Ten years, we've been doing this. The first use of the term "Cosmik Conversations" came on our very first anniversary. In that issue, the table of contents referred to the first of our now-traditional interview highlight montages as "One Year Of Cosmik Interviews," but the switch was in by the time you clicked in to the actual piece. Since then, each yearly montage has carried that name, as well as dozens of our more in-depth interviews.

The idea behind the yearly Cosmik Conversations article was simple enough. Instead of setting off fireworks, banging on drums and making an entire "look at us" issue, we'd celebrate our anniversaries with a single piece that brought back memories from the year gone by, while elsewhere in the issue we'd just get on with the business of starting the next year. We're very excited about our 10th anniversary, but we're going to resist the urge to party too hard. We're going to stick to our tradition. Except this time, we are including interviews from our entire 10 year history.

Normally, we've had plenty of graphics in our Cosmik Conversations montages, even though that always generates quite a bit of e-mail from frustrated readers who are still stuck surfing the Net at 56kbps. The page loads slowly. Imagine how slowly it would load THIS time, with ten years worth of interview clips and images. So we've decided to give our 56kbps friends a much deserved break and forego images, except for the title at the top. It's still going to take a while to load, believe me.

We toyed with the idea of including pieces of every interview we've ever done, but then we realized we needed to get this thing online sometime in 2005, so instead we've decided to present some of our favorites. They may have historical significance or they may be interviews we enjoyed doing more than others, or they may be great examples of the diversity that makes Cosmik Debris what it is. It's pretty huge, so you might want to bookmark it and come back a few times. However you slice it, we hope you enjoy these highlights from the first decade of Cosmik Conversations.

THE REPROBATES (June, 1995: Issue #1)
Interviewed by Alan Wright

It was our very first issue, and we were scrambling to make it happen. Cai Campbell, one of the five original staffers and idea guys, had a friend named Alan Wright who had a zine of his own. Turned out Alan was willing to do reviews for our first few issues while we gained some credibility with the record labels, and he even provided us with our very first interview. The Reprobates played melodious punk, one of Alan's favorite things. When he interviewed the Timonium, Maryland band via telephone, the subject turned to buzzin'. Since we were oh-so underground in our early years, it worked fine for us.

Cosmik: I don't know what it's like out there, but here we're seeing a lot more pot busts.

Mike: Yeah, I just got some mushrooms mailed from my brother in Olympia.

Cosmik: That's the home of the good stuff. There was a doctor, a woman around here, who was growing pot to help her patients with glaucoma, and they busted her!

Mike: They're just trying to make a point or something.

Frank: We do another song called "Jimmy Comes," which was written about the old drummer, Jimmy, when he was still in the band --Mike has a knack for writing about everyone around him-- the song starts off, "Driving in the pouring rain, looking for some rock cocaine, Jimmy's screwing up and going down again tonight."

Jason: One day at practice, he says, "Hey, is this song about me?"

PHILLIP CRAFT (July, 1995: Issue #2)
Interviewed by Jim Andrews

Our second issue, July 1995, had a theme: The Censorship Issue. We gave readers the option of two separate tables of contents. One led to articles about music and non-controversial topics, and the other, which appeared half-way through the issue, led to several articles and interviews relating to censorship and the battle for freedom of speech. It was a hot topic that month, as the Exon-Gorton bill had just gone through the senate in an attempt to place numerous restrictions on our Internet freedoms. Phillip Craft was quite vocal about freedom of speech and censorship in general, and his chosen forum was a Public Access cable program called Political Playhouse. The show garnered national attention in 1995 when Craft and his guests barricaded the doors to the studio, took off their clothes and broadcast for several hours in the nude. When it became apparent that no actual laws were being broken, Craft continued to do this, and he became known, especially in his native Seattle area, as The Naked Guy.

Cosmik: Do you ever find that to be...throughout your daily life, do you find that there are a lot of people who associate you with that? I mean, people who actually know you personally wouldn't, but everyone else who has heard your name would probably associate you with being "The Naked Guy". Does that affect you in any way outside of television?

Phillip: I think it's funny.

Cosmik: You don't think people sometimes miss the point? Guys calling up and saying "Hey, why don't ya have her take her panties off, too..."

Phillip: Well, of course. That's part of the point as well. We're trying to reach people who aren't necessarily already converted. So they're not initially gonna get the point.

Cosmik: So, preaching to the choir isn't gonna do any good...

Phillip: Right, because the choir already knows and they're hip and they get the point. But I'm trying to get to people who already don't agree, and at first when they see the stuff, they're not gonna get it, because they don't have the context. And that's then when it's up to us to establish the context. And they tune in, they watch the show on a regular basis, and they might not watch the show because of the political content, they might watch it because it breaks rules, and because it's not like anything else on TV, so they might develop an affinity for a character on the show...And eventually, they will get the point, and when they do, the battle is won. Because then, they can't be brainwashed by all the bullshit that comes across the airwaves. They've all of a sudden gained a little context on what information is and what truth, liberty, and nudity really are. All of a sudden they understand that censorship is just about the controlling of information. And most people don't get that, and that's why censorship is the tool and the power that it is. Because most people aren't hip to how it's being used.

Freedom is a muscle. If you don't use it, you lose it. It will atrophy. It feels good to use it. It's part of the responsibility of living in a free society. Every once in a while, you have to act free. You have to stand up and protect that freedom. You empower other people to do that by living it.

THE GREAT SURF SUMMIT #1 (Oct, 1995: Issue #5)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

For issue #5, we decided to try something different. Surf music was definitely the thing we wrote about most back then, in those years before we diversified to include everything else under the sun, so why not get a bunch of the best together for a big ol' convo? Logistics, that's why not. But in those heady early days of the Internet, we were just realizing the possibilities, so we hooked everyone up via e-mail and spent two weeks having what became known as The Great Surf Summit. It was so massive we ended up making it a two-parter, with more players (and the legendary surf disc jockey, Phil Dirt) joining in for the second half. For this first go-round, the participants were:

Dave Arnson (The Insect Surfers) - Guitar - Los Angeles, CA
John Blair (Jon & The Nightriders) - Guitar - Mission Viejo, CA
Todd Damnit (Thee Phantom 5ive) - Bass - Memphis, TN
Joe Emery (Death Valley) - Guitar - Austin, TX (Not participating in this question)
Ferenc Dobronyi (Pollo Del Mar) - Guitar - San Francisco, CA
Rick Johnson (The Halibuts) - Guitar - Los Angeles, CA
Mel Waldorf (The Mel-Tones) - Guitar - Pawtucket, RI
Allen Whitman (The Mermen) - Bass - San Francisco, CA
Pepper Wilson (Death Valley) - Bass - Austin, TX (Not participating in this question)
Bernard Yin (Brazil 2001) - Guitar - Los Angeles, CA

Cosmik: Let's talk a bit about what got you all here. What were the experiences that led you to be players? And to be SURF musicians, at that! I mean, that's not the beaten path, by any means.

John Blair: In my case, surf music WAS the first style of music I ever played. I learned how to play guitar by listening to surf records in the 60s. My first electric guitar was a '59 Stratocaster which I wanted because Dick Dale played a Strat. "Surfer's Choice" and The Challengers' "Surf Beat" were among the very first records I ever bought; I learned how to play every song on those records. I was inspired by the recordings, but also by local bands like the Esquires ("Flashin' Red/What A Burn"; they went to my high school), The Dynamic Five (who didn't make any records but were a great local band), and Conrad & The Hurricane Strings ("Hurricane"). My first band was in high school; we called ourselves The Intruders. I'm sure we were horrible. I kept at it though, playing with a psychedelic rock band in the late 60s (The Columbia Bicycle), a Top 40 copy band for a few months in 1971 or 72, and finally rhythm guitar in Ray Campi's Rockabilly Rebels for a short while in the mid-70s. All the while, I never strayed far from surf music (except for a non-electric period during and after college when I fell in with a bluegrass crowd and would frequently find myself playing acoustic guitar in jam sessions at parties -- I even played rhythm guitar on an obscure 1973 bluegrass album by some husband/wife duo from Missouri). However, I kept collecting surf music recordings over the years, building up a sizeable collection of vinyl, and kept playing surf guitar licks every chance I got. The story behind Jon & The Nightriders has been told in print before (and in detail in the liner notes to our 1994 "Banished To The Beach" anthology CD). We formed in late 1979 and are back together now (and recording) after a lengthy dormancy period. In a way, this is the band I didn't have back in the 60s when I wanted a good surf band the most. It's been great fun and it ain't over yet!!

David Arnson: When I was six years old my parents bought The Beach Boys "Surfin' USA" album. The album is notable because five of the twelve songs were instrumental! Their version of "Miserlou," "Let's Go Trippin'," "Honky Tonk," and their own "Stoked" and "Surf Jam" definitely and deeply effected my early consciousness. Also, my dad (who was into motorcycles) bought the album "Black Boots and Bikes," by The Kickstands, who were essentially a Beach Boys style band who sang about motorcycles instead of surfing. They too played fifty percent instrumentals. I seriously thought that The Kickstands were as big as The Beach Boys, Beatles or Stones! The liner notes stating, "You'll be hearing a lot more from this band!" haunted and taunted me for years. I have always loved rock instrumentals but didn't find out about Dick Dale, Link Wray and The Ventures until the late seventies. It was the discovery of Davie Allan and The Arrows and his mutant meld of surf and psychedelic fuzz instros that finally pushed me over the edge to start The Insect Surfers band in the summer of 1979. The CBGB/New York punk rock explosion around 1976 (Patti Smith, Ramones, Television, Cramps, etc.) really inspired me to make my own music. I wanted a band that would combine the cool dual guitars of Tom Verlaine's Television with the energy of The Ramones. By digging into the surf instrumental past I found the perfect medium to express myself on guitar.

Bernard Yin: The spirit of a good melody and the excitement it can create when delivered with a twangy guitar is truly magic. I think of the James Bond theme, Spaghetti Westerns, Dick Dale, Link Wray. It's not bubble gum safe, it's not excessively sophisticated musically, it has a primal feel yet it's classy. Did I miss anything?!?! Simpler guitar lines allowed me to not be intimidated by the instrument and encouraged me to concentrate on the feel and pleasure. By not being intimidating it's therefore better for one's psychological health [as a musician]! I love surfing and I am fascinated by beach culture and the surf/ California etc. mystique. To have it supplemented by music which is not stupid is something for which one can be proud. Surf/Instro type music, to me, is one of the finest forms of music which ever can be claimed as being highly rooted in the good ol' USA. It's a rare moment for me to find a place where some twisted patriotism and "art" mix. There's more but it is 30 pages long.

Mel Waldorf: I got interested in surf music through the hot rod tie in. We had a station wagon that I used to take out driving, even before I had my license, and I had this Ventures cassette that I played constantly. I used to drag race my wagon, and I always did best with the Ventures in the deck. So fairly early on, I was captivated by the power and the spirit of the music. When I picked up guitar, "Walk Don't Run" was one of the first tunes I tried to play. After playing in other styles of music for years, I found myself returning to the music that turned me on to guitar in the first place.

Allen Whitman: I love music. My father sings 2nd bass (the lowest human register in the choir) I sang soprano when I was little and when I was 11 I heard electric bass in a church and that was IT! I love to play. I'll play with anyone who can groove. I've done top-40, 6-piece uniformed disco show bands on the Jersey shore, "rock of the 80's (English accent)" bands, I played with Helios Creed, the Ink Spots, blues, country, and dinosaur rock one nighters...I'm a total musical whore. I happened to be working with Jim Thomas and it was a total accident. Just my luck.

Rick Johnson: In the late 70's Joe (sax), Kevin (bass) and I (guitar) were surfing a lot. Riding old longboards, wearing old thrift shop trunks. Really into the endless summer thing. We also started collecting old surf records. You could get them for less than a buck then. We were into the whole early 60's package. So we started playing the music too. Also, lucky for us, we started buying our vintage equipment then too. I got my first Jaguar for $200, my first reverb unit for $150. You won't see deals like that anymore. We played our first gig in a club as the Halibuts in '82, opening for Davy Allan and the Arrows. We've been playing surf music together for about 15 years now.

Ferenc Dobronyi: My first exposure to surf music came in 1979 from the Johnny Thunders album SO ALONE where he covers Pipeline. I was just learning how to play guitar, so (like half the kids in America) this is one of the first songs I learned to play. Then I heard the original version of Pipeline in the movie "The Warriors," and that sound really knocked me out!! So I went to the library! and checked out a few of those cheap surf-sound compilations and went to work on all the other instro standards. I have played in bands fairly consistently since then, but no one ever shared my interest in surf music. I had known Jono (the other Pollo Del Mar guitarist) for about 3 years before we talked about our interest in surf. It was like a big secret that we weren't aloud to talk about. But we decided to get a band together and voila, joy and incredible happiness. Like John Blair said, this is the band I've wanted to put together since High School.

Todd Damnit: Since I was born on the set of Hee Haw, entertainment is in my blood. As a child I had the Ventures' rec, "Batman," and dug the swingin' beat. It was not until 1983 that I became snagged by the surf beat, when I first heard the Astronauts and that insane CLICK! Shortly thereafter I got my first bass (rhymes with mass) and have been trying to learn how to play ever since. It is commitment and a healthy sense of humor that keeps me and my combo movin'.

GREG SHAW (Dec, 1995: Issue #7)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

Greg Shaw. That's the answer to the proverbial question: Who put the bomp...?

Founder of Bomp Magazine (which pre-dated Rolling Stone), Bomp Records and Voxx Records, Shaw led a fascinating rock and roll life, discovering and signing such important acts as The Flaming Groovies, The Plimsouls, Devo and The Romantics along the way. If there were an Indie Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, Shaw would certainly be a charter member. Sadly, Greg Shaw passed away last year at the age of 55, leaving a still-active set of record labels and many friends and admirers behind. In December of 1995, DJ Johnson interviewed Shaw, and he discussed a wide range of topics, including the events surrounding the loss of The Plimsouls to Geffen Records.

Cosmik: You put out "A Million Miles Away," by The Plimsouls, which is considered by a LOT of people to be one of greatest singles any indie label ever put out, and it didn't put them over the top. Did that shock you, or at least mystify you somewhat?

Greg: No, because I believe that if it had stayed on Bomp, we would have had a big hit with it. It was already on virtually every station in the country when the band's manager decided to go with Geffen. Instead of re-releasing and promoting it immediately, they let it die and didn't release anything at all until the album was done a year or so later. But yes, at the time I thought everyone involved must've lost their minds.

Cosmik: Did it shake your confidence in the power of the indie label in general? Did it make you think "What the hell does it take?"

Greg: No, in fact it confirmed my belief that an indie label never stood a chance. The only way that song got on the radio was because we put every penny back into promotion. We may have sold 100,000 copies of the single, but we also spent $100,000 on promo. And that was only the beginning. It might have taken half a million to push that record into the charts. That's why you needed major labels. But it sure shook my confidence in the major labels as knowing what the hell they were doing.

Cosmik: In the liner notes to the Destination Bomp 20th Anniversary CD, you mentioned that Geffen signed the Plimsouls and basically let them die of neglect. You also mentioned that you wouldn't trade your world for David Geffen's. Little hints of animosity. Is that based on what they did with The Plimsouls, or does it go deeper?

Greg: No. While he is no doubt a major jerk, I've never had any contact with Geffen and no specific gripe against him. That comment goes equally for anybody in that business; they're all a bunch of lying weasels whose lives are devoted to power politics, bullshit, lust for money, etc. Their days consist of endless meetings with other weasels in suits... this is no way to live, in my book. I much prefer my life, even if I don't have billions in the bank. I guess I make the comparison because there have been several times when I was offered such a life, and I'm so glad I didn't take it.

PAT PAULSEN (March, 1996: Issue #10)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

One of the most entertaining and inspired bits of extended comedy came in 1968 when Patrick Paulsen launched his campaign for the U.S. Presidency. It was announced on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, on which Paulsen was a writer and a regular performer, and it became a weekly, much-anticipated segment of the show. Moreover, it became a book, a comedy album and a national phenomenon, as a surprising number of people actually wrote Pat's name in on their ballots. They had to, since the various Secretaries of States generally refused to add Pat to the ballots. In 1996, Pat Paulsen was running again, and running into the same problems. Surprisingly, he seemed to take his politics seriously on some level. As you'll see when you read this segment of DJ Johnson's interview, he definitely took the competition seriously, at very least.

Cosmik: Do you still have as much trouble getting cooperation from the Secretaries of State as you did in 1968?

Pat: More so. In 1968 I was a write-in candidate. Although most of the Secretaries of State would not count my votes, I didn't have much contact with them. This time, for the most part, they will not recognize me as a serious candidate, thereby refusing access to their printed ballots.

Cosmik: In fact, you're suing Michigan's Secretary Of State for not giving you proper recognition. Is that about right?

Pat: I have withdrawn the suit. We were informed in court that Clinton had withdrawn his name from the primary ballot, as he thought he was unopposed. I decided I didn't want to win by default, and besides, if I run against myself, I might lose.

Cosmik: Did filing that suit have any real effect on other Secretaries of State? Are the roads any less closed?

Pat: No. We got a lot of publicity from the suit, but by that time, most of the other states had already been decided.

Cosmik: You were the first Presidential candidate with a World Wide Web homepage. Can't those guys do anything without you showing them how?

Pat: I guess not. Even the White House copied one of my pages. We know this to be a fact, because my wife was on the phone with our webmaster in Arizona one evening as he was viewing the stats. While they were talking, he noticed an unusual address entering the site and asked my wife if she knew who www.whitehouse.gov was. "Of course", she replied, "Bill Clinton". Well, it probably wasn't Clinton himself, but somebody from the organization was in our site for 45 minutes. One week later, Al Gore's cartoon page showed up on their site, laid out exactly like ours was at the time. We subsequently changed ours.

THOMAS DOLBY (Aug, 1996: Issue #15)
Interviewed by Keith Gillard

When Thomas Dolby talked to us in '96, it wasn't about his latest album, tour or synth module. No, Mr. Dolby was part of a project, one of a group of big thinkers with an idea that sounded iffy at the time. As it turned out, Thomas and his cohorts were onto something. From the perspective of 2005, it's rather entertaining to read all this hubub about 28.8 modem surfing.

Cosmik: First of all, let's talk about your big news - Web TV. That seems like a science fiction promise - every home wired. Do you think it can deliver on that promise?

Thomas: I think it does a fairly good job. Certainly from the point of view of the box. I think the big challenge for WebTV is going to be the service. That's really the important part of it. There's absolutely no doubt in my mind that my box delivers, but whether tens of millions of others can... I don't know.

Cosmik: Do you think the telephone bandwidth can deliver enough to capture the "quick-fix" TV audience?

Thomas: I think it does an amazingly good job. It feels very fast when you're used to websurfing from your computer. The built-in modem is somewhere a little bit over 28.8, but it feels way faster than that. I think really because all of the signals are going through WebTV's own servers, and so they've done a lot of tricks to optimize the speed of the signal. And so it's a little bit like websurfing at 28.8 when it's all cached. You know - when you've been there before.

Cosmik: They've eliminated a lot of bottlenecks.

Thomas: Seem to have done, yeah. As an example, from what I hear, when you hit a certain page, the server will look at all possible links on from that page, and start getting them ready to send you.

Cosmik: So it takes advantage of your "downtime," so to speak, when you are reading the information in front of you, to prepare for what's coming next.

Thomas: Exactly.

Cosmik: You're working your RMF (Rich Music Format) into this. How is that going to be implemented?

Thomas: Well, music and sound are very important to WebTV, because the idea of the WebTV box is that you can be sitting on your couch watching mainstream TV - NBC, ESPN, MTV - click number 3, and you're on the web. And obviously if that is silent, then it's going to be a walk. So it was absolutely essential to them from the beginning to have music on the site and on the web at large. And obviously they were dealing with very small bandwidth. So, very sensibly, they included a software synthesizer, which basically is the equivalent of a SoundBlaster-type soundcard, entirely in software, in every box. To this, we can send RMF files, which encapsulate not only the musical notes (as with a MIDI file) but also some data management handles, some enhanced security features, a lot of copyright information about the composer and copyright-holder of the music, and various other aspects which go beyond existing file types.

STEVE VAI & JOEL THOME (Nov, 1996: Issue #18)
Interviewed by Paul Remington

Guitarist Steve Vai and classical composer and conductor Joel Thome collaborated on a project at the Eastman School in Rochester New York in October of '96. Each man had played an important part in Frank Zappa's life story, and Zappa had most certainly played a major part in each of theirs. This clip is longer than most of the others because we didn't want to cut any essential parts of the conversation. This was a highly important moment that seems to have planted a seed. That seed may eventually grow into another chapter in the incredible Zappa story.

Cosmik: There's one thing I have to ask: David Ocker has said that he remembers Frank asking you to do transcriptions of Greggery Peccary he had never written down. He remembers seeing the transcriptions, and he has no idea what happened to them. Do you know?

Vai: [Looking surprised] I have them in my vault.

Cosmik: You have them in your vault.

Vai: In a big box that says "Project Peccary."

Cosmik: Will it ever see the light of day?

Vai: Well, Frank saw it.

Cosmik: Was he pleased with it?

Vai: Well, he wanted a complete score of Greggery Peccary.

Cosmik: Which there never was a complete score.

Vai: Well, there were bits and pieces here and there that he had, and I rummaged through all of his stuff and got everything I could scavenge, you know? And then I just sat and went crazy trying to make a score. And, uh . . .

Cosmik: It sounds like trying to take Mahler's Tenth and finish it.

Thome: Uh huh! [Laughs]

Vai: I've got Frank's handwritten manuscripts for that.

Cosmik: Oh my God.

Vai: Don't tell his wife.

Thome: This is the first time that this riddle has been solved for me. When we were doing Zappa's Universe Frank called and said, "I'd really like to hear Greggery Peccary with orchestra."

Vai: Oh yeah!

Cosmik: Oh yeah, absolutely!

Thome: I know who he was thinking about now. He must have been thinking about Steve.

Vai: When I first heard Greggery Peccary I was in college and I had to stop the tape and go lay down because I couldn't believe one person had composed this. Amazing. I had never heard anything like it.

Cosmik: Why don't you do it? Why don't you pull it out and see if you can piece it together? [a few minutes later]

Cosmik: You have the perfect person by your side to help you complete such a project. I'm sure you'd love to see it completed. [Looks to Thome]

Thome: Oh yeah.

Cosmik: I could just see Steve working on it, his shiny hoofs up against the desk as he draws dots and lines on staff paper.

Vai: [Laughs]

Thome: Frank would love that!

Vai: Yeah, he really would.

CURTIS MAYFIELD (Dec, 1996: Issue #19)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

In 1996, the great Curtis Mayfield recorded his first album since a terrible on-stage accident had left him a quadriplegic in 1990. New World Order was a strong album and a strong statement. Recording it had been a little tricky, requiring a rewrite of the "how to" books. Here, Curtis talks about the experience.

Cosmik: How was the recording process different from before the accident?

Curtis: Of course, prior to my accident, I had a diaphragm and my lungs were strong, and I could stand up and belt it and get into the tune. The difference now is that I DON'T have a diaphragm and my lungs are quite weak. So I've found a way to lay back and use gravity for my lungs to help me be stronger in the recording studio.

Cosmik: How long at a stretch are you able to sing like that?

Curtis: Surprisingly, sometimes I'd be in the studio still five to six hours, so I just felt like once I got started, let's get it on, you know?

Cosmik: That's fantastic. So you adjusted to the process pretty quickly.

Curtis: Yes sir, we did, and I felt pretty good about it. The songs were working pretty good for me, and of course the only difference was that sometimes I would maybe have to punch in at the latter part of the lyric so I could be just as strong at the end as I was in the beginning part. And that's nothing unusual when recording. The importance, of course, was to still continue the sincerity and the honesty throughout the track.

Cosmik: My feeling, listening to the album, is that if I hadn't known the story of what happened to you, I wouldn't have been able to tell there was any difference. Your singing is beautiful, the writing's beautiful, everything seems perfect. Were you surprised, yourself, at how it all came out?

Curtis: Well, I was certainly pleased with the turn out, and of course, I had tried to get into the studio before, coming out of the hospital, and I found that it was hard for me to sit up and perform as I used to. But the importance was finding and learning my limitations. And after understanding what I'd have to do, it wasn't as tough as it might seem.

KENNETH NEWBY & STEVE ROACH (Jan, 1997: Issue #20)
Interviewed by John Sekerka

Right around the time of their collaboration on the Halcyon Days project, Kenneth Newby and Steve Roach were interviewed (separately) by John Sekerka for his Tape Hiss program on CHUO FM in Ottawa. As Cosmik Debris scarfs up all of John's transcripts, we got to share the interview. Here's a sampling.

Cosmik: Why is your record called Halcyon Days?

Newby: It came about in a backwards way. We were talking about when would be a good time to make this recording. It turned out the best time was right around the winter solstice: December 21st. It looked as if we'd be spending a couple of weeks in Steve Roach's studio in Tucson, Arizona. I made the connection to the Halcyon Days which are reputed to be the two weeks around the winter solstice, and I sent a fax saying that it was an auspicious time to do a creative project. We kind of left it at that until we had finished the music. We were sitting around, trying to decide what to call it, and Steve recalled my comment on the fax. We felt that it fit the spirit of the music.

Cosmik: Did all of the recording take place in Steve Roach's studio?

Newby: Pretty much. We spent eleven intensive days recording and mixing there, though we brought a little of the material with us. I had written computer programs to generate some textures and rhythms.

Cosmik: Were you at all affected by the atmosphere, working in the desert?

Newby: It's a really nice environment. The back of Steve's house opens out on to the desert. I was quite struck by it, never having experienced the American desert before. We took advantage of plugging into the environment and I'm sure it came through in the music to a degree.

Cosmik: What exactly is it about the desert that draws you?

Roach: The place is so quiet that all you can hear is your heart beating, the functions of your body and your thoughts racing around like a little hamster in a cage. Over time you get more and more comfortable with that deep silence. Creatively, the place that I arrive to in my consciousness when I'm in this kind of physical environment... I can create that kind of silence and solitude in a sound proof studio, but it has no comparison to when you're sitting on a mesa and can see for seventy miles. Yet there's an inverted sense of quiet that is powerful and profound. Hopefully the music that I create portrays the places I go. Beyond that it becomes kind of a moot point of trying to describe it in words. That's why I chose music as a medium, as opposed to being a writer or a visual artist.

Cosmik: I recall a review in which the writer said she put your tape on while driving in the desert, and only then did it make perfect sense. Is that the ideal listening experience: to match the environment?

Roach: It's one of the high points to experience the music at. From the feedback I get, people feel it in their own environment in different ways. Hopefully the creative act continues as people find new ways of having sound in their lives. It's not necessarily about having music; it's more about creating an hour of sound sanctuary or sculpture. The work is becoming more dimensional, textural and more related to a sense of location -- not specific. Music without vocals offers an open end for the creative imagination to work with. I do have a lot of artists that use my music to create a kind of opening.

RANDY FULLER (Jan, 1997: Issue #20)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

"I Fought The Law" is probably played a hundred times a day or more in this country, and the song is over 30 years old. The Bobby Fuller Four never really got a chance to see how far they could go, because Bobby was brutally murdered in 1966. Randy Fuller has spent the past 31 years wondering who killed his brother and why. His life was changed in many ways when Bobby died, because he not only lost a member of his family, he lost a promising rock and roll career. Randy was the bass player of The Bobby Fuller Four. Our interview with Randy (one of the nicest people I've ever had the pleasure of talking to) covered a lot of turf before we wrapped up with this segment.

Cosmik: I have one more question, if you don't mind getting philosophical for a moment. When you look back at everything you lived through, are you still able to remember good times and enjoy the memories?

Randy: Some, yeah. The thing that I regret the most is not being together like I am now, to help my brother more -- him help me and me help him -- to do better, make the sound better, and everything else. I think my insecure attitude hurt us a lot. And then again it helped, in some ways. But I regret that because I think we'd of been even closer. We was pretty close, you know, but I think that would have helped us to be even closer, and then maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they did. I had a lot of good times, but I had a lot of rotten times, too. We worked really hard to do what we did. Bobby worked extremely hard to get just the little bit of fame we got, which was a very small amount, but we did do a little. I just regret the fact that he had the talent to do a lot more but didn't get a chance to go full blossom to see what could really be done.

The good times... One of the greatest feelings in the world was hearing "Let Her Dance" on the radio for the first time. In Hollywood, goin' down the freeway, and all of a sudden, that started playin'. "Here's the new hit out by the Bobby Fuller Four." Boy, and I'll tell ya, that's the greatest feelin' in the world.

Cosmik: Man... top of the world, huh?

Randy: Yeah. Because you know, to get a record on KRLA or KFWB, back in those days, was almost impossible for an unknown band. When Larry Nunes said he was gonna do these things for us, we was just kinda laughing under our jackets a little there, you know? "Sure, he's not gonna do that." And all of a sudden, he says "You boys listen to the radio at one o'clock today. Your record's gonna be on there." We're like "sure, Larry." We're drivin' down the street and it come on... boy... that's a great feelin'. You see yourself bein' a millionaire. But you never were, you know?

I remember that Bobby had a credit card. We'd never had a credit card before, and he had a credit card up in New York. And that's one of the best times I can remember. I said "man, I sure am hungry," because all we'd been eatin' was like McDonalds burgers and cheap stuff, you know? He says "come on, we're gonna go eat somethin' good. Don't tell anyone else," you know... the other guys in the band. And we went into one of the top restaurants there -- I forget the name of it -- and he said "order anything you want." And I ordered a cornish game hen dinner with grapes on it and everything (laughs), boy. And we talked and had the greatest time that night. And that was... that was a good feelin', you know?

DAVID DIAMOND (Feb, 1997: Issue #21)
Interviewed by Paul Remington

One of our proudest moments came in February (1997) when Paul Remington interviewed the brilliant classical composer, David Diamond. The 81 year old Diamond gave us a memorable look back at his extraordinary life, including memories of his close friends, many of whom are household names. In this segment, he reflects on his friendship with Leonard Bernstein.

Cosmik: How did your friendship with Bernstein enhance what you were doing?

Diamond: Well, remember, he was still a conducting student of Fritz Reiner's while at the Curtis Institute. He was composing at that time and had written theater music while he was at Harvard. But, he was working on a clarinet sonata, or maybe it was a violin and piano sonata that became a clarinet sonata. I didn't know him at all as a composer. But, he was a phenomenal pianist. From an orchestral score, he read through my 1st Symphony that way. He just knocked me out as a musician. He was just phenomenal ... phenomenal. And so, as the years went on, he saw that I was being performed a great deal. Then he made that amazing debut with the New York Philharmonic, substituting very quickly for Bruno Walter. Then, suddenly, he was on the map as a conductor. Then he was given the City Center Orchestra, which was an orchestra that was put together for him. He wasn't paid a salary, but that orchestra that he built-up had marvelous programs. The second year he had that orchestra he did my 2nd Symphony, after he had heard Koussevitzky do it. Then, almost every other year he would perform a work of mine. And then he began to compose a lot. But, I guess I was the only one of the friends that felt he was a gifted composer. Copland didn't think he really had it as a composer. He thought he was very good for Broadway, but he didn't care for his composing. He didn't like Jeremiah whatsoever. Now, I thought Jeremiah was extraordinary.

WAYNE KRAMER (June 1997, Issue #25)
Interview by Shaun Dale

Wayne Kramer isn't satisfied with his well-earned status as a rock legend. He continues to break new ground, as on his Epitaph release, Citizen Wayne, produced by David Was, Kramer's bandmate from Was Not Was. Here he tells Shaun Dale how getting older can really mean getting better...

Cosmik: The first Epitaph album was The Hard Stuff, and that sounded like an album by Wayne Kramer, the guy from the MC5...

Kramer: Uh huh.

Cosmik:...and the new album, Citizen Wayne, is in a different space. New sounds, new approaches, are all over the album. How much of that is a result of working with David Was on this one?

Kramer: Well, David was a great ally. We're homeboys and we share the same twisted musical worldview. We both love maximum rock and deep hard funk and avant garde jazz. And we're both readers and writers and students of the world and history and we're both, you know, fairly insane. The Hard Stuff and Dangerous Madness, I love both of those records, I'm very proud of them, but when it was time to make Citizen Wayne it was time to take a chance. It was time to grow and stretch and to make a more ambitious record. To start to bring in the many influences that I hear.

At my core I'm a musician with big ears. I listen to everything and hear a lot of stuff that's going on. I thought, now it's time to go ahead and step on in there. I wanted to make a record that had harder beats and fatter guitar sounds. And I wanted to make a concept album. I wanted to talk about what it's like to have been Wayne Kramer up to this point. As an artist, part of my job is to expose myself. So I wanted to try to tell some of the story of what it was like to be in the MC5, and what it was like to go to jail, but to do it within my view and, well, not take myself too seriously, but to deal with the idea of doing this work as an adult. To do this work with meaning and passion, and to not try to be a kid. I'm not trying to be a teenager or a guy in my 20s. I'm in my middle adult period and it's fucking great. I'm better now than I was then. If you think I was good then, well look out now. I'm a better guitar player, a better songwriter, better singer, and I make better records these days.

I guess what I'm saying is that our cultural icons don't have to be just Kurt Cobain and James Dean, but they can also be Pablo Picasso and Howlin' Wolf, people who worked on into their 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s. This big rock and roll lie of live fast, die young and leave a good looking corpse is bullshit. My motto is live long and live strong and stay creative. That's what keeps you alive.

DAVE SMALLEY of DOWN BY LAW (Nov, 1997: Issue #30)
Interview by Shaun Dale

Shaun Dale's first interview for Cosmik Debris was with Down By Law, and a year later he got a chance to check back in with DBL leader Dave Smalley after the release of Last Of The Sharpshooters. They took a look at the influence of Jamaican music on the Smalley brand of punk rock...

Cosmik: One song sounded like a bit of a Clash tribute - a touch of that reggae rhythm...

Dave: Yeah, "Urban Napalm." I grew up on a lot of bands - first of all, I grew up on a lot of reggae. Peter Tosh's Wanted Dread Or Alive was one of my favorite albums, and a lot of bands like the Clash and even the Police had a lot of that beat, so there's a lot of that in my blood.

Cosmik: Well, that Jamaican thing is still happening. Look at the posters around here. The rotation seems to be punk bands and ska bands. A lot of them try to mix it up, though usually the best of each are the ones who don't.

Dave: I completely agree with you. I think, like all the bands on Hellcat Records, like Hepcat, they do traditional ska, and they're great. When we do it, we're not doing hardcore - we're mixing white boy reggae with white boy punk and it seems to be ok. But we're not trying to mix hardcore with reggae and trying to be funny. Because those three things - hardcore, reggae and humor - just don't mix.

Cosmik: I think its just nice to find that rhythmic break in the record - something just a little different.

Dave: Exactly. There should be lulls and valleys and peaks. That's another thing I like about this album, the way it flows together. When I listen to it, I tend to listen to it all the way through. I think our real fans are really going to love this album. Kids who just listen to funny hardcore music may or may not like it, but I think it's a record for our real fans.

CHRIS BAILEY of THE SAINTS (Jan, 1998: Issue #32)
Interview by John Sekerka

The Saints hit the punk scene in a big way with their classic, "(I'm) Stranded," and almost immediately moved from their native Australia to the center of the punk universe, London, England. But as this segment shows, not everybody was as enamored of the scene as the media seemed to be.

Cosmik: What was the rest of the London scene like back then? It must have been quite exciting.

Chris: I loved it. The punk rock revolution was awfully, awfully lovely darling. It might have been great for a couple of weeks, but by the time we arrived it was all very corporate and designer.

Cosmik: It's funny because in North America punk seemed very dangerous, frightening, exciting, and way out there. People were genuinely afraid of it.

Chris: I think your average line dancing bar is further out. But don't get me wrong, a lot of my contemporaries are very nostalgic for that period. I don't understand why, but I don't want to be a party pooper. It's only common sense that EMI are not really an arts foundation. They're just there to ship units, and I don't think they give a fuck either way of what they are. And the whole notion of this being a brand new rebellion, that rock'n'roll was originally, is more orchestrated by marketing than music. The music of that period has dated terribly. I don't think there was as much commitment as was proclaimed in the press releases. I've always mocked show business. I'm still involved, but I think it's one of the most stupid fucking human endeavors. I love music, but it has nothing to do with the music business.

CORDELL JACKSON (March 1998, Issue #34)
Interview by John Sekerka

The Rock 'n' Roll Granny started her career in music in 1947, and here she is today, still the same ol' Cordell, still choppin' a mean guitar. Wonder what it's like to have been in the biz so long that you can't even remember all your songs?

Cosmik: Besides being an accomplished guitar player, an engineer, you were also a producer and started your own record label, Moon Records. You've done almost everything there is in the record business.

Cordell: Yes, there are plenty more stories which will be in my book. I feel like your audience might remember the commercial I made with Brian Setzer (Stray Cats) for Budweiser. He and I talked a couple of times, and he never denied their earlier music was patterned from my old rock'n'roll. And I've been told many, many times by disc jockeys that the Beatles loved the big four (Elvis, Perkins, Cash, Lewis) and what they were doing. Now they didn't copy my music, but they took some of my gusto, the feels and stuff, you know. I've never thought anybody copied per say, they styled. Nothin' wrong with stylin'. It's a stylistic world in music. I've had too many disc jockeys say "Hey, you got some time?" And I say "Well, whatcha want?" And he says, "I want to play you something." And every one, they pull out a Beatle record. Every one!

Cosmik: Do you still play the guitar everyday?

Cordell: Naw, I hadn't played in about six months because I'd been trying to finish my book, two movie scripts, and I've been going through and reading every letter I've ever received, going over every tape I've ever recorded over forty years, and I've got my house in a literal mess. I'm wading pretty deep in it because I want to cover everything in my book, because you cannot remember everything. I've found oodles of new songs I forgot I wrote.

COLIN BLUNSTONE of THE ZOMBIES (March 1998, Issue #34)
Interview by DJ Johnson

It's always exciting (and at the same time a bit terrifying) when we get the chance to talk to our biggest heroes. Speaking to Colin Blunstone of The Zombies was, for me, like talking to a Beatle. After years of wishing they had put the band back together behind the success of "Time Of The Season," this little bit of information was salt in the wound.

Cosmik: The strangest thing about "Time Of The Season," of course, was the fact that it became a hit in America two years after The Zombies called it a day. Did you feel like you were in a time warp?

Colin: It was just amazing! I think we'd all completely forgotten about it, to tell you the truth. I'd left the business. I just felt I needed a break from the business, so I took a job as a clerk in an office. I just took the first job that was offered to me. I was wearing a suit and a collar and a tie, and I went up to London on the train with all the businessmen, and suddenly people are telling me this record is going up the charts in America. I was absolutely amazed. We had tried so hard for so long to have that success, and when we finally forget about it, there's a hit. Rod was really committed to Argent, his new band. They'd been rehearsing and working long hours in Germany trying to get the band into shape, and he didn't feel he could turn his back on Argent and reactivate The Zombies again. That's how I remember things being, and I think that's probably the main reason why we didn't get together and play again. When I look back now -- and I think I've said this to him -- it seems like we were offered big tours to go back to America. It seems such an obvious thing to me now that The Zombies could have gone and done a tour in America and Argent could have been on that tour. We could have played as The Zombies, and then it would have been a great introduction for Argent, as well. It seems so obvious, but nobody thought of it at the time, which is a shame.

Cosmik: So were the rest of The Zombies all wanting to do this?

Colin: I don't think there was a concerted feeling that we should do it, no. Chris also was involved in Argent. He was co-producer, and he was writing for Argent, and I think Rod and Chris were both happy to take that route. Paul Atkinson and myself had both left the business. Actually, I think at that time Paul Atkinson and Hugh Grundy were both working for CBS Records, and I think they were both relatively happy to be on the other side of the music business. So in a way, I think, we thought it was wonderfully exciting, but there was nothing for us to do. The Zombies had finished. So we just enjoyed our chart success and that was that.

SPACE GHOST (Oct 1998, Issue #41)
Interviewed by Melanie Campbell

That's right... Space Ghost. We were all in a flutter over the prospect of an in-depth, tell-all, this-is-your-life interview with the legendary cartoon figure, but his busy schedule prevented us from asking more than ten questions. Faced with the daunting task of extracting wisdom and truth from the super hero in 10 questions or less, Melanie Campbell rolled up her sleeves and waded in.

Cosmik: So, when you were little, what did you want to be when you grew up? I mean, like, if you knew early on that you were a super hero, then what did - or what could - you aspire to?

Space Ghost: Well, my mother wanted me to be a nurse. She said I had the eyes for it. I never really understood what she meant by that. But from the first time I saw the Sonny and Cher show I knew I was meant to be an entertainer. So it was off to Hollywood! Not many people know this, but I starred in twelve episodes of Battlestar Galactica. Comedy just came naturally, though. You could say it's in the spandex. Like, "in the genes?" ... Meaning, "Jeans?" ... Get it?

Cosmik: Uh huh. Is there a King of the Universe? Or, do you know if there's some kind of great Space Hierarchy?

Space Ghost: There certainly should be, I know that much. Actually, there's a guy named Alan who flies around up here telling everyone he's The King, but no one believes him.

FIRESIGN THEATRE (November 1998, Issue #42)
Interviewed by Paul Remington

Six and a half years after the fact, Paul Remington's outstanding interview of all four members of Firesign Theatre remains the favorite Cosmik Conversation of many members of the staff. It was a massive undertaking, running twice the length of any of our previous features in November, and again when we presented part two in December. We went all out, including a virtual playbill/menu, soundclips and a rather exhaustive discography that featured reviews by several of Cosmik's writers. We're all fans of the four or five guys, you see, and we wanted to pay attention to detail in a way they'd respect, because detail is their thing, as Phil Proctor explained.

Cosmik: You can listen to [your comedy] so many times, and it's endless.

Proctor: It's the same for us. When we go into the studio and we're doing the material, we're performing it for one-another. There's always an audience there. Therefore, that stimulates us, when we're rewriting the stuff on the spot, or improvising on the spot and finding stuff in character, we want to find something that's going to surprise, enlighten and tickle our partner, the guy you're doing the scene with. We know that there's such a great give and take between us, like jazz musicians riffing off of one-another, that whatever we throw out is going to come back.

Cosmik: When I listened to this CD [Give Me Immortality Or Give Me Death] and the parts that you play, the part that I enjoyed the most is the interaction between the newsmen, Hal and Ray, especially the segment where you discuss the news drought and the coffee maker.

Proctor: Oh yeah, the coffee maker. That was basically improvised. We kept talking about, is there a Green room, is there a back stage to this thing? Is it only going to happen on broadcast? Is it only going to be the concede that this is what you hear on the radio? When we first wrote the album, we wrote a whole life of the influence of the radio and the people in the world -- we had scenes that were in the world. We also investigated the idea of having backstage scenes, although we had never written one. Yet, the whole idea of just thinking about the backstage world, thinking about the life of the radio studio, naturally meant that there was a Green room with a coffee machine, and one of those machines had snacks in it, and you know, what's that world like? So, when we had to improvise a scene at a particular point as we built this record, we decided to rub those two things together -- the fact that they were going to have to go on and do the news, and that there wasn't any, so they had to talk about their backstage life. And it worked! All of that timing and playing was just between David and me. We established these characters back in the seventies, when we did our record, which I hope will be re-released, because it's still extremely pertinent, Everything You Know is Wrong. Ray Hamberger and Harold Hiphugger were the newsmen on the station -- I forget the name of the station. K-HOT, or something. The Hooker Heater Hellmouth television station. They were television anchors. You can get the movie that we made based on the album, Everything You Know is Wrong, from LoadsTone. I would advise [everyone] to get it. It's almost everything that's on the record, except for the Carlos Castenada section. What we did was, Columbia gave us about $3,000 to make a promotional film, and so what we did was we figured out that if we lip-synced to our previous track, we could shoot the whole album, and we did. We visualized the entire album by just lip-syncing to a playback [Laughs] of the album itself. So you get to see Ray and Hal. Again, it happened totally organically. We had not written Ray and Hal into the album when we went into the studio. But we realized that we had to have a newsbreak at a certain time, and we had written other characters. We had written remotes for other characters, and we said, this should be Ray and Hal. We've got them, let's just put them together. Once we did, we realized that Ray and Hal in the 1990s were probably a gay couple living together. We wrote this back-story. We had been improvising and kind of playing that. I don't know why necessarily, just because they had been together so long. This back-story started coming out that they had been living together in this condo, and that they haven't necessarily come out of the closet yet. He makes reference to that later in the album. That all came out during improvisation. We were making one-another laugh because we were kind of implying that they were committed to one another for life, and they were living together, and treating all that with complete respect, as a normal aspect of the end of the century in American society. And so, there they were. They came alive that way, and then they became an integral part of the album. So, go figure; that's the nature of the work.

OLEG VOLKOV (January 1999, Issue #44)
Interviewed by Robert Cummings

In January of 1999 we launched Classics@Cosmik, the classical music arm of Cosmik Debris. The magazine was designed around the talents and knowledge of its editor, Robert Cummings. Sadly, the 4th anniversary of Cosmik Debris also marked the end of Classics, as Mr. Cummings had decided his other projects needed his full attention. But we did get some unusual and interesting interviews to run in both Classics and Cosmik, including this one with world class pianist Oleg Volkov. It seems rock and roll road stories aren't the only ones that can raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Classics: I remember the pianist Byron Janis telling a humorous story of how, at a concert he was giving, the piano suddenly started to move away from him. Others have told stories of ivories breaking and orchestras losing their way. Have you had any unusual experiences in concert?

Volkov: I am quite sure that almost everybody experienced some unusual things happen during their performances. I have very many interesting and funny stories like that. Maybe one day I will write a book with all of those stage experiences. For example, I remember how long time ago, when I was a student, I was talked into giving a brief performance at one mental institution. I was clearly warned not to play anything loud or exciting since the reaction could be unpredictable. To make the story short, during Chopin's Mazurka one of the audience members got up from his seat and started walking slowly toward me. Since I kept playing, the guard did not move. That individual walked around me a couple of times and peacefully stood behind me for the entire length of the piece. However, not knowing what was going on behind my back at that moment, I had some bone-chilling moments that certainly did not make my performance very inspiring but, for sure, made it very unique. Here is another story. Once I was invited to play Rachmaninov's Rhapsody with a symphony orchestra in Poland. 20 minutes before the performance I was approached by the artistic administrator of the orchestra with some bad news. It turned out that the conductor was just hospitalized with a heart attack. She asked me if I could possibly save the evening by playing a solo recital instead, because assistant conductor was not available at that moment and inevitable cancellation of entire performance would be a great disappointment to all people in the hall -- the house was completely sold out. I agreed and played the whole solo recital by myself.

JOEL DORN (February 1999, Issue #45)
Interviewed by Shaun Dale

With eight Grammys on his shelf and dozens of classic albums carrying his name in the credits, producer Joel Dorn is as legendary as some of the noteworthy acts he has worked with over the years. Shaun Dale spoke to him about his origins in radio and developments since...

Cosmik: But there was a time when a young DJ in Philadelphia could get the attention of a label like Atlantic and get the chance to record Roberta Flack and Bette Midler and Roland Kirk, and I don't think that's possible anymore.

Dorn: I guess anything is possible. I don't know if that particular sequence of events is possible. Look, when I was a kid - I've been into music since I was really young, you know, like 2,3,4,5 years old, I always knew I was going to be in music - and I used to listen to the radio, it was unbelievable. I had disc jockeys that to this day influence me, and they're long gone. But the music they played, the way they spoke, the way they combined music, the attitudes they projected to their listeners, I'm still influenced by that. There was a disc jockey in Philadelphia named George Johnson, Jr., he used to go under the name Sir Lancelot. When I sequence a record, the way I do it is based on the way he used to do his show. And there were guys like Jocko who could really talk shit, and do it slickly and intelligently in a way where you were beguiled by what they did. So I come out of that whole tradition of disc jockeys who lived or died by how they spoke to you and what they played, not necessarily in that order, and in that order. So that was a thrilling time. You'd sit there and listen to the radio and you'd wait to hear that new record they played last night or your favorite, and you picked up all your slang from those guys. It was a fascinating time. And I guess things really changed in the mid-seventies. That's when the lawyers and the accountants and the conglomerates realized that this little cottage industry could generate trillions of dollars around the world, and it was time to come in and make it into a real business. And when they made it into a real business, it wasn't the wild west anymore. It became something else.

Cosmik: It became very homogenized.

Dorn: Right. Like, if you ever get in a car and drive from New York to L.A., listen to the radio. There's like three stations. Different people, different call letters, but the smooth jazz is the same, the talk is the same, the oldies is the same, the hot this and the hot that. What's going to happen is what happened with Howard Stern. Somebody's going to come along and come up with a new format and it will change again, and once people realize how to do it, it'll be on 1500 stations across the country. But I'm not beefing. I'm addressing your question, and it might sound like I'm waiting for those glorious days of yesteryear to return, but they're not going to return. Like swing is hot right now, right? One of my sons, David, works for Rhino Records. He's the head of media relations. About two or three years ago, we speak almost every day, and I said what are you doing tonight and he said "We're going out swing dancing." I said "What the fuck is swing dancing? You mean like jitterbuggin'?" and he said "Yeah, we go out and we dance to swing." And I saw this whole swing thing come back, and I thought of all the guys I used to hang around with, they were much older than me and most of them are gone now, and they'd say the big bands are going to come back, swing is going to come back, just wait and see. And I used to feel bad for them, but swing did come back. Anything good can come back, and generally does, and will cycle. But kids aren't listening to Basie and Lunceford and the Dorseys. Kids are listening to the new swing bands. It's like, Mozart's not coming back, but the guys down at Carnegie Hall who play Mozart are here. Good stuff always finds a way to come back.

MOJO NIXON (April 1999, Issue #47)
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes

The outspoken Mojo Nixon writes biting parodies all the time, but don't assign him the job. Here he tells Rusty Pipes that he just didn't seem to have a song in him for the easiest target of 1999.

Cosmik: Actually I sort of expected a song about Monica. Have you got anything in the works on her?

Mojo: I'm so ornery! My manager says, "You gotta write one," and I was like, "Okay," and I just couldn't come up with the three words that defined what I was trying to do. I just couldn't find it. If you tell me to do something, I'll do the opposite. Probably should have told me I couldn't write a song about Monica, that I was too stupid, then I would've. But I've been talking about it. The other night on stage, I said, "Yeah, Bill Clinton is the greatest sexual liberator of our time. My mom said the word "blowjob" to me!" (Laughs) I mean, more so than the birth control pill, the drive-in movie theater, anything! But Monica, when she did that interview with Barbara Wawa, I wanted some details! You know, let's talk about this cigar. Let's talk about the ass licking. I wanna hear about technique! But no, didn't get any of that.

Cosmik: It was all girl talk.

Mojo: Yeah, there was more details in the Starr Report. Ken Starr is the biggest perv in the country!

ALICE COOPER (May 1999, Issue #48)
Interviewed by Bill Holmes

Dating back to the years when Alice Cooper was a band and not just one man, their stage was always graced by fine musicians, the kind who were then and today remain underrated by all but the fans who know the music best. During Bill Holmes' interview with the man who became Alice, the topic turned to the axe men of incarnations past, and one special player in particular. A guy by the name of Buxton.

Cosmik: You played with a lot of great guitar players - Hunter and Wagner from (Lou) Reed's band, and later Kane Roberts. But who is Rockin' Reggie Vincent? I always wanted to know that - that guy smokes!

Alice: Rockin' Reggie was a friend of ours, in Detroit, that we met. He had done some writing and he just became a friend of the band, and he was the sixth...well, if you call (Bob) Ezrin the sixth member of the band, he was the seventh member of Alice Cooper. And he was just...well, if he would have lived in Phoenix, he would have been in the band.

Cosmik: And of course, we lost Glen [Buxton] recently.

Alice: Yeah, Glen was brilliant, y'know. He was one of those characters that you could never replace. He was Brian Jones. You know, he was sort of the character that no matter who you put in the spot...well, as good as Ronnie Wood is, and he's one of my best buddies, and he was probably twice the player that Brian Jones was, still the original Stones were the original Stones. And there's no way of replacing anyone as intricate as Buxton. He came up with the line for "School's Out," he came up with all that crazy noodling guitar stuff for the first five albums. And that was his job - to come up with guitar parts that people couldn't play.

JULIAN LENNON (August 1999, Issue #51)
Interview by DJ Johnson

After eight and a half years out of the public eye, Julian Lennon returned in 1999 with a solid album called Photograph Smile, easily his best to date. In his Cosmik Debris interview, he described making the album, starting his own record company, small town life in Italy, some of the less than pleasant things Yoko Ono has pulled on his family, and other juicy topics that make for great reading. But we chose this clip because it reveals a side of Julian that he never tries to publicize. We decided to do it for him.

Cosmik: Could you explain the basic idea behind the charity shows on this tour?

Lennon: The idea was to find out what the worst problems were in the locations we were playing, and to try to help that cause. You see, we're trying to help locally instead of globally. For instance, if it was about homeless children, abused children, or children with AIDS, all we'd ask at the door is a blanket, or cuddly toys, or however much your conscience will allow you to take out of your pocket and give.

Cosmik: This is the first show of each pair, meaning there are two shows in each city and one is a charity show, and this is INSTEAD of a ticket purchase.

Lennon: Yes, and to have whatever association we're working with take the bucket then and there and put it to good use.

Cosmik: As opposed to having to turn it over through government channels and have it get lost in the red tape?

Lennon: Exactly! Exactly! Half the time a lot of these people don't see anything from charity events. It's very sad. Or it goes mostly to the expense of the charity show itself.

Cosmik: So instead of having a pet foundation, you're giving direct help to whatever charity needs you most in each area.

Lennon: Exactly. That's the idea. Obviously I'd like to take it to the next level with the WORLD charity tour next year, when we take it on a global level, but still each case scenario will be localized.

Cosmik: Speaking as a parent in a time when negative role models are given all the media attention, I'm just so happy to find a role model like you to hold up to them, and I know a lot of people feel the same way.

Lennon: No, no... I just figure I live a happy, comfortable, financially secure life. How much money do I want? How much money do I want to rape and pillage the fans for? The only reason I want to get up and play is to get up and play. Of course, it's nice to help promote your album, but I've been on those tours where you've just done 150 shows and you look at your itinerary and say "I just want to go HOME now!" The motivation is lost, and there's no drive there except for you, the management and the label to make some money off these fans of yours. I don't think that's fair. There are a lot of people out there who are a lot more financially secure than I'll ever be that could be doing a lot more, but I feel that at least this is my attempt to help people along the way.

ROBYN HITCHCOCK (September 1999, Issue #52)
Interview by John Sekerka

Robyn Hitchcock is a perfect example of a Cosmik Debris artist. He embodies so many of the qualities that we love in an artist, from unique talent to a refusal to sell out despite the financial rewards. In 1999, the former Soft Boy gave us one of the best and most entertaining CDs we had the pleasure to hear, Jewels For Sophia. The title song closes the album, or so it seems, but hidden after it was the first studio recording of a concert favorite, "Gene Hackman."

Cosmik: Why slip in the now standard rock cliché: hidden tracks?

Robyn: I wanted the record to go somewhere else before it stopped. Rather than saying, "well, here's 14 songs and that's it - nice job Robyn, see you next time." It's as if the listener has wandered upstairs into the dressing room and I was playing through a couple of tunes just for the hell of it whilst having a drink. Like an after show party, really. That would scour the palette. A record's gotta go somewhere. Does a record amount to some kind of narrative? Some kind of emotional ride? That's the question. Those two songs had after show stamped all over them, so I've put them there, and I've started it all off with one of my answer phone messages.

Cosmik: A lot of fans who've heard it live will be pleased to finally have "Gene Hackman" on record.

Robyn: Yeah, but they'll have to get through "Jewels For Sophia" to get to it, but they can always tape it. It'll make them concentrate - as the title track they should hear that more.

STAN FREBERG (October 1999, Issue #53)
Interview by Rusty Pipes

We were knocked out when we got the opportunity to add Stan Freberg to the list of great comedians who'd graced the pages of Cosmik Debris. Freberg possesses one of the sharpest comic minds the world has ever known, and he comes at everything from an angle that is quite unique. Among his many talents is an incredible knack for writing unforgettable commercials. In his outstanding interview with Rusty Pipes, he discussed this facet of his talent and, as usual, had some funny stories to illustrate his points.

Cosmik: Have you ever written a commercial that just tanked, that didn't do what you thought it would do?

Freberg: No, no, I haven't. The worst that could happen was a commercial that did not make the sales shoot up, and in almost all cases sales went up. In varying degrees, at least in a small amount the sales did go up. But sales aside I made people now think of that company in a different way. That's what I did for giant Goliath clients like the Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh and General Motors. I did some stuff for Dupont and they said, "Well, we know about the prunes and pizza rolls, have you ever taken on a really serious client?" and I said, "Other than God?"

Cosmik: You mean your Presbyterian commercials?

Freberg: Yeah, That sort of stopped them. Yes, God was my client at one point, they never asked that question again. But I couldn't get their commercial through their red tape. But no I never had a campaign that really tanked, no. I had a couple campaigns turned down by the client which had nothing to do with the creative quality of the work. One was the Renault automobile company in which I wanted them to take on Detroit. They said (switches to stuffy French accent) "Monsieur Freberg, these are the most brilliant commercials we have ever heard, but unfortunately we do not, uh, how you say, have the guts, to take on General Moteurs, and ze Chryslers." Anyway I didn't have to give the money back, that's part of the deal. I make them give me the money up front and then I write the thing. And whether they like it, they can put it on the CBS network or they can throw it in the trash. They can do what they want with it, but I can retain the rights to the material and I don't have to give any money back. In other words I don't work on spec.

WAYNE "THE TRAIN" HANCOCK (November 1999, Issue #54)
Interview by DJ Johnson

Alt.Country artist Wayne "The Train" Hancock's music has often been about loneliness and pain, but there was a noticeable change on his 1999 album, Wild, Free and Wreckless.

Cosmik: There's an interesting thing about "Tonight The Rain Is Coming Down" that I'd like to ask about. The lyric is about that time just after someone finds love, when they realize it's real and they can settle down to enjoy it. A happy time. A lot of people, including yourself, write about loneliness, but in this song the loneliness is just as strongly felt as the joy, even though it's past-tense. It's never all one way or all another way in your songs.

Wayne: Yeah, that's sort of the idea. Seems like a lot of people don't take a realistic approach to writing songs. They write "when you're away from me the sun don't shine, the moon don't glow," and all this stuff. Well.. maybe to you it doesn't glow, but it does for the rest of us. Then you've got people like me, I guess. My good times are more often now than they used to be, but it used to be I'd have a really good day and then I'd try real hard to remember that day, so when I was having a bad one I could remember it and make everything all right. Take a picture of it or write a song about it.

Cosmik: There's a kind of melancholy to it, though, almost a quiet fatalism.

Wayne: Everybody knows that love is not a forever thing. It's like catching the light from stars above us. You catch one here and you catch one there, and you feel like it's a special thing you get to experience. Then, for a while, you're happy. Then it's gone and you're right back to where you were, hopeless and can't get your head out of your butt. Then one day, when you least expect it, you find happiness in the fact that you're over it. Then BOOM, you fall back in love and it starts all over again. It's a never ending cycle. But in order to be really, really happy, you've got to have been really, really sad or how will you know what it means to be happy?

DR. DEMENTO (January 2000, Issue #55)
Interview by Rusty Pipes

Every now and then we land an interview with someone who has meant a lot to more than a few Cosmik Debris staffers. The late Curtis Mayfield was one. Firesign Theatre were certainly in that category. Well, you should've heard the whoops of joy when we found out we'd have an audience with Dr. Demento! Barry Hanson had been a part of life for so many of us, and, I'm sure, for many of you. He turned out to not only be a fun interview subject, but also one of the most knowledgeable we've ever had the pleasure to talk to. On the subject of the music that he has made famous (and vice-versa), the natural question is:

Cosmik: Have you got a personal Funny Five?

Dr. Demento: Well, that changes all the time. I always get excited about new things that come in. I always enjoy putting something that's new and funny on the air and seeing if the audience likes it too. That's what keeps me going the most these days. My personal Funny Five would change all the time as far as the kind of stuff that I play on the show. The all time most requested song is "Fish Heads" by Barnes and Barnes. It's something that I'm fond of, it still gets played a few times a year. (But when I) finish a show and can relax for the evening I don't immediately put "Fish Heads" in the player. It's the audience's all time favorite and I respect that. I love it like the way Mick Jagger probably still has a warm spot for "Satisfaction," though he might not... sing that for his own pleasure when he's not working. Number two would be "Dead Puppies," by Ogden Edsel. Those two are way out in front of all the others. Both of those interestingly came out in the late 70's.

Cosmik: I'm sure they came to note exclusively through your show too. I don't know of anybody else that would play them.

Dr. Demento: Those two were certainly mostly through my show. "Fish Heads," after they made the video, it got a little bit of exposure on TV. My all time most requested artist of course is Weird Al Yankovic.

Cosmik: He's had a lot of new success this year.

Dr. Demento: Oh yes! The Saga Begins is a big hit this year. I'm sure I'm best known to the public as the guy who discovered Weird Al.

KEN STRINGFELLOW of THE POSIES (April 2000, Issue #58)
Interview by Bill Holmes

The Posies certainly have had plenty of success in America, but like many of the best bands, their success overseas is even greater. This puzzling little phenomenon has been pondered in our pages before, but Ken Stringfellow's response to Bill Holmes' question seemed to be right on target.

Cosmik: I know that you've had a lot of success overseas in places like Japan and Spain, and a lot of bands do, frankly. Cotton Mather, a great band that can't get arrested in their own country, is over there (U.K.) right now playing sellout shows and getting ready to open up for Oasis on tour. Why is it that people outside the United States seem to "get it" more than we do here?

Stringfellow: You know, (laughs) that's something I've often wondered myself! I guess people in Europe, especially, are just a lot more broadminded, that just seems to be the case. There is so much culture that is so readily available, so many kinds of art forms. The average person is brought up in an atmosphere where things are different. I mean, Europe is like a lot of little cultures smashed together in a really small amount of terrain, so if you're in Germany, you can go to Paris in about an hour, and from Paris to Madrid, where there are all sorts of things there, people coming in from Africa. I mean, you're very aware that there are all sorts of cultures around you, where in America, there's a lot of cultural isolation. The societies that comprise the American society are more into being assimilated, where if there is some diversity, it can almost be invisible. Like, if you're the average white dude like me, living in Seattle, there's a huge Asian culture here, a huge Latino culture, but if you want to involve yourself in that diversity you have to go find it, it's not out there wide open. Americans in general, I feel, do not do well at assimilating things that are... they want to find the common denominator, something we can all agree on. Hence we get the bland.

Cosmik: It certainly seems to be the approach of radio.

Stringfellow: Oh, radio and everything; the film world... there are great independent films being made in America, and even innovative mainstream films, but in general the average person is going to try to find the comfort mood every time, y'know?

ANDRE WILLIAMS (July 2000, Issue #61)
Interviewed by John Sekerka

He coulda been a contender, Charlie, if he'd been willing to smile at the TV cameras instead of flipping them off and then mooning them. Andre Williams' career goes way back to the early days of rock and roll and R&B, and forget the cliche, he's really seen and done it all. The man is a god to his fans, and now, old enough to be a great-grandfather, he's still out there on the road doing his show and doing it well. In his Tape Hiss Interview with John Sekerka, Andre talked about a phase of his career most people don't even know took place: his years behind the console at Motown.

John: Alright. Let's talk about your stint as a Motown producer, handling such acts as Mary Wells, George Clinton, Little Stevie Wonder... How did you get involved in all that?

Andre: Well me and Berry (Gordy) were pretty close. I helped him out when he needed help, and he responded by giving me a shot at his artists. I didn't particularly like him as a man, but I respected him. I don't like anybody that controls everything.

John: You don't ever wanna be in control?

Andre: No, I don't want nobody to be in control. Let's let the control control it.

John: I like that. Out of all those Motor City acts, who was your favourite to produce?

Andre: I think Tina (Turner) would be number one, then Mary Wells. The Contours would be third. The one thing with Stevie (Wonder) was that he was a baby so that don't count.

John: Was this when he was doing "Fingertips"? How old was he, eleven?

Andre: I did the first one called "Thank Your Mother," he might have been ten years old.

John: Did you have a feeling that he was gonna be something special?

Andre: No, I thought he was a pain in the ass.

John: (laughing) A ten-year-old pain in the ass?

Andre: He was everywhere. He was playing every damn instrument in the studio, knocking the pianos outta tune, fuckin' up the drums. He was all over the place. I guess that's what stars are made of -- being all over the place. He was poppin' them instruments dead! He didn't have the juice that he got now, but at least he was challenging every instrument.

John: So how did you handle this wild child in the studio?

Andre: I didn't handle him. Me and Berry just produced him. I didn't have nothin' to do with him on a day-to-day basis cuz I couldn't put up with him, man. He was a handful.

John: Any other handfuls? There are a lot of big egos out there.

Andre: Well, I knew how to work around egos and Stevie didn't have an ego. He just didn't know no different. I knew when the egos would come out. I'd only come out when the egos was in. You can spot a guy with an ego. He don't have it 24 hours a day.

KING SUNNY ADE (August 2000, Issue #62)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

In August 2000, Nigerian musician/legend King Sunny Ade had made -- get this and realize in advance it is not a typo -- 111 albums. It would seem to me you'd have to spend every waking moment of your life in the studio to accomplish this, but apparently not, because the man wore about a dozen other hats as well. He ran businesses (and not as a figurehead; he was in the office and on the phone and in the board rooms), and among other things, he was the head of Nigeria's musician's union, no small office considering the huge task before him, which was to undo years of corruption that left Nigerian musicians unpaid for their work. But perhaps his greatest role was that of "voice of wisdom" in a new age for the people of Nigeria, just a year and a half after the end of many decades of military dictatorship so harsh that no one dared utter words of dissent for fear of torture and death.

Cosmik: Let's talk about your new album, Seven Degrees North. It's a very peaceful, spiritual album, and there's also a feeling of excitement to it. I'm wondering if those feelings reflects the mood in Nigeria at this time, now that the military dictatorship is history.

KSA: Yes, because by now we are like students that have just stepped into a new class, and the teacher has to tell them what to do. Democracy is something that we have to start by practicing it as long as we are learning how to do it. I look at it this way: from the military to the civilian life, the difference is that the civilians must be more or less patient while the military man is militant.

Cosmik: And that may be something that's hard to turn off.

KSA: Yes, but the civilians who were not in the military were not forced to be doing those kinds of activities, and they must remain calm. The two of them are not together. In Seven Degrees North, it is a chit-chat telling you that we have to mellow, that we have to concentrate, and hopefully your mind can listen. Democracy is something we just started practicing in Nigeria, so we have to sit down and see what we can do. It's an entirely new life in Nigeria.

Cosmik: So the album is meant to be a soothing thing for the people, as well as information.

KSA: Yes, to say not just to the people of Nigeria but also to America that we are a democracy, but we are only one year old, where America is more than two hundred years old. We are like in kindergarten. Elementary school. We need the whole world to know that. We need to listen to them and they need to listen to us, because we want to be the friends of all the people of the world.

Cosmik: A lot of the music on Seven Degrees North seems to be a celebration of that learning experience, of learning to be a democracy or, more specifically, of learning to be free.

KSA: Oh, definitely. There is much celebration in it. But not just celebration. When you are in a class, there is time for pleasure, there is a time for seriousness, and there is time for calming down and thinking. And there is time for relaxation. That is how the album is, and that's how it is for everyone all over the world. Even in your house, there is a time to play with your kids, time where you are serious, whether you are reading or writing, times you want to watch your TV, times you want to sleep, and there must be times when you are working. That's how the album is.

Cosmik: It covers it all. I love the spirituality of the music. There's a lot of conviction in it, and it's even in the liner notes where you implore people to learn about Africa and to support African artists. You take your role as a musical African ambassador very seriously, don't you?

KSA: I would just say that I wanted to be one of the pioneers, to be there for the younger ones who come up, for the other ones who have not been privileged to become known. This is the reason why I do that. I am an opportunist. When I came to music, I didn't know I would be known this way, and when I came to the western world, I didn't know I would be known this way. I said "well, since they love my music, I don't want to be greedy. I shall allow other people to come this way." And I know the more you see other people, the more you'll like this music. That's the way I look at it.

CYNTHIA PLASTERCASTER (August 2000, Issue #62)
Interviewed by John Sekerka

What is a Tape Hiss Interview if not off-beat? Okay, that's a cheap joke. John Sekerka has always chosen his interviews with an eye for the unusual, but this one was a stroke of genius. STOP THAT! I'm really sorry. Who is Cynthia PlasterCaster? An unusual lass who has spent the majority of her life making plaster statues of the sexual organs of rock stars and other famous people. How does one get her start in such a business?

John: How did you approach your first star subject? Did you just blurt it out?

Cynthia: Yeah, you're right, I did. My friend (Cynthia doesn't drive) followed Jimi Hendrix's limo in our car. We all tumbled out respectively and I just blurted out to Jimi who was standing there as big as life, "can we plaster cast your Hampton Lick?" which was Cockney slang for dick, which he knew. He said "Yeah, I heard about you, c'mon up." Normally we would present a calling card to the band - very official looking, like traveling saleswomen. The more absurd it was the more we would have a good laugh out of it. Laughter was an important component for me to get comfortable in the presence of one of my demi-gods.

John: Any problems from the other end, where, say, they couldn't do the cast?

Cynthia: You mean they couldn't live up to full capabilities?

John: Uh, yeah.

Cynthia: That has happened quite frequently. I try to make it clear to everyone that sees the exhibit, that I normally don't capture full capability. And sometimes zero capability.

RON DANTE (September 2000, Issue #63)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

You never saw his face, but you sure heard that voice. Ron Dante was the man with the golden pipes in the late 1960s, when bubblegum was king. Remember a little tune called "Tracy," by The Cuff Links? You would if you heard it, but here's one that everybody knows just by name: "Sugar Sugar," by The Archies. That's right, Ron Dante was the voice of Archie Andrews, cartoon teenaged every-boy who just happened to front a rock and roll band with a couple groovy chicks, a couple guys and his ever-faithful mutt, Hotdog. Dante's career didn't end when Archie's did, however. Besides having a lucrative career in the commercial voiceover field, he became a top record producer with an impressive resume that includes most of Barry Manilow's million sellers. Bubblegum is still a subject close to his heart, and in this segment from his Cosmik interview he pondered the meaning of Gum.

Cosmik: I'm almost afraid to use the term bubblegum, even though it's a term of endearment for me. You've worked in all kinds of music, and you're certainly aware that some people don't take some of that music very seriously, and that the term bubblegum is sometimes said with rolled eyes, but there's something about it that makes it appealing even today. I was wondering what you think the key to that is. What makes bubblegum great?

Ron: I think it's the innocence of it. It doesn't deal with serious issues. It's love songs, or fun songs. Good time rock and roll. It's also danceable and appeals to the very young and people who think very young. I think the power-pop of today is very similar to the bubblegum of the late 60s, and I must say, the bubblegum of the late 60s is very popular today. Continues to be popular, gets played every day on thousands of stations across the country. People love the music. They come and support the artists when they perform live. It's okay if people want to put it down; it was not meant to be compared to Led Zeppelin or The Rolling Stones, but it's just as relevant in that it's very sound, musically. Great sounding records, great singers, and very memorable songs. The Turtles were bubblegum with "Happy Together," but that's a great record, great song, great vocal. So I find that pop music, in all its incarnations, stays around because it gets to the most people. "Sugar Sugar" sells six, seven million records. That's a very good seller, and that's not just selling to teenagers. It sold to everybody, including people who didn't even know who The Archies were.

Cosmik: Very similar to when The Monkees' first records came out, ahead of the first episode of the show, and nobody knew who they were but they bought the records anyway because the songs were so strong.

Ron: The songs were very strong. "Last Train To Clarksville" was a strong song.

Cosmik: What's interesting to me is thinking about bubblegum music being made now, because obviously it's still being made. But I have trouble imagining anyone singing N-Sync songs thirty-one years from now. What do you think the big difference is between what was gum then and what is essentially gum now?

Ron: I don't know. The bubblegum of today is more like Hansen, Christine Aguilera, Britney Spears, even the boy groups like N-Sync and Backstreet Boys. It's very similar to The New Kids On The Block of ten years ago. Some of it is good and memorable, but I don't know how much of it will last and how much won't. I really like some of the songs N-Sync does. I love Savage Garden. I think they put out some really nice songs. I think there's some memorable stuff. You have to realize that ninety percent of all the stuff that is released is going to be forgettable, but that ten percent... you can't really bag yet. You don't know what's going to be memorable ten or twenty years from now. There are a lot less great songs being written today because writing is a tough craft, and a lot of people are using what has come before to write. Like they're writing a rap record around a Sting song, and I don't think that takes as much creativity as writing something from scratch. So there's a lot less creativity, a lot more retro-writing going on, people leaning on what has been done, so you're going to get a lot less memorable stuff. Some of the rap stuff, they're not songs: they're a musical idiom. They make a statement, but I can't call them songs. There's not a song there, it's a moment in time and an interesting sound. I mean, sonically, some of the stuff is really cool. It can be very interesting because they do different things, like they don't use a bass or whatever. It's very interesting nowadays, but the songs that will last a long time are few and far between.

Cosmik: And I guess that even back in the 60s they were few and far between...

Ron: It's just that we've forgotten them. (Laughs.) Out of the top one hundred, there were five or six that were really good that month, while the rest of them were just being pushed up the charts by promotion men. There's always a lot of fluff and filler. I think the Internet will start to cut that away, though, because you'll see the really good stuff rise to the top of the Internet at some point, and people will be able to judge for themselves.

TONY IOMMI (of Black Sabbath) (October 2000, Issue #64)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

Black Sabbath may be one of the most influential bands to ever take the stage. At least seven tribute albums have been released as of this writing. Hundreds of metal bands, from the most obscure to the biggest household names, proudly wear Sabbath shirts on stage and tell interviewers, with nary a moment's hesitation, that their sound began by studying Sabbath's. Usually that means studying the guitar sound of Tony Iommi, a man who is a true original because nobody was making any sound like that when he came up the ladder. Low, heavy and dark. Those are words that describe his sound in simplest fashion. When Iommi made a solo album in October of 2000, each track had a guest. Unlike most albums with a guest on each track, and each guest had been heavily influenced by the great Mr. Iommi. He talked about the experience in -- appropriately enough -- our Halloween issue.

Cosmik: What was the experience like, doing this album with these people? All of them are people you've influenced heavily.

Tony: Oh, it was really good. When you take a project on, obviously you wonder "oh, God, what's it going to be like working with these people," you know, which could be anybody. You could know them for as long as you like, but until you actually work with them, you never know. But they were absolutely great. I really, thoroughly enjoyed it. They were really nice people, real gentlemen, real polite. We had a great time and real fun making it, and I think that comes over in it. We were all pretty excited about working with each other.

Cosmik: Were you kind of surprised by the outcome of some of the collaborations?

Tony: Yes, because both of us would push each other a bit to really try different things.

Cosmik: The one that completely surprised me was the Billy Idol track. I just never would have thought of pairing you up, but boy, that track "Into The Night" just kicks.

Tony: Yeah, well again I wanted to do something not everybody expected. I think when I first mentioned something about doing a solo album, everybody thought "well, it's going to be Rob Halford, Bruce Dickenson..." I think they felt like it was all going to be people who were a bit older, but I wanted to have a variety of people. And of course with Billy Idol, that was something you'd never have thought of, that it'd be us together. And a lot of people have been really surprised by it and said they like it. It was great working with Billy. Billy's a really nice guy. We actually wrote a couple of tracks with Billy, and we wrote three with Phil Anselmo [Pantera], and two tracks with Billy Corgon [Smashing Pumpkins], but you know, we could only use one of each.

Cosmik: I was surprised to see Henry Rollins on the album, too.

Tony: Henry's a big fan, and he has been for a long time. He would come down to the rehearsals when we were doing the Sabbath reunion tours, and he came over to England and stayed with us for three weeks. He'd come to rehearsals every day, you know, because he really liked to just sit and watch. So he's a huge fan. I got to know him pretty well, and I told him about the project and he said "oh, well I'd like to sing a song." I played him some of the stuff and he'd say "oh!! I wanna sing that song!!" So when we got back to LA, we went into the studio and we recorded it [Laughing Man (In The Devil Mask)].

PAUL KRASSNER (November 2000, Issue #65)
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes

Our Closet Philosopher, Rusty Pipes, brought us quite a bit of coverage of the Shadow Convention in 2000. Remember the Shadow Convention? It was a gathering of the famous and the common folk who were tired of the political status quo in this country. They were equally ticked at the Republicans and the Democrats, and they said so, quite loudly, from the podiums of two conventions, one in Los Angeles and one in Philadelphia. Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist and a Shadow Convention principle player, conversed with Rusty shortly after the conclusion of the conventions.

Cosmik: Do you think the Shadow Convention was the start of something big?

Paul: I think they served as consciousness raisers and raising consciousness usually precedes the start of something big. I think it was the continuation of something big or the crystallization of it because the three causes - Campaign Finance Reform, Poverty and the Failed Drug War -- or as I call it "The War On Some People Who Use Some Drugs" -- it was all in the air already, it was all in the mix. It was just a way of formalizing that. I think that there were a lot of young people who were there and got inspired and didn't feel so alone and really mingled. There was a lot of networking in the best sense of the word going on at the convention.

Cosmik: What happened in 1968 in Chicago was nothing like what happened here and in Philadelphia this year, but there were rubber bullets and pepper spray used on people when they shut down Rage Against the Machine.

Paul: I think it was to scare people, to scare them from further protests. In was more insidious in other ways, because while that was going on, there were fake bomb scares at both the Shadow Convention and the Independent Media Center, so there was an overt assault on the First Amendment when reporters were deliberately targeted and photographers. But this was a more covert way of attacking the First Amendment.

Cosmik: I heard Arianna give several statements about what she knew about what happened, but I never heard anybody figure out exactly who was behind the fake bomb scares. She said something about a particular van was declared suspicious by the police themselves, and that was the form that the bomb scare took.

Paul: There was an anonymous tip and the bomb squad took four hours to arrive. Then they allowed a reporter to go up with the bomb squad to the roof (of Patriotic Hall the site of the Shadow Convention). If it was a real bomb scare they would never allow that.

MIKE KENEALLY (March 2001, Issue #69)
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes

Former Zappa guitarist Mike Keneally would probably like to stop being called that. The thing is, when you're a Jet you're a Jet all the way from your first cigarette to your last dying day. That's borrowed from elsewhere, but it works for former members of Zappa's bands (and aren't they all?) as well. The thing about Keneally is that his name is not known world-wide (like Steve Vai's is), yet he deserves that kind of recognition. He's one of the finest guitarists you'll ever hear, and that's not even his first instrument! Turns out Keyboards are his first love. He should also be respected for maintaining a level (read: uninflated) head and being a great guy to hang out with and talk to, not to mention a serious, deep thinker with a lot to say.

Cosmik: One of the things I always like about your work is, lyrically at least, there's always a lot of whimsy to it. I mean a song like "Potato" (from Sluggo); you can't take a song like that seriously, you have to laugh. How do you feel about artists projecting so much attitude? It's just like "Oh come on you guys, you're not really like that in real life are you?"

Mike: Well, it depends, some of them are, I think. Especially like the goatee contingent...

Cosmik: The "goatee contingent?"

Mike: Yeah, if you'll notice every young band has to have at least three of the four members with a goatee! (Laughs) You know there is a lot of anger and it's almost like they haven't yet found a way to... to elevate themselves out of it, so they just bellow in their chains. I think that maybe over time I've gotten a little more conscious of the fact that there needs to be some kind of balance in the popular music realm. I've done some dark work over the years. There's definitely a bit of darkness in the Boil That Dust Speck album and the Mistakes album. And sometimes when that's all that's going on inside you, that's what you express. But I'm in a very good place these days and choose to have the feeling of the music, (pauses) I want to give people positive feelings. I definitely want to make people happy.

For someone who, (when) their circumstances are hopeless, they can either choose to listen to music which is similarly hopeless, 'cause misery loves company, or maybe they can have the option of something that shines a little light on another area of life, saying, "Look things aren't that bad. It's really wonderful, come on over." That's really the choice I hope to present.

Cosmik: Somebody like Eminem, okay, well he's got maybe an angry past but now he's made a serious amount of money. Is he still going to sound angry? You betcha. Sometimes it's a cynical nod towards the expectations, the product that appeals to a certain market segment, that's what he'll do again regardless.

Mike: Yeah, in the case of Eminem or anybody else who makes a lot of money via their anger, I see your point, but just because he makes a lot of money, it isn't necessarily going to make him any happier. In fact I think once you get into that kind of money it really brings on a whole bunch of problems that people who don't have that kind of money can't even imagine. When you get somebody who's obviously disturbed to start with, which I think Marshall Mathers is, he's had a rough life, and he is really voicing a lot of young people's frustration right now. We could definitely have a lengthy discussion on how healthy that is. The thing that troubles me is just that he's really pushing hate. He's selling a lot of hate there and hate is a very comforting thing for a lot of people. If there is any one message above all, and I think the most important message in We'll Be Right Back is that politics is important but it is also bullshit. It's founded on bullshit whereas hate is a constant and so many people find comfort in it and find it so easy to hate large groups of people for no rational reason than other than their father hated them. So they grew up feeling that it was the right thing to do. So much sickness gets instilled in the society by that endless chain. It's really hard to turn back the clock on that kind of thing. People like Eminem, who I respect (for) a lot of the craft that's going into his music, it saddens me that it's becoming commercially viable and acceptable to say those kinds of things on a record. Yay First Amendment and all that stuff, but I do think there needs to be a little responsibility.

THE SOUTHERN ROCK ALL-STARS (July 2001, Issue #73)
Interviewed by DJ Johnson

Going to see The Southern Rock All-Stars was 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 was Jakson Spires of Blackfoot fame, the lead guitarist was 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 weren'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.

JEFF BERLIN (September 2001, Issue #75)
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. And Berlin, a man who has appeared on a dizzying array of albums over the years, knows of what he speaks.

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 every time 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 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.

STEEL PULSE (September 2001, Issue #75)
Interviewed by Eric Steiner

Selwyn Brown of the conscious reggae band Steel Pulse talked with Eric Steiner 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.

MICHAEL SHERMER (September 2001, Issue #75)
Interviewed by Rusty Pipes

With the propaganda and misinformation that we were all bombarded with, common sense and skepticism became more important than ever in September of 2001. 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.

KEVIN SALEM (December 2001, Issue #78)
Interviewed by Bill Holmes

Kevin Salem had just released his first album in five years (Ecstatic [Future Farmer Records]) when Bill Holmes caught up with him for this interview. During this segment, they talked about Salem's newfound passion for film scoring.

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