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Okay Seymour, you live in San Francisco, or is that past tense?
"I've lived in San Francisco since 1978, with extended episodes trapped in the suburbs and outlying counties.
Fortunately, the ransom was paid and I now walk free, just like normal people. Sometimes people stare and whisper,
but that's okay, because I'm getting it all on tape and they'll grovel when I sit in judgment of them. When my family
first moved here, I had a knee-jerk reaction to the unfamiliarity. I was a teenager at the time, and stupid things like
finding Pink Floyd graffiti on the sidewalk near the high school were significant cultural barometers for me. Where I
came from, my friends wouldn't even discuss the possibility of listening to a band with such an uncool name. After I saw
the Pink Floyd graffiti, I started noticing and preferring almost everything else I found in California. They had used
record shops here, where you could buy LPs for $3.50. Burritos were filled with fresh vegetables (instead of just beef
and cheese, deep-fried in oil). I could go to the movies all day long on the weekends and see films from all over the
world, not one of which I'd ever heard of before."
I like to envision San Francisco as the land of Noise and Honey. Is it really?
"I don't want to burst your bubble, but I will say San Francisco has a lot in common with rural Alabama. We both
embarrass the rest of the country because of a certain openness with our proclivities. Speaking of which, don't some of
your fellows Belgians periodically get the hairy eyeball for indiscreet sexual deviancy? Is Belgium the Alabama of
Europe?"
For a moment we were so delusional thinking "Man Bites Dog" was a reflection of reality. Then we woke up from the
trip surrounded by our Plastic Bertrand records and half-eaten waffles. Back to washing down asspills. The first issue
of _Bananafish_ magazine I found was in Japan. Contrary to what most think, Japan is a land polluted with vomit inducing
pop which in the Western world would be deemed uh... exotic.
"People always think whatever they want. Odds are we're wrong and never even know the difference. What else is new?"
But what I'm trying to ask...
"Look at from a statistical point of view. Of all the trillions of things there are to know
about, and the infinite number of innacurate ideas and uninformed opinions the trillions of people in the world could
possibly have about them, the likelihood of anyone ever getting anything right, especially how much vomit-inducing,
non-exotic pop is in Japan, is pretty damn small."
How long has _Bananafish_ been running around the world now? How did it get started?
"I started Bananafish in 1987 because I was just lying on my bed staring at the ceiling feeling miserable all
the time. Why is no one's business. Okay, it was the damn voices, intoning over and over again, "Must... eat... brains...
Must... eat... brains..." Can we just drop it now?"
"Man, you're a relentless interviewer."
It's dropped!
"All right, then. A few minutes after I decided feeling sorry for oneself is a ridiculous hobby, I noticed the
non-edible things in my room that seemed to bring me a bit of joy were all magazines: _Breakfast Without Meat_ by
Gregg Turkington and Lizzie Kate Gray; _Unsound_; the newspaper inside the Ex's _Too Many Cowboys_ double-LP; and an
anthology of Italian socialist poetry called _Neon Meate Dream of an Bananafish_. It suddenly seemed so obvious --
I'd been profoundly excited by writing since I was 15, and Barbara Manning worked at a print shop around the corner
from the place I worked. I couldn't believe I'd waited so long. She was a prominent, integral part of the magazine's genesis.
I knew the way to go was with people who had outstanding verbal skills and imaginations that put yours and mine to shame.
I called an old friend (Lucian Tielens of Bren't Lewiis Ensemble) and taped our conversation without telling him, and did
the same thing with a new friend (Fred Rinne of National Disgrace). I also called Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls, although
he knew it was an interview, and collected the letters I'd received from Tom Smith, who at the time was making history with
Peach of Immortality. With a bunch of graphic items, most of which I'd found on the ground and saved, that was the first
issue. It looked a typically horrible fanzine that you'd see at the time, but at least it was all mine. See, we didn't have
websites and the Fox network back then."
Sure.
And you play with Barbara Manning in Glands of External Secretion.
"Technically, yes, Barbara and I have played together, but making audible sounds in the same room isn't really playing
together. Listen to the music she's made with Cole Marquis, Brandan Kearney, Calexico, and the S.F. Seals (_Truth Walks in
Sleepy Shadows_ being the most sublime incarnation, if you ask me). Those people played with Barbara Manning."
Anywayzzz what role do you play in the Glands?
"Mostly editing. I don't use computer programs, but I'd be the last person on Earth to get all high and mighty
about technology. I'd love to be a desktop producer, although it sure is fun to crack wise about Powerbook bands.
I mean, expecting people to sit down and watch me transcribe an interview for _Bananafish_ seems ludicrous, but there's
probably just as little to see when some of these bands perform live. A lot of the old fashioned techniques still sound
good to me. I haven't yet gotten tired of cutting tape with razor blades and listening to sounds at the wrong speed,
backwards. If I had the memory and the applications, I'd be happy using a computer just like a four-track with a television
set, essentially."
How did Glands of External Secretion come about?
"Barbara was asked by the Majora label to do a single, and she asked me to help her record the songs, just because,
I think, writing, playing, singing and arranging was already a lot to do. I made sure the microphones didn't fall over,
watched the needles on the four-track VU meter and kept her beer glass filled. The B-side, "CZC," was a montage of noises
and musical sounds well within the limits of the kind of music I can make, but in this case it was predominantly orchestrated by Barbara. She left the mixing and editing up to me, which I feel fairly comfortable doing. I still regard it as one of the creepier, more gorgeous piece of music I've worked on. She could easily concoct masterpiece after masterpiece in this style if she ever wanted to put a lot of charlatans out of business for good. Anyway, when we were done, we didn't want to kill one another, but we didn't have any plans to start a band or anything like that. Still, another opportunity to release a single came along from Starlight Furniture Company, which we titled _The Glands of External Secretion Demonstrate Congo Bob's Epic Saliva Torture_. We didn't intentionally name ourselves Glands of External Secretion, but it did come to be called that without any protest from either of us."
Do you plan to do more with Barbara?
"Sure, although we don't always have to be together for anything to happen. A lot of Glands tracks I edit by myself
from tapes she's recorded in completely different situations with unambiguous intentions. For example, I have a tape of her
performing by herself live on KPFA from several years ago. I recently contributed a Glands track to a compilation CD to be
released by Cast Exotic Archives, which uses manipulated loops of her song "Green" from this broadcast. Since it's not really a straight cover of the song, I titled it "PMS 348 CV," a specific green-colored ink. The Glands contributions to the_Who's Who in Hospitalization_ CD, our collaboration with Prick Decay, as another example, were made at Barbara's house.
It's a huge variety of noises and sounds originally created by cooking and cleaning and various other things we did throughout the day. Everything I later edited and changed; it was edited again and changed further when Prick Decay received the tapes. Most of what's on the CD neither of us remembers doing. Barbara has huge beer glasses."
That and the first Glands of External Secretion album, _Northern Exposure Will Be Right Back_,were released by
Starlight Furniture, right? Is that your label?
"It wasn't originally, but since I seemed to have some involvement with most of what was coming out, it was too
difficult for Bob McDonald to prevent me from tainting the label identity with my own unmistakable stench. He and I used to
live with Harvey Stafford and Shelley Rewolf in a warehouse above a furniture store, and we all loved the sign on the front
of the building. It was old fashioned and beautiful, riddled with peeling paint and broken neon tubes. It was a huge monster of a sign, visible from 10 or 15 blocks away, a neighborhood landmark until the building caught on fire years after we'd moved out. The label logo looks exactly like the sign. One can only imagine what the original must have looked like when it was new, glowing in the late night San Francisco mist. We all loved that sign."
Apart from the Glands, do you like to indulge in any other sonic projects?
"I wouldn't mind attempting to perform an answering machine symphony. The music of the Dead C. and A Handful of Dust
have helped me appreciate the timbres and moods that certain machines will give to music, not necessarily because of defects, just limitations. I know I'll never do it, but if I had the time and energy, I'd like to fill a space with about 20 answering machines, each playing tapes of independently recorded sounds. Since few of the machines are likely to produce much in the way of highs or lows, it would probably churn out nothing more than an underwhelming midrange mushpile that is a lot less grand than I would hope. This might be something that amplification, equalization and filtering could help avoid, but I can't even get around to acquiring more than two working answering machines. I doubt I'll ever be ready for all that other complicated whiz-bang. In November I sent a CD-R of half-finished loops, noises and sounds to Tom Greenwood in Portland, Oregon. He and his band, Jackie-O Motherfucker, improvised with it live. I was in town to see it but didn't hear their performance. In December in New York City, MV and Ms. Erika of Tower Recordings improvised with the same CD as part of a month-long series of shows at the Pink Pony organized by Tom. I was able to attend that show and was surprised at the volume of my CD relative to the live musicians. I'm accustomed to being mixed into the background so that a listener might experience the sounds as a textural part of what a live human is doing, rather than knowing it's prerecorded, but it was blasting out of the P.A. I couldn't hear anything but my idiotic Santana record skipping. I used to be in a pots-and-pans-and-plastic-flamingo conglomeration when I was student. We called ourselves the Bren't Lewiis Ensemble and assumed what we were doing was revolutionary and without precedent. Well, I assumed so, because I was a pretentious moron. One of my English professors gave me no end of hassles and insults about it, as he thought we were a bunch of dilettantes who didn't understand true performance art and other crap he felt we needed to be aware of. Someone screwed a light bulb into my ass while my head was inside a garbage can once, but that wasn't good enough for this guy. No-o-o-o-o-o. We didn't shoot each other or try to eat parts of automobiles, but for a bunch a obsessive-compulsives with certain, shall we say, dependencies, we had a lot of weird, unforgettable fun that no one else could ever reproduce. Still, I was fairly intimidated by the heavy, negative pronouncements of this doctored bully; eventually I tried to get the other people in Bren't Lewiis to think about what we were doing seriously, because I was susceptible to the need for approval from others. I was a damn fool. Impressing an old man you hate is no way to get your ya-yas out. I found a copy of the Los Angeles Free Music Society's _Lightbulb Emergency Cassette_ at a used record shop when I went to Berkeley for the weekend, and then a copy of Smegma's _Pigs for Lepers_ LP arrived in the mail. After that I melted all the cassettes my teacher had forced me to listen to (a bunch of lame poetry), put the dripping mess in bags and nailed them to his office door. At least I tried to save myself."
Growing up, were there any signs you would turn into the creature you have become?
"Probably. My mother would be the one to ask. I've heard her say that I was generally well behaved and often played
quietly by myself. There was no hideous trauma that suddenly changed my life, as far as I recall. It must all be connected.
I don't know the answer to your question. Could you answer it about yourself?"
Me, I liked the static the television produced more than the Muppet Show.
"Oh, I see what you mean. I used to have an electric air organ when I was a child. During one of those "Mom, look at
me, Mom, listen to this" situations, I tried to play "Silent Night" using just the chord keys. It couldn't have been anything other than a bleak dirge played by a clumsy doof with no musical aptitude whatsoever, but she said it was wonderful, of course. Years later, she tried to buy me a drum kit for my birthday, but I cried and screamed that I didn't want one.You'd think she had just told me that she was sending me to military school without my dog. I have no idea why I was so against it, nor did anyone else in the family, but I didn't get the drums. It's possible on some intuitive level I knew that music is torture, even back then, but I didn't know for sure until about six or seven years ago.""
How do you make enough money to get those stinky Violent Onsen Geisha records?
"How do I personally, or how does anyone? I trade in a bunch of garbage at the used record shop and buy them with
the credit. But there are other things to buy, too. Records by Violent Onsen Geisha may not improve one's quality of life,
but do you really think they stink? "
As I learn English from _Happy Days_ reruns, I can only say Geisha is hip'n happening. Rock on. Or no, let's sit and
chat some longer. You work at Midheaven or just hang around there?
"Hmm? Dusty Starcastle is your man at Midheaven. He's good people."
Is _Bananafish_ just an attempt to interview the cute Yasuko from Melt Banana?
"My heart belongs to another."
According to Hugh Swarts, you like to call yourself the Sixth Feller.
"He's just trying to embarrass me, even though he knows I do that kind of work solo. The truth is that Thinking
Fellers' current drummer, Jay Paget, is the sixth Feller, having joined after the original drummer, Paul Bergmann,
wisely decided not to get in the van any more. Greg Freeman, who has recorded Thinking Fellers many times, and Gibbs
Chapman, who has recorded them and done live sound on numerous occasions, are solidly ahead of me in the Union. Then
there are David Tholfsen and Margaret Murray of U.S. Saucer, whose influence shouldn't be underestimated. Hell, you could
put Pamela DesBarres ahead of me, while you're at it. I'm not even in the top 20 auxiliary Fellers."
She called herself the Led Zepster.
"Yeah, Margaret's nuts about Jimmy Page. Let me tell you a little secret about Margaret..."
No, no, Pamela DesBarres!
"Oh. Right."
So what does it mean, you clean up the sonic debris of the Fellers or what?
"All I ever did was talk about dressing them in matching red leather outfits like the Romantics..."
What are you listening to these days? Burt Bacharach rip off bands, martini sipping lounge Muzak or seventies disco
toonz?
"Being a resident of the land of Noise and Honey, I can't avoid it, but I don't actively seek out any of the above.
The CD that comes with _Bananafish #13_ captures what I like to listen to lately. I enjoyed harsh noise for a couple years,
but I'm not satisfied by it much anymore. Recently I'm looking for music with a similar vibe but more complex. I've been
listening to a lot of music by composers hoping to find it, but the hits are few and far between. After savoring Masonna
and Evil Moisture, it's hard to get excited about anyone else's limp, lethargic editing. All that digital hardcore nonsense
is a waste of time (I'd rather hear analog hardcore) and I feel suffocated by the predominately silent recordings approach.
The Nur/Nicht/Nur label in Germany has some excellent CDs on its roster. Their artists use pretty diverse techniques and
instruments -- solo trombone, electronics, Styrofoam -- but they have in common a strange, abstract joy in soundmaking that
is hard to find elsewhere. Anything by Pink Floyd prior to _The Wall_ provides me with a singular comfort. After all, that's
what classics are for. "
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/seymour-glass/seymour-glass/407/
Meer Seymour Glass op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/seymour-glass
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