it's not clear where they're going to be in a year or two, but my guess is they're probably going to be off to another band. So I think it makes sense, and the people at our label think it makes sense, to make the effort to find the people who are really into it, knowing that those people aren't fickle. They aren't looking for the flavor of the month. If we can find the people who are into it, we know we can make three or four or five more records and those people will pick them up.

Cosmik: The guy who buys the second Stew record will probably buy the tenth.

Stew: Precisely. We used to, a long time ago we used to have a little conflict with our ex-manager, who is still a dear friend, because he wanted to find a way to coax the younger crowd to get into us. That's what I mean by being tribal. People who look onstage, who look at the record, they want to see something that reflects them. Kids don't buy music made by older people unless somebody told them that the older blues guy is cool. If Mick Jagger tells the kids that Muddy Waters is cool, maybe Muddy Waters sells a few thousand more records. But if you put Muddy Waters in one club and some guy with a backwards baseball cap in another club, the kids are going to look at the marquee and they're going to look at the photos on the front and they're going to go to the concert with the guy with the backwards baseball cap. And there's nothing wrong with that, that's just natural. That's just human fucking nature and there's nothing you can do about it.


NIC HARCOURT
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
In July of last year, Rusty Pipes got a chance to talk with eclectic spin-meister Nic Harcourt, of Morning Becomes Eclectic fame on KCRW in Los Angeles. One of the things they discussed was Nic's recent appearance on the station's weekly Politics of Culture show, which focused on promotion practices in the music industry, and how the corporate culture of profit is affecting the industry.

Cosmik: There was a particular public affairs show you did in June, The Politics of Culture, as guest host. It raised quite a lot of interesting questions about how the record companies use independent promoters to get around the payola laws and feed the commercial music stations music for their play lists. Did you feel it was necessary to organize that show in particular?

Harcourt: Debbie Adler actually produced that show. The Politics of Culture is a weekly show on a variety of subjects hosted by different people and a couple of times a year they rope me in, doing something that's music related. The one guest that we had on the program, Eric Robert, who has written a couple of pieces for Salon; he was writing stuff a couple of months ago about [promotion practices in the record industry]. Debbie was trying to put together a show around this in the public interest, you know, public radio. And then when Chuck Phillips did his piece last week or the week before that was fairly detailed on how independent promotion works, then obviously time was of the essence to put this show together. That's why we did it really, just because it's a topical issue. We're in the middle of Los Angeles and the entertainment industry; it's an important subject to cover.

Cosmik: I thought it was a powerful show, but listening to you over the last couple years I've never known you to make political statements or anything like that.

Harcourt: Did you think it was a political statement?

Cosmik: Sooner or later it's all politics. I read it as a questioning of authority. The first statement that you ran in the show was the one from the lawyer describing legal definitions of payola in the laws versus how the industry really operates these days. That sure made it seem like there's something going on that isn't right.

Harcourt: To be honest with you, I needed another ten minutes, maybe another thirty minutes; certainly we ran out of time. There were a couple of other points that I would have like to have covered. What was important to me as the host of the show and as somebody who is in the business, was to have the program be as balanced as possible. I hope we did that. The bigger question for me, and we just touched on it right at the end, is the way business is done in America, period. The music industry is just one example of how shady deals are done in the business world.

Cosmik: There are quite a few groups that seem to jump on to the stage full blown and I can only think this incestuous relationship of the music and radio industry is the reason why. The N-Syncs and The Backstreet Boys, who knew them before? Did they ever have a stage in their career where they were playing bars and stuff just getting their act together?

Harcourt: But that's not new, there's always been manufactured bands and singers and artists, whatever.

Cosmik: It seems like back room maneuvering by corporate power is a big problem and nobody's come up with a good solution for reigning it in. I don't see anything wrong with corporations fundamentally but at the same time, profit uber alles, if you will, it creates a lot of problems. Just on a more artist-by-artist level, how do you feel about TV commercials using various famous songs? I've heard The Who in several Nissan commercials and Moby's album Play last year, an album I really liked a lot, it seemed like every song popped up in a commercial!

Harcourt: (pauses) I guess I feel that in a world where everyone is trying to make a living, anything is fair game, you know? Now whether or not we turn around and say, "Well that's a sell-out," or "We don't appreciate the co-opting of sounds that we personally feel attached to," I also understand that.

Let me address the two examples that you gave. Moby for example, now he was very smart because his record really wasn't going anywhere. It came out of the gate with a bang and then just stalled out. So much is dependent on marketing plans and promotional strategies for a record, as it is with any product. Let's face it, at the end of the day a CD is a product. So for whatever reason it wasn't really getting the support that I think it should have gotten and I suspect that he probably felt the same. So what he and his management did was aggressively go out and license tracks from the CD for television shows, commercials and movies to get those impressions of the music out there in the market place. The effect of that was to spur sales of the record and in my opinion because they found an alternative way of marketing and promoting that music. Now you know at the end of the day you can say, "Yeah, but I'm so sick of it now! When I had it at home and it was mine, then it meant something to me, but now it's on this commercial and that movie, it doesn't mean as much to me." That's a personal thing obviously, but I totally respect his right to try and sell his record.

The thing with The Who is a completely different thing. They're obviously looking at ways of making some extra money, but who am I to deny them that really? It kinda bothers me on some level but ... (trails off)

Cosmik: There have been a number of really great songs, Lenny Kravitz and stuff like that that I don't feel good about playing anymore. I feel like they've been vandalized.

Harcourt: I understand. I think we can have those personal reactions, but as I say, at the end of the day somebody has the opportunity to secure the education of their kid or something... There was an interesting article in the New York Times Magazine about this a couple of months ago, talking about Apples In Stereo. An indy band who never really made any money who licensed a track for a commercial and basically the band gets to keep going for a year as a result of that. So everybody has their own reasons for doing this. Making money to keep going with the band, whether it's just putting extra money in the bank for an already rich rock star or whether it's somebody who needs a way to get those impressions of their record out there in the public. A significant part of it comes back to how difficult it is to get music played on the radio. And people trying to find other ways to get their music out there. I mean, The Who is probably not a good example of that but I think the Moby thing is and a lot of other bands too.

Cosmik: It comes back to the lockout that seems to be going on in commercial radio and how do you get around that. It's kind of funny Moby is using his music in ads and the term the industry promoters you had on the show kept using for getting music on radio play lists is "adds." They're getting paid for adds! The focus isn't on the music itself at all; the program directors in the music stations aren't really doing their job any more!

Harcourt: No, probably not. Most of it's being done on a corporate level anyway.

JEFF BERLIN
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
There's a lot of talk in the Indie world about "selling out," as if playing music for financial gain is a bad thing. Jeff Berlin has an opinion on that attitude. It is, after all, called the music business for a reason.

Cosmik: It's fascinating. Bass players, for the most part, don't seem to be searching for new sounds, and I don't think that most people who hire bass players particularly want them to. You just about have to be the leader to get away with this, don't you?

Berlin: Yes, you do, and that's a very good point. The only place that I've discovered, after the years I've been in music, the only place one really can do what they want to do is on their record or in their band. Outside of having a group or being the leader, it's next to impossible to play what you play unless you're hired to do what you do. Because almost every time there's a producer or another bandleader who will tell you what they want. And you know something? They're absolutely entitled to get from you what they want. That's what they're hiring you for, that's what they're paying you for. That's the majority of music. Most music is music for hire, anyway.

Cosmik: You certainly did your time on the LA session scene, where it's a commercial in the morning and a soundtrack later and somebody's new record after that.

Berlin: That is correct.

Cosmik: The last thing I want you to do if you're cutting an ad for my car lot is to draw more attention to your proficiency on the bass than to the beauty of my fenders and bumpers...

Berlin: You're 100% right, and I'll tell you where there's a reward in that. I once did a K-Mart commercial, and everytime they play a commercial you get a royalty check. So I used to go down to the union and collect my royalty checks, and next to me was Anthony Jackson, and Steve Gadd was in this line, and the Brecker brothers were over there, and we were all collecting our checks for the jingles we'd do, because commercials were good income for little musical stress. Anyway, I did this K-Mart commercial, and I tallied up my royalties. The commercial I played was two bars of music, total, and I collected over $14,000 for that.

Cosmik: $7000 a bar! I hope you can make that off this album!

Berlin: That's a true story. I earned over $14,000 for two bars of bass. And the reason that's a reasonable reward is that the bass I played was two half notes, eighth, quarter, eighth, quarter and a quarter note rest.

Cosmik: And for $14,000 you were willing to let them tell you exactly what to do.

Berlin: You're darn right, man. I'm a musician. If I'm a leader, I'm going to be the one to call my musical shots, but believe me, I have my price. I will play for pay because I'm a musician, but I'm also in business. This is called the music business. I can't see anything anything wrong with supplying what they want from me. You can make a lot of money in music if you can give the leader what they want, exactly the way they want it, and do it with a smile and a good attitude. There's a lot of money in this industry, and I have children, and I have a business, and I have to take care of my bills. I see nothing wrong in doing the job that I'm hired to do as a musician. As a musician, I know I'm qualified to give anybody anything, anywhere, under any circumstances. If I didn't feel that way, I wouldn't be in this industry with the kind of zeal I'm in it with.

Look, I did Zappa, you know what I mean? I did Zappa's band for a short time, and he gave me a chart once, and told me to learn it, and Steve Vai came over and helped me out because I didn't know how to read the stuff. He gave me a few hints and then I understood. A week later I went back to the rehearsal, I broke out the music, and we started playing. Frank stopped it immediately and said "What are you playing?" and I said "I'm playing this part you gave to me." It was "Pedro's Dowry." And he looked at it and "Oh man," he says "I gave you the guitar part by accident." So I learned the guitar part, in treble clef, and learned it in a couple days well enough to function in his band. So what are they going to show me now, to complicate my musical life, or give me any kind of tsoris. It's a Yiddish word, means give me a headache. I'm happy with that. It's nice at my age that I don't have to sweat it anymore. And I'm happy with giving a job. They want a job, they got it. As a leader, it's my ball game. It's my ball, and I call the rules, as any leader will.

MICHAEL SHERMER
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Common sense and skepticism suddenly seems so important in today's world. Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and Director of the Skeptics Society, discussed the credulous public with Cosmik's Rusty Pipes and offered a suggestion for helping to remedy that situation.

Cosmik: I remember reading the story of how you became a skeptic. In seems like you really went in for a lot of New Age kind of fads, and then you had a sort of reverse epiphany on the road while in a bike race?

Shermer: (Laughs) Yeah, right! Well I was always an open-minded fella and I tried a lot of different things [to enhance my bike racing]. When you're younger you're more suggestible and willing to try things that you haven't had a lot of experience with and test new ideas against. But basically because there was some scientific training that I'd had, I really just kind of realized that there was no way to know that any of this stuff was working. In fact it probably wasn't working and it was just all in my head. Yeah, I became a skeptic on the road.

Cosmik: These miracle cures, are they just creating a positive mental attitude and that's it?

Shermer: It depends on which ones. The alternative medicine field is a tricky one because there are literally hundreds and hundreds of claims and you can't just blanketly say all of them are false. Some might be good, there's no way to know until you test it. But you can't just use the anecdotes. They all have anecdotes and they all claim to have peer-reviews, experiments, tests and so on. You have to actually look at the research.

Cosmik: Do you think that in this day and age, maybe because of lousy schools, that there has been a general breakdown in common sense, or has it always been like that?

Shermer: Oh, I think it's always been that way. I don't know that it's really worse than it used to be. I think it is to the extent that there's more mass communication and more channels, more cable stations that have this kind of stuff on, so people hear about it more. You can actually measure some of that. The [alien] abduction movement, it's like a mass contagion, mass hysteria as they filter through culture. That you can track. Whether it's worse than, say, a century ago or five hundred years ago, we don't have any data on that. Overall I'd say that compared to the Middle Ages we are less superstitious than we were as a society, but most of the polling data, over the last, say, thirty years, on belief in these things, do show them going up.

Cosmik: When I was growing up and attending Sunday School, our particular church seemed to concentrate on God and Jesus' Love. The resurrection and all that stuff was there too, but we often went down the street to the Natural History Museum and looked at the statues of dinosaurs right after church. We would have said, "It wasn't really seven days to create the universe; maybe God's responsible for the Big Bang." Nobody took it so damn literally. I guess that's what I'm talking about, the breakdown of common sense. Especially in matters of Biblical truth, it just seems like there's a big contingent in the population lately that's just become very, very credulous.

Shermer: I think it's always been that way.

Cosmik: Is there anything that you would do to the school system to change that for the better?

Shermer: Well yeah, part of it is the education that kids are getting. We need balance between rote memorization of facts, data and knowledge and how to think about those things. It's called critical thinking. The progressive, so-called liberal education, they went too far in the other direction, away from the so-called "kill and drill" style of education. You do need facts, you do need to know things right at the tip of your brain. They had this idea that, "well, you could just look it up." But that's really not good enough, because most people don't take the time to go look it up. You really need to have that and then know how to process it, how science works, not just science factoids because then you hear a new fact, ESP or whatever, and you don't know how to compare it to other facts. You do need a process to know how to think about those things as well.


DAVID BASH
Interviewed by Gary Pig Gold
Well, we can't avoid mention of it forever. At some point we'll need to discuss the tragic events that occurred this last September. The International Pop Overthrow, scheduled for December in New York City in 2001, is a good place to start. Here David Bash discusses the feeling that the festival creates, and looks forward to helping bring some healing to the city.

Cosmik: The International Pop Overthrow is known as much for what goes on between and around the concerts as for the shows themselves. Was it intentional to create such a strong spirit of camaraderie and "family" amongst the bands and their IPO audiences, and what can you do to ensure this remains the case as the festival undoubtedly grows larger and more frequent in years to come?

David: Thank you for your kind words about the camaraderie! It would have been my intention to create that had I had enough foresight to envision it, so I guess you could call it serendipitous that it happened! I'm certainly very grateful for its existence. In retrospect, I guess you could say it's a natural by-product of having good bands who are made up of good people. Both pop fans and artists are among the humblest, most selfless people I know, and when you put a bunch of people like this together it's natural that a family-type environment will occur.

I guess the main thing I can do to ensure that this continues is to remain true to my heart and vision. I will always do my best to put a quality product out there, without ever compromising my ideals. I will not bring any band in who doesn't fall within the parameters of pop, just for the sake of drawing people. I will never let the festival lose its grassroots feel for the sake of bringing in corporate funding. It's wrong, and in the long run it will not do the scene any good.

Cosmik: In December, you will bring IPO to New York City for the very first time. What unique challenges will this undertaking present, and do you foresee anything different -- not to mention special -- happening in NYC that you wouldn't necessarily expect at the L.A. Overthrows?

David: Well, New York is inherently a tough crowd, so I would imagine New Yorkers will be tough to please. Obviously, the events of September 11 have brought with them a unique scenario for any entertainment-oriented event, and it's something IPO is going to have to overcome. My hope is that by December, the prospective patrons will be most looking forward to an event which will not only entertain and enliven them, but will bring an air of positivity that has been lacking in New York lately. Of course, New Yorkers are known for being resilient, and this has been quite evident over the past month. I think resilience and positiveness go hand in hand, so a good situation for IPO should be in the offing. Other than that, it's not really different from L.A.: several clubs being used over several nights, and lots and lots of good bands!

RON JEREMY
Interviewed by John Sekerka
And how did we come to be interviewing Ron Jeremy, you ask? (Did you say "come?") Well, stranger things have happened. He does say that being in adult movies is like playing jazz - improvisation is key.

John: How many movies have you been in?

Ron: Over 1700.

John: That's crazy! Now that you're dipping into mainstream Hollywood, are you still keeping up with the sex films?

Ron: A little bit. It's too much fun to quit. I work less because I have an exclusive contact with Metro Home Video.

John: How long does it take to make a film?

Ron: How long? Nine and three-quarter inches, ha-ha-ha. Sorry. Listen, the jokes are funnier on stage. I used that same line on Weakest Link (standing next to Gary Coleman no less), and they cut it out.

John: Can you make a film in one day?

Ron: A lot of 'em are. Very little story line. Here's your story line: "Hi honey here's your cup of coffee, eat this." There's your dialogue.

John: So the director gives you an opening line and away you go?

Ron: Yeah, you're delivering a pizza and bingo. What I wanna know is why every time a girl orders a pizza, they never have the money to pay for it.

John: Is it like jazz? Do you get to improvise?

Ron: Yeah of course. Just like jazz.... Just like jiz, heh-heh-heh. No, I do, in fact they rely on me to do that. I often think of some kind of goofy thing. It keeps the thing going. It's one of the reasons I got known over other actors. I'm the average guy who gets lucky. To see a gorgeous guy get all the girls is one thing, but to see me, it's like all of us have a shot at it. I also try and put in a little humour, try to make the characters a little more believable.

John: With 1700 films under your belt, so to speak, you must have been working 24 hours a day.

Ron: A lot of one day movies over a 23 year career.

John: You're not making a movie right now are you?

Ron: Yeah, as a matter of fact, later today.

John: I mean right now while you're on the phone. Multi-tasking.

Ron: Heh-heh... hold on honey, I'll be done in a minute!


MOMUS
Interviewed by Holly Day
Folktronic is Momus' take on the American folk tradition. It's just another new direction for him. Now he's a member of the cast of a movie and a Broadway show as well; or is his cast a member?

Cosmik: I read that you recently had your penis cast by Cynthia Plaster Caster.

Momus: Actually, it wasn't that recently. It was back in '98, but there's been a documentary which they spent a year or so making that is now doing the rounds of all the film festivals called "Plaster Caster," and that's got me in it, so it's become a fresh kind of thing because of the documentary.

Cosmik: Is it still on display?

Momus: The penis? No, no. Her exhibition on Broadway was last year, I guess August or something of last year. As far as I know, it's not a touring show.

Cosmik: Did she give it back?

Momus: No. She keeps them all in a bank vault. If you're famous, you're in the bank vault. If you're just kind of a Joe Schmoe, you're in her lounge.

Cosmik: When it was on display, did you ever stand next to the casting and introduce yourself as the subject?

Momus: Oh, absolutely. I was there like a shot, standing next to my cast very proudly--no, not that proudly, because I was put in a case right next to Jimi Hendrix. Sorry, it wasn't Jimi Hendrix, it was Anthony Newly, who's actually very well endowed. I wasn't even very excited by the experience. I know you should be excited, putting your penis into a thermos flask full of lukewarm putty, but for some obscure reason, I didn't find it a great turn-on, so I'm only sort of moderately hard, and the resulting cast isn't that impressive. But I kind of thought it was a nice symbol of rock and roll declining into self-parody and tongue-in-cheek decadence 30 years on from, say, Jimi Hendrix, who obviously meant it and was very... firm. Firm in his resolution. But people like me are ironic and humorous and all the rest of it, and you can't really be that firm in your resolution when you're going in ten different directions at the same time and some of them are self-parody and some of them are genre parody. What does it all mean anymore? Can rock and roll still get a hard-on? That's the real question.