198d

First of all... read this excellent interview with one of the greatest humans ever in rock, alan licht. then buy his book.
also www.crankautomotive.com please find some music... thank you.

Alan Licht
by Bob Fay




About who knows how many years ago a certain Mister Joe Puleo pulled me aside. This was not at all unusual, but as this was a backyard barbeque get-together and my sunburned hands were firmly throwing all manner of charred flesh down my throat, I needed no pulling just then. It all worked out though. He wanted to play for me the recent debut 7" by Lovechild. He insisted on playing a 30-second passage where the singer’s voice climbs to a screeching climax of epic proportions; this was preceded by a running full-blast into a flaming black hole of a guitar solo. I, of course, finished my meal and wondered. Alan Licht (the guitar and vox of said band) had just penned a very comprehensive overview on LaMonte Young in Forced Exposure. The rest of that Lovechild 7" showcased the slightly perverse stylings of Rebecca Odes and drummer Will Baum. Lovechild, if memory serves, first played in Boston a few months after the release of the 7" and a full-length was promised shortly thereafter…but this took awhile. Licht, however, kept busy. Stints with the Blue Humans and more solo work started to blossom. Lovechild were kaput after two full-lengths. All along Alan had been dueting with many of New York’s finest improv artists. Run On was formed with stalwart players Rick Brown and Sue Garner of Fish & Roses as well as the unceasing talents of David Newgarden. In 1996 Newgarden left and was replaced by the whole-new-dimension-adding Katie Gentile on violin and various augmenting instrumentation. It was this lineup I caught in Louisville, Kentucky last April, and it was quite exciting. The Run On were opening for Will Oldham at a rather large theater. The acoustics wreaked havoc with the vocals at first, but the soundperson managed to weave some magic and I was dually smoked by the personal beauty and wonderful interplay of Run On. Will Oldham dancing to a drum machine was a whole ‘nother pot of coffee, however.

PW: I wanted to start by just getting some general background type things from you… where did you grow up?

A: In New Jersey.

PW: So you were sort of making your treks into the city all along?

A: Yeah, starting off with being taken to art museums every week by my mother and Broadway shows and kind of moving up to, y’know, the Lower East Side.

PW: …and the punk rock and the weird jazz and all that.

A: Where did you grow up?

PW: I grew up about 15–20 miles north of Boston. It sounds like we had sort of…as far as going into the city and being opened up to all sorts of art and weirdness and music…it was a common thing for both of us. So you started going to shows…?

A: Not so much shows, though, it was more like…

PW: Museums?

A: It took me awhile to even figure out what a used record store was. A lot of it was reading. I stumbled onto New York Rocker at one point, kind of following The Village Voice, I discovered Lester Bangs…kind of right before he died!

PW: So this is all like ‘80? ‘79–‘81?

A: Well, it’s really, I mean ‘79 I was 11 or 12, so it’s a little bit after that. My cousin gave me that book 1988 about punk rock when I was 10 or something, so I kind of knew all the names then, but I just couldn’t deal with it…at all (laughs). I was way more into Wings (laughs).

PW: That was one of the things I wanted to ask you about. On the Evan Dando of Noise CD you went into great detail about your love of pop music and also your love of noise, or whatever you want to call it, in a "letter" to Bruce Russell. It’s always surprising to me how close-minded some people can be about what they like.

A: What I found is that a lot of times people in the "indie rock world" would get a kind of queasy look when they would ask me when I was playing and I’d say I was doing an improv thing.

PW: That means you’re not going to stop every 3 minutes? Oh, ooh, I don’t know.

A: But then the other thing that I noted, which was a big inspiration behind that letter, is a lot of people who Iwould meet who were getting into free jazz or improvisation or experimental music after coming from a rock background who would then kind of be—"oh I was an idiot back then for liking that silly pop." Which is ridiculous because 5 years from now they’re just going to be saying—"oh I was an idiot for liking that experimental weird stuff."

PW: It’s all a matter of what’s going on during the time you’re listening to it more than completely disavowing your past because of it being a different time. Everybody looks back. I personally look back to the records I was listening to in 1985 and figure, "well I was just caught up in the hype of this label"…the early Sub Pop records, the early Homestead. For people to just completely blacklist their past for those kinds of reasons…I could never understand that. Your writing in the CD insert reminded me of your earliest fanzine writing; would that be the stuff for Phudd? The whole Chris Stigliano stuff? I was trying to go back…

A: …through the mists of time.

PW: I remember seeing your name there; the stuff that you and Bill Shute were writing was always a breath of fresh air compared to the Stigliano regime. The first thing I really remember being blown away by, and I’m sure it was your first big exposure in the fanzine world, was the La Monte Young piece for Forced Exposure. I can immediately think of six or seven people who became obsessed with La Monte Young after reading that article, myself included. It was my first exposure to him, really, and even then I’ve only been able to find so much stuff.

A: Well there’s not that much to find. That was great, [Forced Exposure] did such a great job with the photos, and the layout I think really helped.

PW: Those were the real glory days of Forced Exposure and you just hope that somebody would pick up that slack. Are there any recent fanzines that you can say that you get behind?

A: Well Halana does an OK job.

PW: Yeah, Halana’s a great mag.

A: I really think Popwatch…even though it only comes out once a year, in a way it’s the only thing to really live up to Forced Exposure in terms of covering both the rock and experimental…what Forced Exposure developed into.

PW: The thing that I’m missing from Popwatch, and don’t take this as a slam Leslie or Frank, is that there’s just a lack of humor. Going through those old Forced Exposures you notice—in these PC times we’re living in—there was a lot of nastiness, but on top of that there was a lot of humor and I think that today that’s something that’s kind of lacking in fanzines.

A: Y’know a lot of that is probably the times too…much more of an "us against them." To come out with an underground publication like that that was so well-done and funny…in a way there were more things to take shots at.

PW: But there was a peak period there where, like you said it was kind of an us vs. them thing, and there wasn’t this sort of developed sense of irony that is kind of prevalent in today’s society. Back then there was just a lot of people that were not getting it, not involved with it, and it was easy to make fun of those sorts of people, whereas now….

A: People were totally ignorant. In high school if you liked the Ramones you were just a total weirdo. And now in high school I’m sure Nirvana and Pearl Jam are still totally popular. So the acceptance is there, alternative has become this accepted part of pop culture/youth culture.

PW: How old are you Alan?

A: Almost 30.

PW: OK, see now I’m 35. Growing up and being a fan of independent music for all those years during the 80s, you really did think that "it’s just never gonna change, it’s always gonna be this uphill battle." And now I look back and think how I wish those days were back again…that pre-Nirvana blow-out where everybody got remarkably involved with what was going on in the underground before there was this marketability to it.

A: The thing is it just really builds and builds. In the late 70s major labels took the chance on punk, or whatever, and it totally flopped… for Blondie or the Talking Heads. Then they were like, alright, forget that.

PW: The stuff that Blondie and the Talking Heads hit with wasn’t even remotely punk anyway compared with whatever else.

A: And then it just went totally underground with hardcore, and then people got sick of hardcore and started to remember 60s rock.

PW: The shift was kind of amazing when all of the sudden the records that in 1985 sounded so good to you in 1980 sounded so thin, and I think there was a whole bunch of people that just wanted something a little bit heavier. And there was the SST stuff that was definitely leaning toward that 60s-excessive guitar stuff. But so much of that was just hard to take, like the Octoberfaction record.

A: But then Dinosaur came out and blew all of that out.

PW: It really did! Dinosaur were such a lynch-pin band to me and I’m sure to lots of people that were involved at the time. I always thought that if Dinosaur’s first record was recorded like the second record ended up being recorded by Wharton Tiers, that that would have been a huge record. First off, it’s like Homestead Records in 1985 was barely making it out to the west coast. Once that Dinosaur record came out in ‘87, You’re Living All Over Me, it really did seem like there was this building momentum and that bands could get paid; Sonic Youth started to make good money playing shows from like ‘88 on.

A: Well that was the thing, when I was in high school I started listening to Minutemen and Hüsker Dü. They were still kind of punk, enough, but it showed that they were listening to all kinds of music, and that’s what I was doing too. I was listening to jazz and started listening to Steve Reich, Philip Glass, and all that kind of stuff.

PW: Did you attend college at Vassar and that’s where you ended up meeting Rebecca?

A: …and Will.

PW: The first time I heard your music was on the first Lovechild 7" and the first song, "Know It’s Alright"…that guitar solo. My friend Joe played it for me, and it was one of those things where by the time it came around to the solo and your voice builds to one of those all-time rock crescendos, it was a real heavy-duty thing. A lot of like what I got from early Sebadoh songs with Eric singing, completely cathartic-sounding…in the sense of like, "I’m gonna blow my whole thing here on this one track"—it had that feel to it. From then on I was pretty much won over, and then I started hearing more stuff and hearing the pop subtleties…. How were the songs written in Lovechild? Would you say that Rebecca was more of the pop person?

A: Everyone had their own songs. You’d bring them in and then everyone would kind of play behind them. Will at first was pretty much dictating parts. Rebecca was learning how to play the bass when the band started; she kind of knew but hadn’t been playing long at all. Will had his songs and I could relate to playing drums on them more than second guitar which I thought would be too much. I thought they’d be better minimal but with more kicking drumming.

PW: At this point where were you with your guitar playing skills?

A: I’d been at it for a long time. I started playing when I was 10…I was pretty far along. I didn’t know how to play drums, so that kind of evened the score. Will literally taught me how to play drums. He said, "Look, it’s easy, just go boomp boomp with your foot and then hit the snare drum."

PW: It is easy, I’m proof positive of that.

A: I never got to be great but I could certainly keep it together for 40 minutes. Rebecca just had a real natural ability for writing melodies I think. It was obvious that she didn’t have any long background in writing or playing but she came up with stuff that was pretty good right off the bat.

PW: …and still catchy to this day. For that kind of music that’s the bottom line.

A: I listened to Okay in maybe the last year or two. I was really surprised at how good it was, ‘cause I didn’t like it for a long time. I thought the sequence was bad and some of the production was bad…but I was pretty happy with it. So everyone kind of had their own thing and people would back them up. It was kind of like we started with the White Album (laughs).

PW: Yeah yeah, you did, it’s true.

A: …moved on to Let It Be.

PW: The big fights in the studio…ignoring each other.

A: Will didn’t last too long, he was being "difficult" to work with I guess you could say. Just being a pest. Then we got this guy Brendan to play drums, then the shift became me and Rebecca leading the band and collaborating more on songwriting. By this time we were out of college. We had this single out that was doing really well and we said "Hey, let’s do this band thing." The economy was awful, neither of us was working that much.

PW: Was there much extensive touring for Lovechild back then? Did you ever make it out to the west coast?

A: We did but not until after Witchcraft. We did Chicago and some Midwest things, but we couldn’t really get anybody to book us and that kind of thing was just beyond me, and definitely beyond Rebecca or Brendan. The other thing was when Okay came out, Will wasn’t in the band at all. I kind of thought it would be weird to go out without playing half of the songs that were on that record.

PW: Was there a down-period at all in between Okay coming out and Brendan coming in that you guys didn’t do any shows?

A: He was already in before Okay actually came out because it took awhile for it to come out. We did that Moondog 7" (on Forced Exposure) in the meantime. We were both living at our parents houses and I would go over to her house everyday with a 4-track. I don’t even know whose 4-track it was…it might have been Will’s, that he had "loaned" to me.

PW: That’s a great 7". I love that.

A: Yeah, that’s my favorite Lovechild thing… or one of my favorites. In fact, it’s funny, over the weekend I got this Julie Andrews record that Moondog did all the music for. A children’s record from the early 60s I guess.

PW: Wow! Is it on Prestige?

A: It’s on Angel.

PW: Angel, wow, the RCA label, that’s hilarious. Have you listened to it?

A: Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s Moondog, totally. It’s all nursery rhymes and stuff, everything is super short, only like 10 or 15 seconds.

PW: So it’s like his cannons and rounds on Moondog II, that kind of thing?

A: Yeah kind of like that. A couple things are rounds but a lot of it is one melody.

PW: That sounds great. I can’t get enough Moondog it seems. I’ve never even heard of such a collaboration. I have a fair amount of Moondog records. I got a couple rare items, late-70s things. What was the thing from ‘78?

A: The German ones?

PW: Yeah one of the German ones. Actually Byron [Coley] sold it to me when he was doing his whole Father Yod overpriced records stuff back in the day. Y’know I sort of miss that. but in another way I don’t. I don’t know if I would want to be paying him $35 for a record I might hate.

A: Yeah because to him it’s all good (laughs).

PW: Yeah I know…his descriptions. He can really make the shit shine sometimes in his descriptions. Let me see if I can find this now that it’s starting to obsess me…Heart Songs.

A: Heart Songs, right. I know that one because it came out on CD…a bunch of those came out on CD and David Newgarden [ex-Run On, WFMU dj] loaned me all of them at one point and that’s where I heard "Enough About Human Rights" which Run On has done now and then over the years but never recorded. In fact we did a half-hour version once; it was the entire set.

PW: Where?

A: At Coney Island

PW: This almost sounds strangely reminiscent of those Yo La Tengo shows where they would go out and jam on one song for a half hour. Was it that kind of deal?

A: Yeah, kind of. I remember Yo La Tengo doing "Big Day Coming" for like a half hour after a Lovechild show at Maxwells… years ago. It was really great. Never sounded better. In fact the reason they did it that long was because Bob Lawton [manager] told them they should shorten the song. They’d been doing it to open their set back then…it was probably ‘92.

PW: You never ever tell a musician what to do and expect them to do it. Ira seems to be… not "contrary." Yeah, contrary. He can be very contrary. There’s no other way to put it.

PW: Before Run On started up you were doing stuff with the Blue Humans?

A: That was all while I was still in Lovechild. Yeah, I heard Rudolph [Grey] on that Tellus cassette, the all-guitar one? I was like "wow, what the fuck is this?" Then I remember seeing one of Thurston’s Ecstatic Peace ads, probably in Forced Exposure, where it said he was putting out a 12" by this guy. I liked Sonic Youth, and it said that [Grey] had played with Mars who I also liked…Branca and Lydia. And of course the Branca and Lydia things turned out to be just kind of a fluke thing, but my curiosity was definitely peaked. And that was one of the things about Phudd that got me interested in it was that they would write about Rudolph. This guy in rural Pennsylvania is writing about this New York guitar hero that nobody, including Henry Kaiser, seems to have heard of.

PW: (Laughs) I was always amazed by that sort of thing in Phudd because you’d be like, does this guy just sit on these copies of The Village Voice for 20 years and then all the sudden say "yeah this is it, this is the stuff!"?

A: It’s just boggling. I really thought at the time that this was the "who put the bomp" of the 80s.

PW: And when you think of the amount of time a lot of that music, especially the Cleveland stuff and the New York stuff, was just languishing in vaults or cassettes or however they transferred it onto vinyl, it’s kind of incredible. And you don’t want to look back and go, "huh, well who started this?" But in a way it was…it was Phudd and Chris.

A: Yeah, but he went off the deep end. He got so right-wing. He kind of ran out of stuff to write about, too.

PW: Right…but at the same time, as far as the hardcore collectors that were looking for these new sounds, he definitely opened a lot of eyes. I hadn’t even really thought of it that way.

A: Yeah, there he was, unearthing new gems every issue.

PW: Yeah, you’d be like, "Simply Saucer… hmmm."

A: Yeah right, it’s like who are they? What a horrible single.

PW: Yeah, I had that [Simply Saucer] single back then and I remember it was so new wave and bad!

A: Then the record came out and it all made sense.

PW: I guess I saw that last issue of Black to Comm but I can’t really remember what it was about.

A: The Alice Cooper one?

PW: Yeah the Alice Cooper one. It was OK, but…

A: It was horrible.

A: So, I got interested in Rudolph and I was doing a radio show at Vassar, and I was like, Hey I should call this guy up, he lives in New York, just bring him up, play some tapes and try to figure out what the fuck the story is. And he did it. He came up, he set a small fire in the studio…that managed to get under control. He was smoking a cigarette. He played "Transfixed" before it came out, which was totally mind blowing, played Red Transistor stuff, some duo with Zev, duo with Beaver Harris….

PW: So he was just sitting around playing tapes for you.

A: Yeah…on the radio.

PW: Oh really? Wow…that’s amazing. Did you tape it all? You must have taped it.

A: Someone was supposed to tape it for me and they flaked. But I managed to get all the tapes out of Rudolph. It was such a great introduction to the man and his music. And I stayed in contact with him after that, I did a print interview for Black to Comm, which was the first of any kind of in-depth interview with him.

PW: With him talking about his past?

A: As much as you can get him to talk about it. He’s pretty tight-lipped. I met Jim Sclavunos once, he was playing in the band Fuse that Tom Surgal’s girlfriend was in at the time. I was hanging out at a recording session and met him; he had played in Red Transistor, briefly… apparently he was fired by Von Elmo for, quote, selling secrets to Lydia Lunch.

PW: (Laughs uproariously.)

A: So I asked what the Rudolph Grey of today was like compared to the Rudolph Grey of yesteryear and he said that he was more friendly and outgoing now (laughs)! So I stayed in touch with him and got to the point where he would let me come over and listen to records and he played all kinds of great free jazz and 60s records, and a lot of singles from the 60s where he’s only person on earth who still has them…it was a great education. I played him some solo tapes of me on guitar and he was into it and he had a couple gigs… like Thurston’s Rock and Roll Circus…and he asked me to play bass. It was me playing bass and David Litton playing drums and it was pretty good. Then he had that Mask of Light thing and he asked me to play guitar on that, and that was how I met Thurston and Surgal…and Don Fleming (laughs). I met a lot of people through Rudolph, which is kind of funny considering he’s not the most social. Tom [Surgal] and I wound up playing with him for a couple years there. We did the Clear to Higher Time record which was great, although it took him 2 years to get the cover art and everything together. It was good when it finally came out.

PW: I love that record. Just about anything I have with him on it…the stuff with Arthur Doyle, that other record, and Beaver Harris.

A: That Shock CD is great.

PW: I don’t think I have that.

A: That was live at CBGBs with Jim Sauter and Beaver Harris…1988, opening for Sonic Youth. I was at that show and that was the first time I saw him do anything. That was by far the best Rudolph Grey I’ve seen.

PW: What’s he doing now?

A: Funnily enough I just saw him play last night. Unexpectedly, he was playing with William Parker and, true-to-form, for the first 10 minutes he couldn’t get his amp to work and Tim Wright, of all people, from DNA and Pere Ubu, is trying to help him with the amp…it was Donald Miller’s amp. Finally he got something going but it was weird, he started out not playing much with his back to the audience and eventually kind of wandered into the wings of the Cooler so he was completely invisible to the audience, although still playing.

PW: Are there any dream songs you’d like to cover? Or obscure nuggets that you’d like to give a go ‘round…or are you by chance doing that now?

A: I used to have a whole list that I was trying to get Run On to do…the thing is they can’t really play covers. Rick, especially, is totally self-taught so he only really knows how to play his own songs. I always wanted to cover "Double Exposure," that Television song and …James McNew actually stole a couple of my cover ideas.

PW: He’s really good for that.

A: "You and I" I wanted Run On to cover and then he turned around and recorded it with Dump. There was one other one I mentioned I was interested in covering and he turned around and did it. There was one Jandek song I thought was really good called "I’m Ready" that’s on On the Way; it’s the last song on the record. It’s like the best song Neil Young hasn’t written in the last 20 years.

PW: No too many people do Jandek songs.

A: It’s true…he’s undercovered.

PW: Have you ever done any Captain Beefheart covers?

A: Oh yeah, that was another thing. That was when I opened for Will Oldham, I did this whole set where I was playing with these tapes from a hollering contest. One thing is on Evan Dando of Noise. After I got through doing that I had a tape of Beefheart doing "Well" from Trout Mask Replica and I would play guitar along with that. It was supposed to be kind of a Young Marble Giants…I kind of played so he was singing with these two punk rock chords going on underneath him. Oh I know what it was…I sent you the tape where I was playing chord organ and I did "Well"…I did "Heart of Darkness," and "Nighttime" by Big Star. I did this other thing where I did this tape loop from the song "Mama Says" which is the last song on The Beach Boys’ Wild Honey. It was this loop that said "Never be lazy." I did one show where I was playing guitar with that, and another show where I was playing chord organ over that…but for a half hour.

PW: Last week I was starting in earnest to do my research for this interview and I had listened to the first side of Sink the Aging Process and got up to flip it over. I flipped the record over and I just put the needle on the record and we had an earthquake!

A: Coincidence or…?

PW: It was one of those things where I had to get out of the house after it happened. It was my first earthquake and it was very…it just ripped through the house in about 5 seconds and I could feel it from one end of the house to the other, I could actually feel the earth moving. I was going in and out of great trances anyway so I was sort of in a susceptible state, listening to "Polarity"…what happens with a lot of stuff I listen to, like Bertoia or really good Xenakis, I’ll just get into this weird state. It’s not anything drug induced, but you’re listening to these tones, you’re hearing other tones, and it can start to work this physical manifestation on you. So I was in this weird way anyway and really enjoying listening to "Polarity," I hadn’t listened to it probably in a year and a half, and to get up and have this earthquake happen! Was, um...

A: Intense. I remember walking into Kim’s Underground once and they were playing "Polarity" and it was the last couple minutes of it. It finishes and someone from the video counter is like "Can we listen to Belly now?"

PW: (Laughs.) That’s a lot of what we’re talking about or what I think about you when I think about you and your music, like "Yeah let’s do that, let’s listen to ‘Polarity,’ this 20-minute delayed noise thing, and then, yeah, let’s hear some heavy-duty pop music. Let’s hear Supergrass." That’s what I’ve always really liked about what you’re doing is that there is no finite when it comes to music.

A: And even "Polarity" is taken from a rock song it’s just the last chord of a rock song. The whole thing about my interest in that is I listen to all that kind of stuff as rock music. The thing I liked about John Coltrane initially was I thought it sounded like what I liked about the Allman Brothers and the Doors, it’s the kind of long, tranced-out jams.

PW: That was always my stumbling block with getting into jazz initially. I would have these drawn-out fights with an older brother of mine who would say "Listen to this, it’s heart and soul, it’s talent. There’s great music here." And I’d be like "It’s musical masturbation." But of course at that time I’m listening to Minor Threat and early-80s Rough Trade, which strangely enough a lot of that stuff had jazz elements but I just couldn’t hear it. And then I think I heard some Monk; Icouldn’t deny its melodic beauty. And then someone started turning me on to really good Coltrane records and then the whole thing sort of went from there.

A: If you like Captain Beefheart it shouldn’t be too hard to get into Monk. That was actually the first jazz I bought I think, was by Thelonious Monk.

PW: Any books you’ve recently read? I know this is kind of a dry question.

A: That I’ve read and liked?

PW: That you’ve read and liked. Yes, let’s put it that way.

A: I really like that Nick Kent book that came out, that collection of essays.

PW: The Dark Stuff?

A: I never really read anything of his. I grew up as a big Bangs and Meltzer fan. I really thought he was their equal after reading that book. I hate to say it, but that Glimpses book, the Lewis Shiner book. The guy who fantasizes about these bootleg tapes. I really couldn’t believe I was reading it, it just seemed so "geeky"; but it’s actually a really good book.

PW: Is that sort of like that Nick Hornby book? That High Fidelity book?

A: Maybe I haven’t read that.

PW: It’s worth reading. It’s sort of sad in a way, because there’s almost too many parallels to my own life as far as being an obsessive music geek.

A: That’s why I’m afraid to read it.

PW: I guess this new book he put out is supposedly an extension of High Fidelity; there’s the character in present day 36-year-old form, and I guess he flashes back a lot to him being a 12-year-old boy. I think it’s called About a Boy.

A: It’s funny you ask this question actually Hand to Mouth by Paul Auster I like too it’s funny you ask this because I’m working on a book now for Drag City. They asked me to write a book; didn’t say about what, didn’t say when they needed it, just wanted me to write one.

PW: Has Drag City put out anything other than that Neil Hagerty book?

A: They’re just about to do a Fahey book. I know they’ve had a Bruce Russell novel for awhile, but I don’t know what’s going on with that.

PW: I’d love to read a Fahey book after reading that thing on Antonioni [Popwatch #9].

A: It’s gonna be really good; it’s a collection of essays and whatnot.

PW: Fahey is someone who just instantly made a world of sense to me, and I think mostly just because I couldn’t figure out how he was doing what he was doing. When I first started hearing him I really didn’t have any knowledge about alternative tunings or anything like that.

A: One of the cool things about Fahey which was pointed out in, maybe it was even Glenn Jones’s liner notes to the Blind Joe Death CD reissue, was how he took the guitar playing that was mostly just background to vocal music and created this whole instrumental, spotlighted context for it; also blending it with other kinds of music, but just the fact that he took this thing that was not really supposed to be noticed that much and did notice and studied it very carefully and set about doing his own "take" on it. I think that is what makes him so important. And in a way it’s a lot like Jimi Hendrix, the way Jimi took feedback, which beforehand was this unpredictable, very occasional kind of thing, and created this whole language based on it. To me that’s a similar thing. Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how both Bob Dylan and Patti Smith took these folk (laughs) in Dylan’s case literal folk forms and infused it with this beatnik or Rimbaud-influenced poetry. Patti Smith did the same thing with 60s garage rock putting this poetry spin on it. The other connection is The Anthology of American Folk Music.

PW: Mind blowing.

A: You listen to it and you go, "Oh, this is punk rock." (Laughs)

PW: So true. Have you heard that Dock Boggs CD? I don’t have it yet, but after hearing the Boggs stuff on the Harry Smith box set it seems like anybody with any sort of love of Americana or folk music or anything like that from the past 80 years should want to indulge.

A: I had wanted to hear it for years because I remember Peter Stampfel talking about it in the liner notes to a Fugs reissue where he said he and all these people had gotten this record; and then he was going in the studio with Harry Smith who of course produced that first Fugs session, and so on and so forth. And later I got into Harry Smith’s movies.

PW: Are there any favorite tour stops? Towns you like to play in or just towns you like to soak in the ambience?

A: Well Chicago’s really great; I’ve always had a good time there. I had a pretty good time playing in Detroit, just knowing a couple people there who’ve shown me some pretty cool things like the Book Beat store. One guy I met in Detroit took me around to play a couple of Harry Bertoia’s sculptures. Bertoia’s from Michigan and there are places there that had a couple sculptures.

PW: How did that sound?

A: Great. It just sounds like the records, only, obviously live and in your face...there was a really good barbeque place in Tuskaloosa, Alabama, though I wouldn’t recommend playing there. We played to two people. The Cramps were playing across town so everyone was going there this was with Lovechild. That was pretty bad, but the guy was a heavy stoner so we smoked a lot of pot.

PW: And had barbeque. Nice.

A: San Francisco I kind of like. I haven’t had much luck in LA to be honest. I’ve had fun hanging out there, just not playing shows. But San Diego has been nice, the couple times I’ve played there. Austin. The thing I’ve found about touring is I’ve really enjoyed the longer tours more than the shorter ones. It seems like when you’re out there for 4 or 5 weeks, at least, it becomes a lot more of a journey, it’s a lot more interesting. When you’re trying to cover all this ground in like 3 weeks it’s just not as much fun.

PW: I was listening to the Two Nights CD you did with Loren Mazzacane. Considering how distinctive Loren’s style is, I was having a really hard time telling the difference between your playing and his playing on that CD. Obviously the playing was improvised and you are familiar with each other’s styles, but I noticed what I’d call a great amount of respect and restraint between the two of you as well as the great interplay. What do you plan to do next with Loren?

A: We have a couple other records. There’s one on New World of Sound recorded at CBs gallery. That’s a good one. And there’s another one (besides Two Nights) on Road Cone. That was a really good gig. That was during CMJ, actually.

PW: Did it help your careers? (laughs)

A: Yeah, can’t you tell?

PW: Are there any current pop things that you can get behind in a mainstream mindset?

A: For years I didn’t even pay attention to the radio and now I have a couple of guilty pleasures. The Paula Cole song "I Don’t Wanna Wait," and that Shawn Colvin song has been stuck in my head for a couple days. One of the big things I’m gonna do in this Drag City book is, I’m in the process of writing it now, I’m doing this long semi-memoir of encountering all these songs from the early 80s New Wave/ MTV New Wave and remembering which parts of them I liked and stuff like that. Some of them are actually good songs. The whole problem with the 80s was production values.

PW: They went south!

A: They totally went to Hell. Take a song like "Time After Time" by Cindi Lauper, right? Incredible song, but the production is just an abomination. So one of the things I talk about is hearing the stuff again. First of all it’s amazing how much of it I remember.

PW: You remember every note of the guitar solo to a song you haven’t heard or thought about in 10 years.

A: Exactly.

PW: That’s the pervasive power of radio. With all the other stuff you’ve thought about and done in the last 10 years, you shouldn’t remember that at all but you know it note for note.

A: The other thing is I can watch a movie I saw maybe about the same time, like 15 years ago, and I’ll remember two scenes from it, and as I’m watching it I won’t remember anything, but with a song I heard a lot back then all the details come back. When you add on to that the last 8 years of making records and being in studios and finding out how things work on that end, then you have this other added appreciation for stuff that you didn’t notice back then. I remember hearing that song "Electric Eye," the Judas Priest song. It was the first song on Screaming for Vengeance.

PW: That was their biggest records wasn’t it?

A: I don’t know, one of them. But I was listening to the guitar solo and he punches in every single line. Every line of the fucking solo is punched in, which at the time I never would have realized, I would’ve just been like "God he’s good." Also I listened to London Calling for some reason a few months ago, and listening to that record from the perspective of a musician at the time I thought it was kind of "punk." (Laughs) It’s the most commercial.

PW: It’s amazing how ‘merch that album is!

A:It’s like a disco record practically.

PW: It is, and Sandinista was even worse for that.

A: The production on that is so drug damaged.

PW: When that record came out and they were doing interviews for it Joe Strummer said "Oh I smoked enough pot to turn into a bush when we were making this record," which I always thought was a great line for a band being in a studio and realizing, "Oh my God we’ve created this monster, I cannot get high enough to get through it."

A: London Calling had decent production values and it sounds good, but it just sounds like they’re really trying to conquer the American market.

PW: And that’s always so sad when a band you liked for having their own distinctive sound, maybe a little provincial when they’re singing "I’m so bored with the USA" or White Riot, or the specific stuff the Clash were singing about early on, but when you see them flattening out their sound and people used to accuse Sonic Youth of that. "They were heading toward something and they might have hit it with Evol and Sister, but then after that everything flattened out and was a bit easier to take."

A: Yeah well, with them I think it just became a marketing game once they signed to Geffen. To me the music had evolved to its fullest point with Daydream Nation. I think they knew they had to either take it to a bigger audience, and what the songs actually were didn’t matter as much because they had developed their music to where everything was pretty much going to be. The whole 90s they’ve just kind of been I don’t want to say following trends, but they kind of have been doing that.

PW: Yeah, to a degree, there’s no doubt about it.

A: Grunge came out and they were like "Well, y’know we can be kind of grunge." Guided By Voices and stuff like that came out and they were like "Hey, we can do short songs." And now that you have Tortoise and whoever else more on the experimental tip, they’re like "Hey, don’t forget, we’re an art band. Check out our EPs." You can’t really say anything because they have worked super hard and they deserve to be where they’re at.

PW: Absolutely.

A: But as far as actually sitting down and listening to their records.

PW: Although live they’re still amazingly interesting and still great.

A: And they have been the whole time in fact, kind of better. To a certain extent in the 90s more than some of the shows I saw in the 80s.

PW: What about Run On? Aren’t you guys doing any touring or recording any time soon?

A: We did so much last year. Everyone was kind of fried and we all just decided to take a few months off and figure out what the next step will be.

PW: Electronica? Drums ‘n’ bass?

A: That’s what I keep saying, but they just go.

PW: (Laughs) It’ll be easier, you won’t have to do as much, just turn on the tapes. How have you been utilizing your time off?

A: The Drag City book is coming, and a record with Loren Mazzacane for Drag City that Jim O’Rourke produced with a bunch of other Chicago people on it like Ken Vandermark and Rick Rizzo and Darren Gray [Hoffman Estates] it’s got kind of an early 70s Miles thing going.

PW: Isn’t it weird, don’tcha think, how Drag City has turned into this hippie label?

A: But that’s what those guys like. I guess Blue Cheer is not a hippie band, but that’s the stuff those guys are way into, they’re way into 60s rock.

PW: But that hasn’t always been the case regarding the stuff they’ve been putting out. I think now they’ve caught up what they’re releasing to what they really like. Nothing against the early Drag City releases, but it seemed more radically defiantly anti-establishment and weird, noisy kind of things. And they still do put out records like that but there’s way more of I don’t know if hippie’s the right word.

A: Well, Ghost. That’s pretty hippie. I think they’re learning to love experimental music.

PW: That’s a good way of putting it.

A: Gastr was originally on, what, Teenbeat? It’s probably just more a consequence of Grubbs living there I think that maybe they signed them. I think Jim (O’Rourke) starting hanging out more and probably came to be a little more influential as far as turning people onto stuff. I think once people started to know him personally he became more of an influential figure. When he was just this guy who was on a million records then everyone was just kind of suspicious of him. When you actually encounter his personality which is so effervescent then you have to take him a little more seriously because he really does know what he’s doing and what he’s talking about.

PW: And the results are always good.

A: He’s a really talented editor.

PW: Yeah, he’s sort of like the Holger Czukay of the 90s in a way. He’s got great taste which, for an editor, is such a crucial component of their makeup.

A: Part of the problem originally is people were tagging him as a guitarist, which he isn’t really. When you check out the editing work on that Faust CD…you saw Faust in Hartford, Connecticut, right? (Laughs.) If he could make something out of what was going on there and elsewhere, you’ve gotta be some kind of genius.

PW: So the book and Loren collab are happening, and Run On will probably be working later on in the year? [Nope Alan recently reported that Run On have broken up Ed.]

A: Yeah, probably doing something. I did a solo guitar record on 4-track actually like 6 tracks that I finished editing and would like to get somebody interested in.

PW: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

A: There’s one other anecdote which relates to your original premise of the whole pop versus noise thing which is that my mother tells me that when I was a baby only two things would make me stop crying: one was her playing the radio and the other was her running the vacuum cleaner. So the whole pop/noise thing goes pretty far back.

ALAN LICHT DISCOGRAPHY

Solo

Rabbi Sky CD (Siltbreeze, April 1999 release)

The Evan Dando of Noise? CD (Corpus Hermeticum, NZ, 1997)

Sink the Aging Process LP (Siltbreeze, 1994)

Calvin Johnson Has Ruined Rock for an Entire Generation 7" (18 Wheeler, 1994)

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on CRANK magazine split 7" (with A Handful of Dust, 1994)

"Betty Page" on Breathe on the Living 3-LP compilation (Locust, 1990)

"Betty Ford" and various improvisations on NO MUSIC FESTIVAL CD box set (1998)

"Polarity" (live with No Neck Blues Band) on Waiting to Be Old compilation (NZ, 1997)

"The Shvitz" on Halana #3 CD (with magazine, 1997)

untitled piece (lock groove) on RRR 500 (RRR, 1998)

"(Won’t You Take Me to) Niketown" on split 7" with Paul D. Miller (Manifold, forthcoming)

with Rudolph Grey

Mask of Light LP (with Jim Sauter and Rashied Ali) (New Alliance/Ecstatic Peace, 1991)

with The Blue Humans

Clear to Higher Time CD (New Alliance/Ecstatic Peace, 1993)

"To Higher Time" 7" (New Alliance/Ecstatic Peace, 1993)

with Loren Mazzacane Connors

Hoffman Estates CD/LP (with Jim O’Rourke, Ken Vandermark, Rick Rizzo, Kevin Drumm, Chad Taylor, etc.) (Drag City, 1998)

Mercury CD (Road Cone, 1997)

Two Nights CD (Road Cone, 1996)

Live at CBGB Gallery (New World of Sound, 1996)

with Run On

Scoot EP (Sonic Bubblegum, 1997)

Sit Down EP (Matador Europe, 1997)

No Way CD/LP (Matador, 1997)

"Pooch" on State of the Union dbl. CD (Atavistic, 1996)

Start Packing CD/LP (Matador, 1996)

"Miscalculation"/"A to Z" 7" (Matador, 1995)

On/Off EP (Matador, 1995)

"Days Away"/ "Ordering"/ "We’ll Play House" 7" (Ajax, 1994)

"Water"/ "Day Old Bread" 7" in Bobby Haber Memorial Box 7" box set (Matador, 1995)

"Days Away" on What’s Up Matador? 2-CD comp (Matador, 1997)

"Pretty Note" on Monsters, Robots, and Bug Men 2-CD comp (Virgin UK, 1996)

with "Gerry Miles" (Connie Burg and Melissa Weaver)

Gerry Miles and Alan Licht and Haino Keiji CD (Atavistic, 1996)

"Rooney Olson" on Out of Their Mouths dbl. comp (Atavistic, 1996)

with Lovechild

"Cigarette Ash" on Basement Tapes comp 1995?

"Erotomania" on This Is Art dbl. 7" comp (Radiation, Spain, 1993)

Witchcraft CD (Homestead, 1992)

Witchcraft CD/LP (City Slang, Germany, 1992)

"Stumbling Block"/ "Six of One" 7" (City Slang, Germany, 1992)

"Six of One"/ "Sleepyhead" 7" (Homestead, 1992)

"Ponytail" on Fortune Cookie Prize comp (Simple Machines, 1991)

Okay? CD/LP (Homestead, 1991)

Love Child Plays Moondog 7" (Forced Exposure, 1990)

Love Child 7" (Trash Flow, 1990)

with Tamio Shiraishi

"Our Lips Are Sealed" CD (Pure/RRR, 1997)

with The Max Factory (Fred Lonberg-Holm, Lin Culbertson, Tom Surgal)

Tudor City LP (Ecstatic Yod, 1995)

with Tara Key

Bourbon County CD (Homestead, 1993)

Other

Performed as a guest member with:

The Styrenes (1992)

King Kong (1991)

Arthur Lee and Love (1993 and1994)

White Winged Moth (1996)

The Shadow Ring (1995)

contributed to soundtrack of "Eerie," dir. Phil Hartman (1996, unreleased)

contributed to sound installation piece The Downsizing of Don Dokken to "Constriction" gallery exhibition, Pierogi 2000, Brooklyn (1996)

sound environment, Today I Am a Fountain Pen, Studio Five Beekman, NYC October (1998)

Death Cube K

I always thought Frank Zorn and Buckethead were better alternatives.

__________________
| I produce g u i l t. | The fool; the meddling idiot. | Fyck off weak doom; we kane harder. |
| I Care Because You Do. | Welcome to Bucketheadland. | Lull Continue and Moments. |
| If I Wash Myself in others blood am I Sick? | Blood stained hands; Rust is eating my skin. |
| My death lays awake there, whistling Dixie. | KMFDM is the drug against war. |
| Please come home... Mr. Bulbous | Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven! |
| Unjust responce for your ignorance, intensify my rage. Unrest that makes me strong. |
| We see all but do nothing, in the hole of "How it is". | Life Under the Swatter. | Brainville |
| Happy With What I Have To Be Happy With. You Have to Be Happy With What You Have... |

remstress

how cool (and strange!) to be randomly going through old posts and come across one that metions lovechild (albeit in the form of an article/interview someone posted from somewhere, but mentioning lovechild nonetheless)!!!

they were one of the bands i 'discovered' by listening to college radio...i wish i could find this song on winmx sometime..

--cigarette ash--
"cigarette ash that you left behind
smells pretty bad, but i don't mind
reminds me of you and now that you're gone
won't be happy until you're near"

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