Thu. Nov. 20, 8pm
SPOONBILL & SUGARTOWN
218 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
718-387-7322
www.spoonbillbooks.com

Sat. Nov. 22, 7pm
JUANITA & JUAN'S
125 N 11th St Philadelphia PA
www.myspace.com/juanitaandjuans

Tony Rettman: Other than writing the descriptions in the Systematic catalogs and maybe some copy for SST, did you ever do any rock writing/journalism?

Joe Carducci: Not really. A San Francisco mag called ‘Damage’ asked me to write, so I reviewed my favorite film, Sword of Doom, and the play ‘The Elephant Man’ (starring David Bowie!) for them. I had written a couple pieces for The Match!, a Tucson anarchist paper in the mid-70s. I’ll put these in my collection, ‘Life against Dementia’, in the next year or so.

TR: What is this ‘Life against Dementia’ going to consist of?

JC: ‘Life against Dementia’ was going to be the follow-up to ‘Rock &The Pop Narcotic’, but when I heard about Naomi's death, I got sidetracked. It is named for the essay I wrote in ‘02. Luckily, Jay Babcock was just launching Arthur so it was published in issue one. I've expanded it quite abit and still have to update it for the collection.

Also in the collection are the Damage pieces, the Match pieces, some stuff I wrote for Details magazine after ‘Rock…’and various things I wrote for a website that didn't happen. One of the Details pieces is the précis for the book I'm now working on called, ‘Stone Male - Requiem for a Style’. It's a book about film acting - mainly the actors in action films that are considered bad actors in comparison to award-winning stage-trained scenery-chewers. My second piece for Arthur was an obit of Charles Bronson which I adapted from work done on ‘Stone Male’.

So next year I'll publish ‘Life..’, and another script collection, and in 2010 I hope to have the film book out.

I just finished a science fiction script called ‘Epsilon Indi’ for James Fotopoulos. He'll make it for our company Thermidor. He finished a Raymond Pettibon scripted short called ‘Untitled (Relax, Get In)’ last winter and that will premiere in NYC at some point, probably in a museum or gallery. We hope to produce my script The Winter Hand, which is in the ‘Wyoming Stories’ title.

TR: The ‘Stone Male’ book sounds pretty interesting. Could you go a little further in explaining it?

JC: It’s about how Hollywood and particularly westerns brought in an un-school of acting based in horsemanship, looking good with a gun and other physical skills. Often the guys came into Hollywood as wranglers and stunt men. The audience appetite for these un-stars varied over the years. I'm calling Ben Johnson, Richard Farnsworth, Jim Brown the purest examples. The book also goes back to silent stars like Harry Carey and William S. Hart and on to the post war actors that had some of that in them: Eastwood, Bronson etc. The book will also cover certain directors and writers who seemed to click to the special abilities of these guys.

TR: I remember hearing stories once how Richard Farnsworth would often work ‘double’ on sets. Like, he would have a role on ‘Bonanza’ or something and also being doing stunts as well on the show. Is there any truth to that? How did stuff like that even come about?

JC: It’s pretty untraceable how the wranglers and stuntmen moved to extra work, then doing one line, and getting the eye of someone. The Ford Company got to know each other and the stunt/wranglers were usually where the fun was so they did get known by the directors that worked those kinds of films. Later, the second units became more isolated and maybe the director and actors didn't even see them. Farnsworth doubled Montgomery Clift in ‘Red River’, and generally for Roy Rogers, Henry Fonda, Kirk Douglas, Steve McQueen and others. Mostly this would be in mid or long shot action, so it doesn't really fall under what I'm looking at, though there is some pretty detailed literature about the stuntmen before they began to get into the credits. Ben Johnson got to act big parts fairly young; whereas Farnsworth not really till old age.

TR: In ‘Enter Naomi’, was it difficult to write about your days at SST? In the back of your head, did you ever think you'd have to write about those things again? Would you have had this book 'in you' if it wasn't for Naomi's passing?

JC: I don’t think I would have written about SST because it‘s really Greg Ginn‘s thing from the early 70s when it was his ham radio equipment company, SST Electronics. But once I started turning it all around in my head again it struck me how rare the dedication of the younger crew at SST was and what a testament to Black Flag it was. And that it would be an interesting way to revisit the era. And telling the story that way would better allow young people who read it, to understand what might be possible today. I also thought I could make a contribution to the literature of Los Angeles, which I think is itself pretty good for a kid from the cornfields of Illinois.

TR: Do you think something like SST could operate today?

JC: You have to assume anything is possible. Watt used to say regarding finding greatness in unlikely places or formats, ‘It's down to the dudes’. But then you can easily think up alot of reasons why nothing could ever happen again like that. Musically we'll never come off the same twenty year, or even 80 year period we were in 1975. It was a world-historical meeting of a post-African black American music that had incubated for three hundred years before the civil war, and unlike in the Caribbean and South America, in North America the slave drivers took away the slave's drums. That probably accounts for the starker more rhythmic use of string instruments here than elsewhere. Then they ran into Spanish and Scots-Irish and English forms, the hymnals and the bawdy ballads, story songs etc. And finally the broadcast and phono media began to move the music out of its folk circumstance and into other places where it could be taken as pure music. Just that was a process that took the twentieth century. None of that and nothing like that will ever be a launching base for a new music again. Now the bottlenecks of those media are gone under the hammer blows of the internet revolution. Its not that major label help is necessary; we had none of that. But it does help if great musicians can be launched at a large audience that takes what they do as important. The web works against that. Even so, where do you find the dudes we had crawling out of the woodwork? Even given all of them I think if you subtract Greg Ginn from it the only thing that happens is those early bands on SST just go new wave like everybody else.

TR: You think The Minutemen or Overkill would have gone New Wave?

JC: The Minutemen less than some others but that's mostly because when Watt was younger, he was really too eccentric to interface with a major label. They wanted to with their second album, ‘What Makes a Man Start Fires?’ which was supposed to get them signed. Later D. Boon just wanted to mellow out in a Meat Puppets direction and Mike couldn't move him. But Firehouse was totally new wave, with just a little Minutemen fury in the first album probably out of fear. Spot was important in this regard with Black Flag backing him up; it meant bands took it on faith that an unvarnished presentation is what was the smart thing to do. I think Greg, Chuck and I didn't think of metal in the style of Overkill or Vitus as a sell-out. I imagine Greg and Chuck felt they could sell Damaged and a follow-up that would've been parts of My War and Slip It In via MCA distribution to metal kids in the suburbs and rural areas. That never got tested. Saccharine Trust had a beat/jazz kind of lodestar to follow so that kept them honest too. But Husker Du, Firehose, Meat Puppets in particular wasted everybody's time at the end of the eighties.

TR: The one thing I thought was funny in that 'American Hardcore' book was the story you told about how the Necros wanted to come down to SST to check out a Flag practice and Greg decided to stall them out because he thought they'd snake some of Flags' new style/material. I talked to Barry Henssler once about that and he said something to the affect of 'That's like John Coltrane not letting a sixth grade marching band watch him play. It was almost a backhanded compliment'. It's obvious that the whole Hardcore thing lies on the shoulders of Black Flag, but were they really that conscious of how much they were being emulated or was Greg already that much of a paranoid dude?

JC: That's a smart take on it by Barry. But still Greg knew that just the slow down would be emulated as it was in a more simple metal way. Also, we had no idea how long it would take to be able to record and release those tunes. What was bad was BF live revenue was all we had really, the SST releases were minor cash flow in 82-3, and yet BF had to stop touring on Damaged after three go-rounds, and couldn't play the new tunes either. That really focused Mugger and myself on getting the SST catalog in print and making it work.

TR: That brings up something I was always curious about. Why did it take so long for that Stains LP to be released? I take it that the material had to be recorded in 1981 but I don't remember actually seeing a copy until maybe the end of '83 or so. Was the cash flow problem the reason? Why do you think Greg didn't keep it in print? If it came out earlier, it would certainly have been a more well known release. To me, it's got to be in the top 5 (or so) things SST released.

JC: Yeah it was cash flow, plus the question of whether they were still together at the time. It wasn't that clear because Dez was in touch with them the most and he didn't do business. Eventually Dez had Caesar and Louie in DC3, both were in the Stains though I don't think Louie drums on the album. I did hear a live tape of the band with an earlier singer who was replaced just before the recording session, and that tape sounded warmer, not as fast either if I recall. Spot said the Stains album was the last session at Media Art and the whole thing was done in one ten hour session. Caesar was always ready to play with Robert in whatever he would do but it wasn't constant. They played as Nightmare in 84-5 maybe, with a bit more metal in it. Not recorded though. It was all priorities by how busy a band was, or how in touch with us they were. It wasn't fair but we had severe limitations until the end of 84. Later I can't say, except I image the three format release and digitizing back catalog must've been a logistical nightmare.

TR: Through out the ‘Enter Naomi’ book, it seems there's very little light shown on why and how Naomi passed. You mention drinking, kidney operations, and perhaps even physical abuse by her husband. But there never seems to be any cold hard facts as to WHAT drove her down that path of destruction. Of course the book starts with the suicide attempt in her teens, but that seems to be the only sign on trouble. What was the reason for such a veiled view? Respect? Lack of facts?

JC: I’m not a reporter, and so didn’t pump people for answers if they didn’t offer them. If I didn’t know the people I talked to, I could’ve been a stone asshole and got more facts I suppose. I would have tried to meet with her father. I was lucky enough to meet her mother a couple times at her brother Chris' house. I would have loved to know what Naomi said to Chuck that night after her suicide attempt, but when I visited Chuck, to his credit the whole subject was still upsetting to him, so when all he offered was, “Naomi was a nice girl,” I accepted that. Chuck Dukowski was the most compelling figure in that period for people in the know, and certainly being consoled by him took the edge off her despair. Black Flag didn’t peddle fantasy, the album was called Damaged and their version of the blues spoke directly to smarter, more sensitive young people then. Once Naomi decided she wouldn’t have kids, and didn’t want to get old, the rest of it is just medical bookkeeping. This aspect of the story I wrote with young women in mind, hoping there was just enough detail and nothing to distract. Most of these issues are unspoken, because in the air they become political and inhuman. In some way I keyed off of the other SST women I contacted.

TR: How is the book of Naomi's photos coming along?

JC: Chris Petersen has organized the prints Naomi left behind, and has access to my stash and Dischord’s. He still needs SST’s. But the real work is digitizing the negatives and that hasn’t begun.

TR: Here’s a quick story you might find amusing. It had to be '86 or so. My brother was the guy who used to DJ all the Sunday Hardcore shows at City Gardens, the local Punk club in my town. Somewhere down the line the message was sent that Flag didn't want any Hardcore played in-between bands at their upcoming show there. My brother was more than fine with that as he just sorta played that stuff because it was his job (well, part time job) That Sunday, my 13 year old self walked proudly into the club next to my brother as Davo and crew immediately swarmed up to him to check out the stacks he brought. Blue Cheer, Swans, maybe Hawkwind, definitely some early Damned because I remember Henry being stoked he played the Damned version of 'Lookin' at You'. I distinctly recall Davo giving a smile and a nod after flipping through the milk crate. I thought that was really cool.

Once the show opened and the punkers trickled in, they were coming up to the DJ booth requesting GBH and the like to which my brother happily replied 'Sorry, no Hardcore today'. Kids were PISSED. All of a sudden, Davo starts going through the record shelves behind the booth that were saved for the regular 'club' nights of the place. He finds a copy of 'Get the Knack' and tells my brother to play 'My Sharona'. Even my brother wasn't gonna do that. Eventually they talked him into it and as soon as it came on, Davo pumped the bass on the soundboard to the max. The walls were literally shaking. Strangely, one of the fondest memories of my early teens is looking at Davo, Henry and some other SST types staring out of the DJ booth and laughing as a whole buncha limey looking punkers audibly bummed as they were forced to hear The Knack at an eardrum shattering volume. That visual pretty much summed up the SST vibe to me.

JC: Great! Classic! You know, we had total confidence they were cutting that kind of figure. It's a point I've made before that it was Mugger, Spot, Davo, etc. that might be taken for the rock stars when the Black Flag van rolled up in these towns. The longest tour I went on was Black Flag/Meat Puppets/Nig Heist up the coast to Vancouver and back. This was ‘84 and in Seattle before Black Flag came out to play they came out on cue as Mugger doing sound played some Dio era Sabbath or maybe it was Dio's own band. ‘Holy Diver’, maybe. All they did was line up and make metal gestures to the song -- Greg, Henry, Chuck, Bill, Davo. It wasn't a hardcore audience so they were into it compared to what you're describing. But I always enjoyed how Bruce Pavitt got stuck with a label famous for bands that dug the SST stuff he hated the most. Sub Pop was mostly a column in the Rocket in those years.

When I was new to SST and we were still behind Unicorn in West Hollywood they came back from the first 'Damaged' tour dates on the east coast and England to do a big return to LA, the first Black Flag local Damaged gig; KROQ was playing alot of the album day and night. They were headlining the Olympic Auditorium over the Blasters, Fear, Suburban Lawns, and Saccharine Trust. It was a big place and new to being used as a music venue. Spot was still with them on tour then and so from the soundboard he played "Back in Black" over the PA in this large arena. It was a new song and sounded real good. They just walked out and played though, no gestures.

TR: Where do we stand currently as far as culture goes and where do we stand to evolve from your perspective?

JC: There used to be gatekeepers for music and they operated on the local level -- clubs, record shops, instrument shops and the radio stations they advertised on. Gigs got promoted, local singles got airplay, sometimes went national. The gatekeeping went national and professional and the music people were replaced by media people. Radio took control of its own programming and the opening to locale ended. Now there are no gatekeepers, or the last of them are struggling to maintain a handhold in a different landscape. Now we need aggregators to sift out the 99.99% of hobby music down to just the inspired amateurs. I wouldn't know whether this is currently being done well. Most hobbyists don't really understand how totally consuming music is of the lives of their inspirations. It's pretty obvious because alot of them died young, or burned through their inspiration quite young. As mentioned earlier, we are now beyond a world-historical process that introduced African energy into certain Anglo-Celtic forms in America. In this sense, as my friend David Lightbourne talks about, Rock and Roll was born decades, maybe centuries before the 1950s. But now that process is complete and anyone wanting to play rock and roll is a classicist of one sort or other. I've been working on putting together three hours of L.A. punk rock for John Allen at WFMU, and I just read Alan Licht's interview with Rhys Chatham. It's striking how strong the pop sensibility was in early L.A. punk rock, and Chatham makes you think that No Wave's sensibility was looted from the contemporary classical scene in NYC. I'm not sure there are undiscovered world musics to profitably borrow from today. If I was a musician today I'd listen widely in the American traditions but try to specialize in what I played so that my own guitar voice was personal from the what I played to the tone of it, plus I'd avoid digital as much as possible unless able to write my own code. Then it’s a matter of finding a physical rhythm section. Players who respond to their own playing are like a living feedback loop. The ambition of so many musicians to disappear into professionalism of some faceless tradition, even the blues one, is entirely misconceived.

In the near term: Anxiety is always productive for artists. An Obama victory with no Republicans in control in congress will possibly induce another punk/seventies post-Nixon landscape of productive anxiety. I've just written a piece on this which if I can't find a place for it will be tossed into the Life Against Dementia collection. We don't need musicians with policy recommendations. We need musicians working on an existential plane. A McCain victory would mean more politics in music. Personally, I don't vote; may the best man lose. That was probably Ron Paul; mission accomplished.