Cosmik Debris Magazine Presents: Cosmik Conversations, 2003

[Click on the Cosmik Debris logo to see and download a full size version for use computer wallpaper. This unusual piece of art was created by our former graphic artist, coLeSLAw, and was the cover of issue #2.]

June. It never meant a thing to me before I started Cosmik Debris Magazine on June 5th, 1995. Since that day, every June 5th feels like the birthday of one of my children. As the staff of the magazine have become more and more like family, and they've become more emotionally invested in the success of Cosmik, each June has become more special. This is the 8th anniversary, and we're creeping up on issue number 100. As always, we're celebrating our "birthday" with only one deviation from the norm, that being this feature: An 8th Year of Cosmik Conversations. For those of you who are new around here, I'll give you the basic idea of the piece. It's a randomly ordered walk through moments from each of our interviews from the past year. There are 8 of these pieces now. Perhaps we'll make them all available soon. That might be fun to look back at all 8 years. For now, though, we hope you enjoy this look at the interviews of the last year, and we further hope you'll be with us for the next year and beyond. Have at it.
Sincerely,
DJ Johnson - Editor

PETER WOLF
Interviewed by Bill Holmes
Peter Wolf's new album last year, Sleepless, didn't have any "singles" on it. It was created to represent a mood. That's not a popular way to make albums with the record labels as they are structured today. Bill Holmes and Peter talked about what the labels are doing to recording artists and the radio, and educating the listening public about good music.

Cosmik: I understand exactly, because you were talking before about regionalism. I'm not much younger than you are, and I remember when an album label was an imprimatur. If something came out on Motown, you knew what it was going to be. If something came out on Atlantic, you knew what to expect. It was almost that you had faith in the quality control system at those labels because they didn't want to put out something that was shitty. They really didn't care if every single record...sold. They took pride in the fact that "we have Van Morrison on our roster" or "we have Bob Dylan."

Peter: You're a hundred percent right, and there was a time when I remember that Columbia Records resigned Miles Davis because they thought that he was an important artist to have on their roster. Not necessarily that he was going to sell lots of records. It proved, because he was important, that he could sell lots of records and become an American icon. But you'd buy a certain label because of the sense of quality. But now, because large corporate conglomerates run so much of the entertainment industry, it's controlled by Wall Street. And "contemporary" tends to mean "temporary." With new artists, they really don't care about investing in a long future, they just want to make a profit and move on.

Cosmik: That's pretty much the way it is. I hope there's a resurgence because it's gotten so tight and so bad that enough people will go out and...well, I've been a bin browser all my life. I've always read every magazine I could find and spent hours in record stores, and the vision I had of you hanging around your place pulling albums off the wall is because that's a lost art form. I think it's getting to the point where kids - well, maybe not kids because they're being force-fed everything - but some young adults are sitting around thinking "okay, I know there has to be something better than Matchbox 20. The CD store is as big as Sears but I'm only getting fourteen songs a week, there's got to be something else in here worth finding." And I'm hoping that for music like yours - and a John Hiatt or Van Morrison, someone of quality who makes music from the heart and is not worried about which track is the single - that enough of those records will see the light of day. They'll get the right write-ups or whatever so people say "wow, that was great...maybe I should look for another one like that! Where can I find another artist who puts the care into their craft that this person does?" And that's what I get out of Sleepless, Peter.

Peter: I agree with you, and Bill...that's why I wrote the liner notes. I came up with learning bits of information like "Teddy Pendegrass started as a drummer and he worked here" or "Otis Redding worked as a roadie for this band" or "this player started with this guy." It's like when someone got me a tape of Little Richard playing in Boston in 1964 or 1965 with a band and you hear this incredible guitar playing, and lo and behold it's Jimi Hendrix! That's the kind of aspect that I find important. The bands or artists that I respected had the same desire to want to know...I mean that's why the Stones wanted to know about the past and the great legacy of music out there going from blues to jazz to pop.

FLAMING LIPS
Interviewed by Holly Day
Nobody has more fun putting records together than The Flaming Lips. Over the past 20 years, the band has managed to release some of the strangest, most experimental and comedic albums on the Warner Bothers label, somehow managing to stay on the major recording label despite such works as 1997's "Zairuka," which required the listener to play four CDs simultaneously in order to truly experience the recording.

Cosmik: So what kind of a relationship do you guys have with your record label? It seems like you've been allowed to try a lot of different approaches and still stay on Warner.

Steven: Yeah. I'm not sure how that happened, you know, especially after we put out Zairuka, like five years ago - you'd think that'd be the last thing they'd want to do, because the record before that didn't really sell much at all. But it's always been - I guess, number one, we don't ask for a lot of money to make our records, you know, and it's almost like they don't expect anything unrealistic from us. We'd got this kind of comfortable, "You guys make a record that you want to make that you like, and we'll put it out." It's that simple. I mean, this last record, I think they've been really trying to kick it out there, really trying to push it, like with all this press we're doing - it seems like Warner's really trying to kick it up a notch, so we can actually sell some records this time (laughs). But, yeah, they kind of let us make the music we want to make, and they might suggest some adjustments here and there, but they've never made any demands on us. They've never told us we need to ditch songs and replace them with more radio-friendly material. It's never anything like that. If anything, it's more like, "Why don't you make a remix of this song and we'll put it out as a single, too."
Yeah, Wayne was just saying that people think the record company made us put on rabbit suits this last tour, because for the Sunshine Fix show, Michael and I wore rabbit suits. But that was because we wanted to wear the rabbit suits. We're always willing to wear the rabbit suits.

MIKE SMITH of the DAVE CLARK FIVE
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
The Beatles, as everyone knows, led the British Invasion into the living rooms and television sets of America. The band that immediately followed them onto the Ed Sullivan Show? The Dave Clark Five. While many of those first bands to reach the beach had one or two hits and died quick deaths, the DC5 lasted as long as the Fab Four, breaking up in 1970 after a long string of hit records. Their keyboardist and lead vocalist, Mike Smith, was the key ingredient in their sound and their success, with an immediately recognizable, energetic voice and serious classical training on the keyboards. Our interview with Mike came about because he was coming back to the U.S. (from his home in Spain) after almost 40 years to play live shows with his new band, Mike Smith's Rock Engine. In this segment of the interview, he basically defines "whirlwind."

Cosmik: I was pretty little, but I still remember the first time I saw you guys. Vividly.

Mike: When was that?

Cosmik: Ed Sullivan, your first time. The British Invasion really grabbed me. The Beatles had just changed my life and then you guys showed up and I was just mesmerized by the whole thing.

Mike: So was I! [Laughs] You think you're the only one? No, no, no, me too!

Cosmik: [Laughs] Really?!

Mike: Well I didn't know what was going on. I'd never been on a plane before. On Friday I was told "Pack in your job," on Saturday I flew to America, and on Sunday I played in front of 70 million people! That's a bit hard to get your head around, you know.

Cosmik: Were you scared to death the first time?

Mike: Oh no, I was only doing what I'd been doing all my life. I don't know how long you've been a reporter, but you do your job, and it's a job no matter how it is [that day]. I don't care if there are five people, fifty people or fifty-thousand. Doesn't bother me. I just want to have a good time. That's what rock and roll's about.
[Interviewer's note: I decide to appear professional by NOT telling him that when I interview my personal heroes, like him, I actually am petrified, and therefore can't relate to the notion of performing in front of 70 million people without breaking a sweat.]

Cosmik: See, I would be thinking, "Okay, five, fifty, fifty-thousand..." but seventy-million would totally intimidate me.

Mike: Nah, doesn't make any difference. Doesn't bother me. Never has done. In fact, a few of the interviews I've done people have asked if I'm nervous about coming back and playing after all this time, and I say "No, why should I be? A professional doesn't get nervous." It's what I've done all my life. For me, it's enjoyment. We get out there and we play rock and roll. I know how to do that, and how to have fun, and I just want everyone to join in and do it with me.

FEEDERZ
Interviewed by Holly Day
Holly spoke to Frank Discussion right before his trip to visit a friend in the circus to learn the arts of sword swallowing, fire eating, walking on broken glass, and becoming a human blockhead...

Cosmik: What made you pick Broken Rekkids to release (and re-release) your music on?

Frank: Well, actually, because Mike at Broken has a very good rep for honesty. He also goes through Mordam for the distribution, and they're probably the largest distributor that's untouched by the RIAA, the big five record companies, that shit.

Cosmik: I know the original copies of your first two records apparently sell for hundreds of dollars now?

Frank: I just saw a copy of Ever Feel like Killing Your Boss? go on eBay for $335-fucking dollars. I can't believe it.

Cosmik: Did you ever make that much money yourself when those records came out?

Frank: No, of course not. But that's actually not what annoys me about it. What annoys me is when you have a situation where people who just want to hear the music on those records are having to pay these huge amounts to get a copy. Personally, I wouldn't pay $335 for anybody, not even if they were my favorite band in the universe. But because this stuff isn't around, then your only choice is to shell out the big bucks, and that bit, which is why we re-released them.

BOB DAISLEY
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Bassist Bob Daisley is the man who actually wrote all the lyrics to the classic Ozzy Osbourne songs. The thing is, he was supposed to be writing for Blizzard Of Oz - the band, not the album. After the second album, Diary of a Madman, Daisley and drummer Lee Kerslake were tossed from the band and replaced by Rudy Sarzo and Tommy Aldridge, respectively. Even though it was their playing and writing on the album, it was the image of Sarzo and Aldridge alongside Osbourne and Randy Rhoades that appeared on the back of album, with no mention of Daisley or Kerslake. All these years and later, with a lawsuit still being argued, Sharon Osbourne made a stunning announcement. The new re-releases of Blizzard Of Oz and Diary of a Madman were Daisley and Kerslake-free, as the Osbourne camp had erased their parts and recorded new parts by other players, considerably cheapening the finished product. As you would expect, Daisley was floored by the ruthlessness of such a move.

Cosmik: Was Lee's reaction about the same as yours?

Daisley: Yeah, he couldn't believe it. We were speechless. Surely, nobody could be that stupid, to ruin your own product, to cut your nose off to spite your face this way. And you know, us being insulted is one thing, but when you insult the memory of Randy Rhoades and put his playing with two guys he has no say in, and then insult the record-buying public by saying "Here's some shit. Buy this crap, and we're not gonna let you know until you've bought it that it's not the original band and these aren't the original recordings." That's a bloody insult to the record-buying public.

Cosmik: It is, and I agree about Randy, but now that I learned what you and Lee did, too... don't sell yourselves short. It's a huge insult to you, too.

Daisley: It is. It's an insult to rock history, too, because those two albums are milestones in rock history, and it's really terrible this has happened.

Cosmik: A whole lot of young kids are becoming Ozzy Osbourne fans now...

Daisley: Because of the MTV show.

Cosmik: Kids who weren't even born when you recorded those albums.

Daisley: And they're not going to know what the original albums sounded like.

Cosmik: No, because they've made sure that the old ones are off the market.

Daisley: That's right, because they withdrew all the originals.

Cosmik: So now they're hearing that this is what it is, and they're going to believe that this is what it sounded like, and history will tell them that this shook the world of metal back at that time. This is not what shook the world back at that time.

Daisley: No, it isn't. This is shaking the world now for the wrong fucking reason. (Laughs) You know, Sharon, at the end of her statement, when she said that we'd been harassing her and her family and all that, she said "We've turned a negative into a positive." Oh really? You wouldn't know a positive if you fell over one. How can you call this a positive? Ruining your own product and slandering the name of Randy and insulting the record-buying public, AND insulting the people who actually came up with the product in the first place? Yeah, that's real positive in the first place.

DAVID GANS
Interviewed by Shaun Dale
A lot of guys of a certain age have a guitar, a stash of self-penned songs, a long abandoned dream or two and a total lack of the courage and drive it takes to get out there, get up there and try to make a living playing music for people. David Gans decided to do it, and Shaun asked him, why now?

Cosmik: It's funny, because you say you didn't start earlier because you were too young, and you've got to do it now before you're too old, when the industry model these days is to make your first album by the time you're 22, retire and then come back in ten years to do a VH-1 Where Are They Now special. A guy in his forties starting to break out is way out of line by the industry model.

David: I don't think there would have been a place for me in the industry then. Maybe there would have been. I grew up in the John Prine/Jackson Browne model of being a singer/ songwriter with clever songs about personal topics. I had to do a lot of stuff in my life before I could feel like I belonged onstage telling my own story. It was psychological, personal stuff. I didn't feel like I was a fully formed human being.

Cosmik: Of course, Jackson Browne was doing that when he was about twelve.

David: Well, yeah. Maybe I could have, but I think I would have burned out really early, and I don't think I really had the tools then. I needed to do it exactly the way I did it. And I don't really have any business in the music business. That whole, what I'm doing is not in any category that you can name. I mean, it's sort of Americana but I jam too much to be an Americana guy. I definitely would be happy to be opening for Greg Brown somewhere, or Peter Rowan or Guy Clarke, anyone of those singer/songwriter types I could do a set, opening for, and make it appropriate, but what I do is beyond that, also. I like to jam. I'm stuck in the mold of the Grateful Dead, which is really, really good, interesting American song styles and improvisational music.

WANDA JACKSON
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Interviews are always exciting for us, but when we get to talk to a legend, one who made an impact on his or her genre early on that is still paying dividends today, it's more than exciting. Actually, it can be downright terrifying. To have an audience with Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly? Piece of cake, as it turned out, because Wanda's trademark vocal snarl that you hear in songs gives way to a sweet southern accent and a gentle personality in conversation. Her influence on the American "rockabilly fillies" of today is remarkable in that she never got her props in the U.S., while Europe, Japan and other countries adored her. Perhaps it shouldn't be a surprise that Europe was ready for the Queen and we were not. She possesses a 220 volt voice in a country wired for 120. A peek at E-Bay, though, shows the U.S. buyers are paying top dollar for original Wanda Jackson records, and concert crowds around the world still adore her.

Cosmik: Isn't that kind of fun, in a way, to see how people value your records? And also how they respond to you now.

Wanda: I tell you what, DJ, I'm havin' the time of my life. I can't believe all these exciting things happenin' to me at this point in my life. It's something that I'm enjoying thoroughly. It's kind of a heady trip for me, but I'm trying to keep my feet on the ground.

Cosmik: That'd be pretty difficult. You know, the Bear Family box set came out back in 1993, so it's been a while since this material's been together all in one place. You were practically a baby when you cut these records, though one with a ton of experience. Since then you've done so much more, you know? Whole different sounds. How does this early flash of music in your life feel to you now, with all the perspective of time?

Wanda: I'll answer that in a jiffy. Rhino Records put out one in the early 90s, and it had the combination of rock and country, and then Ace Records in England has just released one they call Rockabilly Queen, and it's selling very good - in fact, I think it was the number one seller in the English market for rockabilly music. So that, along with the box set, I had a lot of material available out there. And of course, the more, the better. The way I feel about it, you asked me... Well, I've finally learned to appreciate it (Laughs). Naturally, you're very critical of your own work, but I've been listening to all these since the early 90s and thinkin' "Hey, by golly, I guess I did make some inroads and made some contributions to this field of music." What was so cute, when I began working the rock festivals - now I'm talkin' 50s rock, or rockabilly, whichever way you refer to it - I started off in Sweden in the late 80s, and then in '95, when I recorded a song with Rosie Flores for her CD, then things really exploded in America for me. So this is still kind of new for me to be getting this kind of publicity and admiration in America. And another thing that was cute: of course I've always done the main songs in my concerts. On a country concert, I still do "Fujiyama Mama" and "Let's Have A Party" and some of those, and then on a rock concert, from my roots, you know? The fans at these festivals, this new audience that's out there loving this type of music, started asking for these old things. I mean the old ones, like "Rock Your Baby," "Mean Mean Man," and "Cool Love" and all this stuff, and I had to go back - even the ones I had written - I had to get the lyrics and learn them again! (Laughs.)

Cosmik: (Laughs) What a strange feeling, like you're covering your own songs.

Wanda: Yeah. The first time that happened was in Sweden, and everyone was hollerin' "Mean Mean Man, Mean Mean Man!" I finally, just over the microphone, said "I don't even know that song anymore," even though I wrote it. So before I left the concert hall that evening, a fan went home, wrote the words down for me, brought it back, said "Here, now start doin' this." (Laughs.)

Cosmik: (Laughs) Boy, were you stuck!

Wanda: I said "Yes, sir!" And that's how it started. Then I started incorporating more and more of this material like is on the Queen Of Rockabilly CD, and I'm finding it's not only well received, it's enthusiastically received. Heck, it's fun for me.

WAYNE KRAMER
Interviewed by Bill Holmes
With his album Adult World, former MC5 guitarist, and legitimate bearer of the title "living legend," Wayne Kramer has taken on the challenge of writing and performing meaningful rock and roll music for adults. There are some introspective songs on this album, among them "Great Big Amp."

Cosmik: Another song I liked right away was Great Big Amp. I think it goes without saying that you are an enduring rock and roll legend. And this song sounds like someone starting out ready to go grab at the world. But I'll bet it's no easier to get a grip on the future now than before - times might have been tougher but you had a clearer target. Even the forced patriotism of 9/11 has shown cracks after only a year. Last September we were all brothers again, but it sure seems to have dissipated in a short few months.

Wayne: Six months!

Cosmik: It seemed like after the initial movement stopped, everyone just went back to doing what they were doing (before). But I always liked the independent voice anyway. This guy is going to grab that guitar and grab that amp and go get 'em.

Wayne: That was part of it. Another part is that the protagonist, the character in the song, actually thinks that by owning this piece of equipment that somehow his world is going to become complete. And there's a danger in thinking that places and things can fix me. Because in the end they can't. I mean if it were just a matter of getting a big amp and it's all going to be okay, then everyone would get a big amp! (laughs) I read an interview with a guy who was in one of those seventies hair metal bands - I don't remember if it was Motley Crue or Poison - you know that whole string of really awful bands like Ratt? And the guy was being very honest in the interview and talking about how everything went very wrong later on, but he said "for a while there we had it all! We had the lights! And we had the big amps! And we had the girls!" And I just thought that that was so charming, you know? (laughs) That this was his measure of accomplishment, that he had a big amp! (laughs). And then I thought, "damn, that's me!" That's what I thought for a long time, too, so that allowed me to open up a door and go inside myself and see just what it was that I was trying to accomplish with my big amp. And it was that I was trying to fix a hole in me, and if I just had that thing - if I just had the car, or the girl, or the home, or the pair of shoes - then it would be okay. But of course, things can't fix me. Again it's that same thing about it being an inside job.

HARROD BLANK
Interviewed by John Sekerka
From the side of the road (where else?) art car artist, documentarian, film maker, photographer, writer and enthusiast Harrod Blank blabs about his special four wheel calling in life ... Harrod Blank is an artist who creates motorpieces. Wait... masterpieces. That is to say... Well, his art is vivid, brilliant, and some of it can go from 0 to 60 in 7 seconds. This you've gotta see.

John: The great thing about this scene is that what looks just like a fringe aspect of art, is actually a large melting pot for various artists: serious painters, conceptual artists, sculptors, assemblage artists, and even wacky craft folk can happily coexist in the art car world. I think that's pretty rare.

Harrod: I think so too. It's all inclusive. The only thing that art car people have in common is that they are different. And that's something we relish: the fact that you are a unique character, or have a certain passion that's unusual or very in-depth to the point of being obsessive, like the telephone guy. Here's a telephone collector making a telephone car. Howard Davis is a successful business man, he's not even an artist. He just wanted to do this because his passion drove him. It's a very diverse bunch of people.

John: Some of these people use the act of making an art car as a form of therapy, some have lost loved ones, some have burning desires, some need an outlet - like the failed golfer. I think that alongside art therapy there should be a real movement of art car therapy.

Harrod: Yeah that's true! I can speak for myself on that. When I had a relationship that went awry, I would take the love that I was giving to the woman, and put it into the car. Whatever reason a person makes art, is the reason that people make art cars.

John: Did you always have a burning ambition to make an art car, or did you just wake up one day and say, "I'm doing an art car!"

Harrod: I was sixteen when I got my first car which was an old beat up '65 VW bug. I was actually embarrassed by the car. I thought it was ugly, boring, and it didn't represent me at all. Because I grew up in a forest and I raised chickens, and I was quite isolated - the nearest neighbours lived five miles away - instead of having friends to play and communicate with, I went out in nature and was a wild child type of guy. I had to commute to high school 30 miles away. I was very different from the other people. So I decided to show them something about myself - that I was different, because I looked totally normal but it just didn't feel right. So I painted a rooster on my driver's door, and just by doing that I was given an identity. People started calling me chicken man. It just encouraged me to keep going. I really did think that I had a problem: I was a freak of nature and very strange because I had this passion of decorating my car and I was the only one that I knew of. Gradually I found out there were others, and what we were doing was something positive for the community and for ourselves. It's therapeutic and it gives something back.

BOB LOG III
Interviewed by Holly Day
Bob Log III is a crazy man, and a crazy man is always fun to see perform. As a one-man-band inferno, Mr. Log plays some of the best dirty blues you'll see this side of 1950, his guitar hand twitching so fast that a German journalist once accused him of having a bionic monkey paw. Holly spoke to Bob Log right before he hit the road on 2002's summer tour.

Cosmik: So have you gotten a lot of flak from people about the titles and content of your songs?

Bob: Not really. I think the people that don't like it don't come see me, and the people who do like it are the ones who come to my shows. Occasionally, yeah. The problem is, in Boston I was there, and we were doing an interview on the radio, and they said before the show, "Okay, you've got to realize, we cannot say 'Clap Your Tits' on the radio. We can't do it." See, I kind of shot myself in the foot with this song because it's a great song, it's the first ever in the world tit-and-guitar duet, and no one can play it on the radio because I say "tits" in it. So I was like, "Okay, so I can't say 'clap your tits' - can I say 'tap your clits?'" And they said, "Sure, that's fine." I mean, which would you rather hear? But anyway, that's been the worst problem I've had with it. That, and the fact that not too many clap their tits with me. I kind of thought that everyone would be really into it, and it wouldn't be a problem, that there'd be people all over the world clapping their tits while I played guitar, but it's only happened about 22 times. And that's all right. I don't expect it, because if you try to expect it, you're gonna be disappointed. But when it happens, it's such a good thing, and we'll all remember that day forever.

RICK SHEA
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Rick Shea is part of the California country and roots music scene that includes artists like fiddler Brantly Kearns, Chris Gaffney, and former Blaster Dave Alvin, who produced Shea and Kearns' album of California music, Carolina, California. A songwriter who knows what he wants, Shea would seem the kind of person who would produce his own albums with no outside interference or even influence, but hey, when Dave Alvin's available...

Cosmik: Well, you've had a lot of experience at this point. One might wonder why someone with such clear vision would want a producer in the studio. Of course they might not know it's Dave Alvin, but I'm saving that for the next question, so talk a bit about why you'd choose to have a producer instead of running the show yourself.

Rick: Well there's always a point where you just run out of ideas. I feel like I've basically produced all of my albums myself, but only up to a certain point. Which basically makes my producer's job a little more difficult, because I'll have a pretty clear idea and vision of what I want and what I want everything to sound like, with arrangements and parts pretty well mapped out, but when you do get in there and start recording and you hear it, then you know what it really sounds like and you'll know if something's missing and it needs a little more. And on all of these projects I've come up on a certain point on certain songs where I've gotten it there but it's not complete and I just don't know what else to contribute to it. Then whoever's with me has the pretty tough job of having been along for the ride up to that point and then suddenly having to go to work and come up with something good. It actually makes it difficult, I think. The other thing is when you're playing these parts, and especially singing, it's really pretty difficult to know when you're getting a good performance, and having another set of ears in there listening, somebody that knows what your style is and what you're trying to accomplish and appreciates what you're doing, to tell you "yeah, you did it well that time" just simplifies things and moves the process along a lot faster. It's really hard to always know when you've done your best performance.

Cosmik: I'd hate to produce myself. You can't concentrate on your performance. I couldn't even imagine being in that position.

Rick: There's a lot of walking back and forth to the control room, because you really do have to take off the headphones and walk in to listen to it in context. And not just once, but two or three times in a row, and it can get pretty time consuming. Everybody who has worked with me as a producer has had some tremendous contributions, I feel, but to a certain extent it's been sort of limited, so I admire and appreciate all of their efforts because I think I make it more of a job.

Cosmik: There are a lot of top notch producers out there, each of them capable of making a great album with you. Why Dave Alvin? What does Dave give you, specifically, that makes the difference?

Rick: I've had the opportunity to work with Dave so much over the past four years on a lot of projects that he's been the producer on, so we're real familiar with each other's styles of working in the studio, so that made it feel real natural. He's also a big fan of Brantley's and has a certain sympathetic ear to Brantley's approach that was worthwhile to have, and Dave's real big talent, on these projects and in the studio, and what I really hoped to get out of him and I believe he did for us, is he can just look at the project and what we're trying to create and get a vision for it, just an idea of what it really means as far as this group of songs and these two guys working together. Like I said earlier, the whole idea of Carolina, California, being Brantley's background in the Appalachian fiddle music in Carolina and both of us having spent our lives playing various forms of California folk music, that's all a concept Dave saw, a vision he had for the album. He had a lot to do with the selection of songs, too. I'm tremendously happy with his involvement and contributions.

Cosmik: So you're writing the songs but he's able to see a bigger picture.

Rick: Exactly. I had a pretty clear idea of what I wanted to do when we first went into this, and I approached the project with the idea that I would be the sole producer. If I had done that, I think it would have been a good album and I would have been happy with it, but bringing Dave into it brought it up to a whole 'nother level. Brought it up quite a bit.

GABOR CSUPO
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Without a doubt you've already seen Gabor Csupo's work. As one half of Klasky-Csupo Productions, he's worked as an animator on the Simpsons, The Rugrats and many other TV series and commercials. Csupo (pronounced "Soop-o") is also no small musical talent and over the last few years has made a string of albums featuring his brand of modern electronic music.

Cosmik: What drew you to electronic music?

Csupo: I happen to like electronic music a lot. It's definitely the music of the future. Also the possibilities with the advanced capabilities of the computer technologies has opened up a lot of new ways for musical expressions.

Cosmik: Kalmopyrin is a lot different than most electronic music that's coming out now. It's more song-oriented than dance. Are you interested in electronic rave music or the house music in clubs?

Csupo: When I make music I just create from mood and feel. I don't sit down and say now I will create a rave song. I start to play or start to paint with the mouse on the screen with a music program and see what happens. The only thing in my mind might be if it's a slower or a faster song, so I set in my mind the BPM, which also might change later in the song.

PATRICK GOODWIN of DIRTY POWER
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Dirty Power takes you back to the way rock and roll was made in the 70s without dipping into anyone's songbook. They play good old fashioned hard rock with songs that are so well written they're unshakable. Patrick Goodwin, guitarist and lead vocalist of the band, was with Pansy Division for several years, but when that band's short break turned to months and then to years, Patrick decided it was time to rock. What they didn't expect was so much attention from the press and rock fans in the Bay Area and beyond, and they sure didn't expect... well, this weird thing that happened to them.

Cosmik: Hey, what was the Independent Music World Series, exactly?

Patrick: Oh, DiscMakers, which is a CD manufacturing company, they do this thing every year that's called the IMWS. You enter your CD and they listen to it, they pick the finalists, and they send the finalists to Billboard Magazine, and Billboard's people go "Oh, this is good, this is good and this is good," and they put six bands together to do a showcase in front of judges. It's basically a battle of the bands thing. The funniest part about it was that Sluggo entered us in it. We played it in February and he entered us in it five months before that, and we had no idea. He did it completely over our heads, and even HE had almost completely forgotten about it until we got this phone call one day saying "Hey, this is so and so from the Independent Music World Series, and we need you to showcase in Los Angeles, and" blah blah blah blah blah, and we were like "WHAT?! What the hell is this?! What are you talking about?" So Sluggo called me, and I called everybody else, and we're like "Uh, hmm, okay sure!" So we went down there and it was just totally silly, because everybody was just schmoozing up a storm and doing their best to impress the judges. We just went up there and played 15 minutes and won it. We almost didn't care at all because it seemed so cheesy, but it was pretty funny.

Cosmik: Were the other bands in your genre?

Patrick: No, not at all. There was some rapper named Nitwit, and a folksinger, and some guy who sounded like Beck, a Salsa band... It was really incredibly eclectic.

Cosmik: And here comes this heavy duty rock band that plugs in and shakes the rafters for 15 minutes, and you win it. That's one for the books. And it was $35,000 worth of stuff? Is that true?

Patrick: Yeah, we just got a crazy amount of gear. It was like this 24 track hard disc recorder and a whole bunch of microphones, and Fender instruments and all this stuff. And all from this thing we didn't really enter, at least not ourselves.

Cosmik: So $35,000 dollars for 15 minutes of work. I have a calculator here. You were making $2,333 dollars per minute. How bout that?

Patrick: Yeah! And all we could think about was all these other bands going home saying "Some shitty metal band took [our prize]." [Laughs.] Complaining about us. "GOD! I can't believe it!!! That was HORRIBLE!!!"

Cosmik: The folk guy thinking "Those judges wouldn't know depth if it bit them on the ass."

Patrick: Oh yeah, exactly.

Cosmik: That's pretty great, but it's gonna completely screw your income tax. Now that you've got all this equipment, what do you do with it? You don't need the recording equipment.

Patrick: We're selling most of it, and we just bought a van. We needed to invest in a van, so it was perfect timing.

Cosmik: Not the usual metal box everybody else tours in. You have a comfortable van to tour in now.

Patrick: Exactly. That's what we did. It's a really comfortable van. We'd been riding around in Pansy Division's van for a long time, and it's got this wooden bench seat in it, with a loft bed, and if you're sitting in the back of it, it's super uncomfortable. But if you're up in the loft bed, it's a total death trap. [Laughs.] You're just waiting to topple over or go flying through a window or something like that! It freaks me out to even try to sleep up there so I don't. But the van we've got now is really nice, so we're stoked.

HUGH HOPPER of SOFT WORKS
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
The roots of Soft Works go very deep and Hugh Hopper is the perfect guy to talk about them. He's a founding member of The Wilde Flowers, the 60s group in Canterbury, England that was the seed bed for members of art-rock groups like Caravan, Gong and of course, The Soft Machine. Rusty was able to catch up with Hugh at his home in England, where his contribution to Soft Works is making sure the grand tradition of English jazz continues to flower.

Cosmik: All you guys are composers but the album has a very consistent feel. I like Soft Works' lyrical approach to the melodies, especially Elton's sax work. He really makes a pleasing sound that's easy to have around, like on the first track, "Seven Formerly." There's a just bit of dissonance but a very digestible dissonance. Did you all agree to this style or do you just have similar tastes?

Hopper: Well, Elton's natural approach is more towards free/improv, and mine is more towards tunes. We meet in the middle.

Cosmik: Usually the Soft Machine got called jazz-rock, but except for Allan's guitar on tracks like "Madam Vintage," your rock roots seem to be submerged here. It's certainly not the frantic showmanship of fusion either, it's all pretty downbeat in comparison, especially on pieces like "First Trane." Maybe we should call it a kind of 21st Century Be-Bop. How would you describe it? Have you got a name for your approach this time out?

Hopper: That's a pretty good label, 21st Century Be-Bop...

LARRY O. DEAN
Interviewed by Erick Mertz
A veteran indie-pop performer, Dean has played both solo and with bands such as the Fussbudgets, Post Office and Malcontent, releasing 14 albums on top of numerous volumes of poetry. When it comes to this artist first impressions can be trusted: Dean is literate, humorous and most importantly, prolific.

Cosmik: You've been with a number of bands throughout your extensive career. What is different about working with The Me Decade?

Larry: The Me Decade grew out of solo shows I was asked to put together to support my first solo album, Throw the Lions to the Christians. I assembled it on a whim, and that group coalesced into a more unified whole while recording Sir Slob, my second solo album. A friend pointed out that I seem to be working backward -- instead of leaving a band to have a solo career, a band has emerged from my solo performances! I still do just as many solo dates in a given year, and those arrangements are informed by what we do in The Me Decade, but I like messing around with arrangements too, I have no fealty to them aside from the basic structure of the songs. Everyone in The Me Decade has a say in playing their own parts, I never dictate anything, I think that's distasteful, but we do talk as a band about what we want to accomplish. If everyone doesn't like a song, we don't work it up. I guess it's as democratic as a band with a singular writer can be.

Cosmik: For people already familiar with you as well as those just getting familiar, talk about what they'll find on Gentrification is Theft?

Larry: As with all of what I do, it's a lyrically-driven album. I start with the lyrics almost every time and write the music from there, so it's an album that's word-friendly and hopefully evocative of ideas, emotions and opinions because of it. I also hope it's funny, because I am a funny guy, but often I look at the songs as a body of work and they seem rather grim. People won't find much in the way of musical showboating; we try to keep the material interesting and varied without resorting to tricks. It's a good sounding record, largely unadorned by studio sleight-of-hand, although when you do any multi-track recording it's an illusion. I think it rocks!

LOUIE DeVITO
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Louie DeVito is the top club DJ in New York, perhaps the whole country if you measure by how many mix CDs he's sold. Rusty Pipes spoke with him about creating those successful mixes.

Cosmik: Seeing the people start to react and jump at a particular song has a lot to do with how successful I feel about a show. I tape the shows that I do, but the immediacy of the mix sometimes doesn't always come through when I listen back to the set. How do you make that excitement happen time after time on a CD?

DeVito: There's a lot of editing that's involved after the actual mix is done to create that energy. I always say that I like to use the best parts of the song. Not to say that there is a bad part of a great record, but there are parts that don't have as much energy. A lot of these mixers are producing ten, twelve minute mixes. In a nightclub it's great to play a song for ten or twelve minutes, but on a CD you're only dealing with 80 minutes. You can't possibly put a song on there for ten minutes. I don't care how great the song is, it's just not going to work. What I try and do is keep a lot of energy there and cut that ten or twelve minutes down to three or four, you know, the best parts, bring the vocals right up. There's remixes I get [on other CDs] where it takes three minutes before the vocal comes in. Three minutes in a club may not be that long if you're drinking, you're mingling, you're dancing, fine. But if somebody's in their car or working out or just listening to the CD, three minutes is like an eternity... I want people to listen to the whole disc, not go, "Oh, I don't like this part" and fast forward. I want them to say, "Oh my god, it keeps getting better and better!"

SKIP HELLER
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Skip Heller is an under-appreciated national treasure. Musicians know about him. Critics know about him. Critiques glow about him. By under-appreciated I mean only that the general public hasn't made the discovery as of yet, even though he's available in two flavors: country and jazz. To save time and space here, just look him up in your favorite musician encyclopedia and then ask yourself "well, why don't I have these CDs?" For those of you who are already Skip-hip, who have been wowed by the country picking or drifted off on the sublime jazz he and his quartet are masters of, it may be a bit of a surprise to learn of this strange studio technique he employs.

Cosmik: You're gonna get called "eccentric" no matter what you do, because you're not going to fit into a category, but some people would say your studio methods really are... okay, at least unusual, right? What's the story behind your session leading technique?

Skip: Except for Howard Greene, nobody in my regular band really believed me when I told them John Hartford's Aereo-Plain was the record that snapped me. One of the guys in the group was reading an interview with David Bromberg, who produced the album, in God only knows what magazine, and the interviewer was particularly intent on details about Aereo-Plain, which Bromberg provided.
"Nobody was allowed to hear playbacks, nobody was allowed to discuss the arrangements except either to ask what key or to count off the tempo, and often enough, first takes were chosen because, even if there were mistakes in the take, you could hear the guys in the band really listening to each other."
That I would choose this as a working method in a group where the music is far more arranged did not inspire much confidence in the bandmember. He's actually angry at me that I have a method based on historical precedent but never told him what it was.

Cosmik: But how does anything work in that environment!? I mean, I can see that it does because your stuff is great, but I'd think you'd need everyone to be on the same page, and with a method like that it's like they're not even sure which book they're reading. Isn't it?

Skip: You have to get into a different vibe with each player, in some ways, usually by playing some sort of rhythmic thing or echoing a phrase that musician might play, but sending it back to him slightly altered, as if you're saying "Yes, and...". I don't know if you know anything about the old Second City company out of Chicago, the improv comedy troupe. Their approach to improvising was developed from the texts of a woman named Violet Sprolin. Her primary focus was that, in an interactive improvising ensemble, you should never contradict another player, you never leave anyone hanging, and you never step on anyone's toes. Those are good rules for improvised music as well, and I've been pretty influenced by Violet Sprolin, and the other forces behind Second City -- Fred Kaz, Del Close, and Severin Darden. Fred and his wife Helen performed my wedding ceremony, actually.
On the other hand, if you're the composer and you're setting up these frameworks for improvising, you are trying to put a certain feeling across, so you have to lead the ensemble in that direction. Of course, if somebody comes across with something great that you never thought of, you have to know how to act in support of that and to have faith that what that player is doing is just as valuable to the music as what you had hoped for in the first place.
This quartet that I have now can deal with this, because we've been playing together for a pretty long time -- roughly three years -- and I've gotten to know the players and how they're going to play something well enough that I can leave them alone and be really pleased with what they come up with. Howard Greene, the drummer, is the only one who really tries to break the "no playbacks" rule, but I think he's finally housebroken.

TIMOTHY GASSEN
Interviewed by Fred Mills
When Timothy Gassen updated his 1995 music reference book, "Knights of Fuzz," this time on CD-ROM, Fred Mills had to interview him to get the details of this record collector/archivist/researcher's wet dream. Fred was generous enough to share the conversation with Cosmik's readers.

Fred: What was your original intent or motivation with the "Knights" book -- or, more accurately, its predecessor, "Echoes In Time?"

Gassen: The original inspiration comes from the mainstream media's deliberate attempts to marginalize music movements that are controlled by the fans and bands themselves. The modern garage/psych movement isn't dictated from advertising agency boardrooms, magazine editors or major labels -- it's the kids that make this music, and this music matters. The 1980-2000 garage/psych movement has created THOUSANDS of bands, albums and 45s worthy of being heard. These bands tour the globe. They play hundreds of gigs around the world every day. THEY EXIST!

Fred: Then do you foresee elaborating even further on the ROM in the future, such as updated editions, moving to the DVD format, or via your Purple Cactus website?

Gassen: I wanted to make this release a DVD, but cost and compatibility issues were the main factors. Just about anyone today can get access to a CD-ROM drive, but DVDs aren't as common -- yet. If fans support this CD-ROM, then I'd really want to produce a DVD with tons more video and audio, plus all the techno goodies I could cram on there. But this CD-ROM release isn't a compromise -- it's the correct medium for this project, especially for the hundreds of text pages.

PETE MISER
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Hip-hop artist Pete Miser writes from the heart, and he makes you feel what he felt when you listen to his music. It's personal and real. The subject of 9/11 has been written about by 80 percent of the artists in the music biz, but Pete. a New York City resident, was hit hard by the attacks. In this part of his interview, he talked about the song he wrote just a few days after the attacks, right about when he was able to think clearly for the first time again.

Cosmik: There's a lot of positivity in your music compared to others.

Pete: [Thinks for a moment, then whispers] I don't know what to attribute it to. [Laughs.]

Cosmik: [Laughs.] Yeah, well I'll tell ya, some people appreciate that. Might Be is all spelled out for us, it's definitely about 9/11 and you're asking some deep questions there. A lot of them... Well, I have to assume the song was written at least several months ago, of course, but this song seems to be coming out at the perfect time, when people are questioning the President.

Pete: Yeah, it's weird, because... well I don't know if you read the liner note stuff about it, but I wrote the song in a way I don't normally write songs. I'll read what I wrote in it. "I wrote and recorded this song a few days after the attacks on the World Trade Center. I was planning to meet up with Upski and Gita at Union Square for a candlelight vigil when the lyrics just kind of spilled out of me. That type of writing is rare for me, so I went with the flow, at first worrying that I was going to be late, then worrying that I was going to miss the vigil altogether. I sat in my kitchen and recorded the lyrics through the little speakers in my laptop to help me remember how to say them. In the end I never went back and did final takes. When I thought about it later, I decided not to edit the lyrics or redo the vocals, but to leave it as a document of what was on my mind in those days. I got to the vigil late and missed the ceremonial part of it. I consider this song a decent alternative." I don't usually write songs very fast, and those lyrics are literally me MC'ing through the little speakers in the little laptop in my kitchen, whereas normally I'd go into my studio and actually cut lyrics. On recent listening, I sometimes say "Ooo, it's a little cheesy, it's a little sentimental," or whatever, but I just feel like that's where my head was at, and I think it would do it a disservice to go back and change anything.

Cosmik: I thought that vocal sound was some cool studio technique. It worked perfectly for the song.

Pete: No. It was just a sketch, you know? I kept playing the sketch to people, and everybody kept saying "you shouldn't go back and do this, you should go with this one." I mean it was mixed... It ended up being mixed by this mix engineer who's a genius, so he made it sound pretty clean and good, you can't hear my kitchen in the background.

Cosmik: Who was that?

Pete: This guy named Mark Plati, who plays guitar with David Bowie and does a lot of his engineering work. A few days after I wrote it, it was poignant as hell, because it was September 20th or something when people were hearing it, but I was kind of concerned that by the time I put it out people were going to be sick of hearing about that subject.

Cosmik: You know what, they might have been if it weren't for the way things are going right now, so you may just be right on time, with the Bush Administration making the moves they've made in the past few months, it's been pretty shocking, I think.

Pete: I'm really amazed that the whole country isn't outraged, and the only thing I can blame it on is just the sedation of the mass media and consumerism. It's to the point where I'm watching some news program and they're talking about hydrogen fueled cars, and they're talking about where we're going to get oil and despite the fact that these run on hydrogen, you still need to extract the hydrogen by using fossil fuels, and at no point does it occur to somebody that maybe we should just drive less. [Laughs.] Remember, that's an option, too.

DALEK
Interviewed by Jason Thornberry
Hip-hop music continues to grow, evolve, and develop. It progresses. Dalek continues to push that evolution, partly through unexpected collaborations.

Cosmik: How did the collaboration with JK Broadrick (of Godflesh, Napalm Death, etc, etc.) happen?

Dalek: After writing a thank you email to writer Dan Hill he wrote back telling me that a friend of his, Kevin Martin, had read about us in Hiphop Connection, and was eager to contact us to talk about collaborating. Dan gave Kevin my email and we began talking about working together. We had a concept for a split 12-inch in the works. When Techno Animal got signed to Matador they pitched the idea for the 12-inch with us, and Matador was with it. We also worked on the 2nd Gen remix for "And/Or" together (I did the vocals) and I lent my vocals to their track "Hell" on the Matador release the Brotherhood of the Bomb. We have toured Europe with those guys and have built a tight friendship. We really consider them to be our brothers.

GLOVER GILL
Interviewed by Holly Day
Richard Linklater's animated drama, Waking Life, with its wonderful effects and characterization, coupled with the subtle and beautiful chamber music strains of the Tosca Tango Orchestra, is the animated film that should have beaten out Shrek and Monsters Inc. at the 2001 Oscars. Glover Gill is the man behind the Tosca Tango Orchestra, as well as the smaller ensemble, Glovertango, which also contributed to the Waking Life soundtrack.

Cosmik: How did you get involved in Waking Life?

Gill: Rick [Linklater] had been lurking around our performances in Austin, and just had a vision that this music was going to fit very well with his images, and it did. When he approached me, we had written most of the material for our fourth and last record, and we had not yet recorded all of them - we were in rehearsal and getting ready for the initial production of that. Now, the music that you hear on the score, very little of that was actually custom-composed for the score. A lot of that was pre-existing material. Many of the pieces on the film just happened to work with certain cues. Timewise, and just everything. So it was pretty easy to lay some of that stuff in. Of course, some stuff had to be re-recorded, or sped up, or slowed down, or edited. So the main things that were custom-composed for the film were sound-effects, string-quartet stuff, that does not appear on the soundtrack CD, and also the last - let's see, the closing music for the end titles, one of those is a new piece that was performed by my new, smaller tango group, Glover Tango, and then another one of them was also performed by Glover Tango. It's an old, classic tango by Julian Plaza, and we had a heck of a time getting permission to use that. We wound up paying more money in purchasing the rights for that one song than my entire paycheck for working on the film.

DIVISON OF LAURA LEE
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
The Swedish Invasion is well underway. I'm sure you've heard of it. The Hives, The White Stripes, The Strokes, The Helacopters.... A lot of bands beginning with "The". For my money, none of them come close to the power and talent of Division of Laura Lee, a powerful band out of Gothenburg on Sweden's less heavily mined West Coast. During this interview with guitarist/singer Per Stalberg, an interesting subject involving the Swedish government's method with helping bands develop came up.

Cosmik: It's interesting that the government would pay bands just to practice. Is it true that they used to do that?

Per: Yeah, we have all these union things and we have a socialistic government in Sweden, they were helping bands out a lot... I don't know how to explain it in English because you don't have anything like it in the U.S., but it's called Studie, and you join one of those, and fill out papers saying who is in the band, and you need to have a contact person, then you just rehearse and put down hours. And for that you get paid. They pay for your practice place, so I think that about 90% of all the bands in the small cities in Sweden have their own practice places. You can buy strings, you can buy an amp, save up money, do whatever you want, you know?

Cosmik: Now a lot of those bands are making decent money, and a handful are doing very well in the States and everywhere else, and they're all taxpayers in Sweden, so I guess it worked out for the government AND the bands.

Per: It's a good thing, and I think it's one of the reasons why there's so many bands in a small country like this, but I still think the weather has something to do with it, too. And, as I said before, all the government bullshit, you know... some weirdos out there just don't want to be controlled. I felt like that since I was 10 years old. I just wanted to do my music. I didn't care about fuckin' working or doing as my mother told me. Sweden's such a small country, though, you can almost feel the control here, where in other countries you don't even notice.

Cosmik: Right. America's so huge you feel 100% free, but we've got fingerprints on file, CIA, FBI, religious right, all kinds of things.

Per: It's so huge a lot of people in America just go with the flow. They don't even bother. They think what they hear on the TV and what the President is saying are true. In Sweden it's different. Everybody's into politics. I wouldn't say we're smarter, but it's different. People seem to read more about what's going on in the world. If I ask a young kid in the U.S., he might not even know what Sweden is. And here I am, I've been talking English since I was 10 years old while I've lived in that country called Sweden. That says a lot. I think we're a bit more informed about what's happening out there, and I think that's why a lot of bands from our country are very political, as well.

RICH BUHLER
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes
Rich Buhler is a former broadcaster who started TruthOrFiction.com in 1998, but has actually been researching what he calls "urban legends" for over 30 years, even featuring them at one time on his daily talk show. Here Rusty and Buhler discuss the e-rumor phenomena, the damage that can be done, the responsibility that comes with forwarding email, and how to identify an e-rumor.

Buhler:... The other thing that I tell people is that when they click that mouse to send an email, they have become a publisher. They have published on the largest publishing entity that has ever existed. And they say, "Yeah, but I've only got 15 people on my address book." There are numerous examples of people who sent something to 15 other people and became what I call an "unintentional celebrity" on the internet. Because it just had all the ingredients of an e-rumor and it got passed around like crazy. The biggest e-rumor of the last twelve months was the one of the Tourist Guy.

Cosmik: Oh, yeah! That fake picture of the guy on top the World Trade Center with an airliner about to crash into it.

Buhler: That was an example of this. The fellow who made the picture is the fellow in the picture and he just did it as a joke! He sent it to a handful of his friends and it just took off. And the bigger it became the worse he felt, because it really was a very disrespectful thing to the lives of the people who were caught in that, making light, and he felt terrible about that and would've never published it that far and wide. In fact, the only reason we ever found out who he was, he's a student from Romania, was because his friends finally outted him. They kept saying, "Look this has become a big phenomenon, you ought to take credit for it," and he said "No, no, I don't want that." Then some guy who looked like him from South America got signed by Volkswagen to do a television commercial, (laughs) and that's when his friends said, "Alright enough is enough!" and they published his name on a Romanian website and it went out from there. But he didn't intend that.
The second most widely circulated rumor of the last twelve months was the Halloween Terrorism rumor at the malls -- that there was going to be terrorist activity at shopping malls on Halloween. That one, we don't know here it got started, but there was this one girl here in Southern California who got it, just like everybody else it was forwarded to her, and she went "Wow! That's important," and she forwarded it to her friends and for some reason that's the one that got the most widely circulated. It was her forward because it had her email signature at the bottom, which sort of made it look like she was the one who knew the truth of it. It caused her no end of trouble because she had her employer's phone number on it, she had the place where she worked, she had her email address. It shut down their mail server, it distracted her employer [because] for weeks he was getting phone calls and media response.
It's a powerful thing. In fact, that Halloween Mall rumor devastated some of shopping malls. The International Council of Shopping Centers which is a 30,000 member group, I'd never heard of them before, had me come speak at their annual security conference a couple of weeks ago in Baltimore, Maryland, because they were freaked out by the rumor. Tom Ridge of Homeland Security was the keynote speaker in the morning and I was the afternoon keynote speaker. That's how powerful an e-rumor can be.

Cosmik: I had a vegetarian friend who sent me an e-rumor that claimed a certain fast food restaurant is using headless chickens to make their chicken nuggets with. It actually claimed they are growing chicken body parts by some high-tech method that uses wries and tubes to replace regular chickens! I kind of lost him as a friend because I sent him a reply where I pointed out that the rumor didn't make any economic sense. The chicken is probably the cheapest meat animal of all to raise. Why would they go to all the trouble to develop all this supposed technology to raise fake chickens? He got very upset at me because what he was really doing was promoting vegetarianism.

Buhler: There's one of the ingredients of an e-rumor. An e-rumor always has what I call the Wow Factor. "Wow, this is interesting," "Wow, this is funny," "Wow, this is important," "Wow, this is just what I thought Bill and Hillary would do," or whatever the Wow is that I want. So even though that rumor is really ludicrous, you can see where somebody who has the Wow Factor as a vegetarian would want it to be true and would use it as something to spread to their non-vegetarian friends, "Hey lookee here!" That's one of the key ingredients of an e-rumor.

JAHRED of (hed) P.E.
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
When (hed) Planet Earth got so close to "making it" they could taste it, only to fall short as sales of Broke began to slide, things began to unravel for lead singer Jahred. He found himself being betrayed by a lot of people he had counted as friends. The things he went through are chronicled on this year's release, Blackout, which seems to have finally put them over the top. The lyrics are dark and difficult, a diary of pain and eventual salvation. Jahred credits his conversion to Buddhism with helping him come out of it all alive. During his Cosmik Debris interview, he was asked about a song that sounded a bit like a suicide note.

Cosmik: Blackout ends with the song "Revelation," which seems to be summing up the way you'd been feeling through that time period when you were writing. "There is nothing I can say I haven't said - Thank you for listening to these voices in my head - This is my revelation, Lord, this is the end - This is my exodus, oh Lord, I'll break before I bend..." Will you still, or have things changed somehow?

Jahred: Well, sometimes I don't mean an exodus like "leave the planet," sometimes I just mean "leave from a certain situation." I don't always mean like leaving out of my body through suicide. Sometimes I mean getting out of a certain situation or getting away from a certain bad vibration.

Cosmik: That makes sense. But I have to admit, I never even thought of that. I guess everyone hears a song a different way.

Jahred: Right on. I get a kick out of hearing other people's interpretations.

Cosmik: Has anyone else interpreted it the other way?

Jahred: Well, what's cool is Sonny will go "Oh, I always though you meant this, that and this..." and I'll say "Whoa, that's rad, because I really meant this.

Cosmik: I listen to this album and there's all this pain and betrayal, and loss, too. Betrayal is so hard. You said "if you only knew" when I asked if it was difficult cutting people loose from your life. Just the feeling of the album says it was devastating.

Jahred: Yeah... but the effect those people can have on my life now is close to nil.

Cosmik: Probably always was. That's probably something you learn through Buddhism is that this was always true, if you'd only known it.

Jahred: Yeah, well that's the thing, you know? That's the thing about being betrayed by someone evil: they're wearing the smile. Your enemy doesn't come into your life with fangs, dragging his knuckles, it's like your friend. That's you're enemy, and that's what's going to tear your heart out, you know what I mean? Buddha said, and it's so true, you don't even get this many things that happen to you in life, but when some of it does happen, you better look at it as a huge message and a crossroads for you to make something right out of it. Fortunately, I was able to do that.