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CRANK STURGEON --- Interview May 2004 1. The mystic smoke of herbal overdose made meguessing. A tasty squibble with the cheerleader of fishnoise would leave some behind with a pungent stench in their mouths. Open up a bottle of wine. How long has it been since you've last spoken to the masses? Hold your horses. The utterances are relatively frequent. I haven't bestowed gas winds or umbrage to the people in the written verse since winter, though my orations and candied-grass notions (of primitive hut living) go aired every other week on the FM bandwidth. They're nice enough at the local community station to allow one with howitzer breath and mud scrapings to come on in and play. It's a relish I tell you. Also, I bared my ass to people a few nights back in the sunny western town of Worcester (named after the sauce without the Shire), but that's typical. Had nothing to do with getting hippie or road kill yetis, and it was also interrupted by an argument with my girlfriend, who decided to join in with her hairy chest and Mexican wrestler's mask. The result was less than a squibble, but definitely in the cheerleader anthem. A few painful teenagers were there to report us to their parents (everything's a witch hunt these days in 'merica), so I know there was at least that essential "cause and effect" reciprocating I-mess-with-your-quotidian-you-run-and-narc shimmy going down. The ass I hope will again bear it's grizzly shavings soon. You see, I love Europeans, they're so polite towards this sort of thing. In Chicago they arrest you. In Boston, they cry in their stout beards, singing Irish hymns because they're so all about that there. But where are you getting this "pungent" in my bio? I'm a sailor, on a well-hung caravel. None of us have the gum rot, but your implications astound me. I'm writing the president on your behalf. As we all know about rotten smells here, he'll have the final word. It'll probably be either "liberty" or "no comment". 2. I've heard a rumour somehow you used to give your dish of sprouts to the dog. Did you grow into the ferocious noise-monger you are by eating a steady diet of potatoes? Again, it's not an Irish hymn, nor a Polish diet. I feasted on "meat cheese and mustard" sandwiches. You have to say that so fast so it sounds like one word. Uttered by a feisty minded eight year old. Very demanding I was. Though potatoes surely made their delivery in there at some point. I was always jealous of the kids at school who had allowances to buy lunch from the cafeteria. Among the many innumerable starch products, as any American can tell you, were these glorious cannister shaped bunions called, "tater tots". Man they smelled good. My mama was all into high fiber and wheat germ and homemade beet breads: very embarrassing to have to be bringing red bread sandwiches to school ... so, yearning for normalcy, I'd hide these devil-foods and empty what meager sheckles I'd had lying about from the summer job savings and sneak a guilty catholic couple quarter's worth towards those spuds. I don't think it helped grow me anywhere in the monger department. That's another story, best saved for an afterschool special on satan worship and goth kids plotting to usurp the system with their velvety black clothes. Betcha they eat sprouts. Fuckers. I'll ask my friend, Maxwell. Do you know him? 3. Gosh it's as amazing as an orange poodle eating cornflakes, how your vulgar audio creations have stayed one step ahead of the game. Compared to other dinosaurs of radical noise/industrial you've never thrown shock effect sushi around the room. I'm sure to a large degree topics as decapitated heads or mutilated genitalia will always be provocative. But are they still anno 2004 relevant to the cause, or have they become as worthless as another Henry Rollins spoken word tour? Thanks for the poodle picture and the kindness, but that's not entirely true. There were a few images, copped from old woodcuts and the like, the gallows-trees or Breughel/Bosch stuff... but used in a protest or surrealistic wink, instead of guts spilling out or genital slicers. Shock effect I've used too, but again, for a self-contained laughter... not to horrify necessarily, but to wake up or disgust people. I'm not a horror film kinda guy. Noise doesn't stem from that one step "after metal" for me, but rather as a perfectly natural crashing sound or a sarcastic morning laxative. All said, I've never really truly been drawn to a negative imagery or that industrial-style iconography. For me there's something of an over-the-top/ boldy-going-nowhere optimism about this... doing this, making these masks and sounds. Something about the sound of crashing dishes over and over again until it becomes microscopic and insectlike. It's much more interesting to me to find an image like that in the shape of the scrubbing sounds than someone being tortured. I guess I always got into science and biology as kid, when all my friends were into Iron Maiden or Freddy Krueger. Is the torture stuff relevant? Hmmm. Maybe, maybe not. While
I'm so far away from creating those images,
we're reminded of them in the present exposé of the Iraqi
prisoners. Put it this way: while I get incensed
enough to want to dash out nasty letters and graffiti-slather
the doors of police cars, there's a better way
to dish out this sort of angst. To deal with the anger in a more
thoughtful (and thusly creative) process is
much more provocative than calling an album, "Fuck Capitalism".
Relevant to the cause? I don't know, nor do I
give a damn after a while. Replicating violence doesn't cut it
though. It's bad energy, bad dice, and only
digs up folks with an even-worse mannerism and pretty soon, the
daisies won't grow. The old mantra, violence
begetting itself.
He was probably my friend Skot. Far from the nebulous school of portent waving, he'd probably had been displaced by the space time continuum and found himself back where he'd left off, his best bet (and in keeping his game face, the only way to rationalize with his bewilderment of re-experiencing the next fifty years of his all over again), was to coin a few sluggers at you; proverbs and the like, be it "a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" or "an unwanted car won't resist your longings to steer into a foamy something something surface annointed with glissando choral treatments something something something something something something something something something something something something something something something something something something something no matter how finely thine hair sweeps across thy face"... you were in fact, the butt of his last joke. Apologies always follow the act of intercourse with any family member (except the cat, maybe), and it's well documented that if not treated, these incursions in time travel will only continue to frequent you with future visits. I'm sorry. Again, no comment. 5. Give us a healthy look in your current fav rubbish noisecore and other no-nonsense aural torture techniques. This is the right time to talk about your nephew's hair-metal band! My nephews learned guitar back in the fifties. I'll never forgive them for ditching me, their COOL uncle, for that hussie of a burger, Liz Phair. Fair my ass! My techniques are always nonsense. "I've wasted my life", I'd say to the future old man Skot who'd come back to me as a youngster, blond beard flowing gingerly, softened by his soy-like demure voice. Then we'd record the best Folkways record yet, timetravel back to the fifties and replace all of Stockhausen's record sleaves with it, but he'd get all the credit, the nineties would come along, ruin everything with the advent of CDr's and Cock ESP's thirty second shows (or rather, make them better in some cases), and I'd come back and tell the younger version of myself to go to law school and save the world. Techniques would fill a book though, you sure you want this to go on record? Not that it's been biblical or anything, what I do. Hardly different than any other obsessive compulsive. My latest rig is the neckless (and thusly fretless) guitar pickup mounted on a piece of wood... I think everyone who has experimented long enough in guitars has decided to try this out, that is to build-yer-own. It originally started a couple years ago, as two of these boards, each with their own pickup, joined in the middle by a door hinge. The idea was "the best tremelo in the world", but the thing was so horribly buzzy, it lasted maybe three shows before I bagged it entirely. But being one to never throw anything away, it came back to a renewed life a few months ago. In the meantime, I'd kinda devoted my sound to just piezo contact mics and electro-doot electronics consisting of really basic split outputs serving as inputs to create feedback loops. Also in this time, well, actually for some time, I'd been interested in interrupting signals and currents (while trying to avoid getting electrocuted), and so one step after another, it dawned on me to interrupt the flow of the feedback loop with, well, me, my body. By touching wire to wire, a signal is met. By touching wire to hand to wire, the signal ALMOST connects... revealing a most delightful broken chirp! Bringing in that hinge guitar... I de-hinged it, slashed the 1/4" jack running from the pickup, and did some fancy footwork. The original hinge-guitar's bridge was an old brass L-shaped bracket, mounted into the wood. Reconnecting the 1/4" jack so that the pickup was actually attached to the bridge (so as to emit even more buzz when you touched the bridge), coupled with a wire coming from say, an eq pedal (splitting the output so that one jack goes to the amp, and the other is free), this free wire, making contact with either your hand or the bridge suddenly emitted all these great great sounds... bleeps and bloops and fuzz static AM radio null squelches... tossing in a few bits of metal, to interact with the free wire, hand, bridge, pickup, the result was DREAMY. I topped it off by taking an old trashed piezo and affixing it to the stripped pickup wires, hovering over the bridge, so when you touch the piezo to the bridge, it sounds. Basically it's a two or three-in-one instrument. The guitar pickup, which I like for extraneous bits of metal, the piezo (for added texture), and the electro-doot feedback looping, so as to sound like the world's first mono-synthesizer. Now I know this is all very exciting to me, and I'm long-winded and your readers will nevertheless be tuning this out, and true... it's basically re-inventing the wheel. And why bother? When you can go out and buy and sequencer that will suirely kick this thing's ass... but, I made it to solve portability issues really. I have gobs of gear but cannot haul them all on my back, which is the usual thing for me... I like the idea that your life can exist from one suitcase. Plus I'm mostly solo. Simplify, right? I don't want to deal with foreign power converters or extra mixers or perish the thought, the LAPTOP. It's SO-GOTTA be magnetic, sorry laptop aficionados, no offense to what you do. I love love love the idea of being able to touch and make sonic connections... so it's an advancement to a very primitive fish, I guess. Touch, blaaaat, thump, bloot. All this talk of gear and I haven't even gotten into costumes. I'd best spare you the fish stick talk, yes? 6. The rehabilitation programme for trash metal's original crossover heroes has been in full swing for some time now, any gas leaking about the infectious groove return of Bay Area's headbangers Exodus and Death Angel? Are you still caught in the mosh? You know I only recently heard this stuff was making a come back. Again, my friend Maxwell told me, and you still don't seem to know him. Anyway. Exodus huh? Isn't Jason Newstead now with Voivod? Wowzers. All those groups I had to thumb through in the LP piles to get to cool stuff. No, I was never caught in a mosh. I pogo'd, dammit. Metal was for morons back then. Exceptions were of course, thrash and speed metal. But I hated all the HC bands growing their hair and becoming metalheads back in the crossover days. And then metal dudes suddenly becoming skaters and wearing Misfits shirts and taking away our perfectly good narcissistic utopia. Metal was too close to the girly shit redneck shit like Dokken. Now all the metal dudes are bald, plus everyone plays with their E strings tuned below their belly buttoned beer gut, so I dunno who the frig is metal or what. It keeps me up at night. 7. What's up with Uncle Cranky Poo's soulful disappearing act into the folkish troubadour abyss? Is it a stopgap hors d'oeuvre of forest rituals specifically summoned for release on the mysterious Audiobot label? Undoubtly that was recorded without smelly socks. My my, the brine of such succulent, endearing images this question reveals! Why of course I'm a forest pixie, at heart. Barefoot, pregnant, or being the bearded lady at the local Shop n' Save. Noise can be this as much as the next guy. I don't like Kid Rock, I don't care for Nine Inch Nails. I'm not a culture follower. I do as I please, when things fancy me. Couple this with the sheer desperation of out times and the thumbs up yer potatoey ass of being an American who doesn't seem to click in with anything that is typified as 'merican, I guess sockless dentures go crawling and my sorry axe-work gets the rusty nails and oh-so-moan symptomatique. It was for you babe, me to you, all about the ewe. I fuck 'em, deliver the neck noodle with a transducer gelatin (preferably the vegan variety, with petroleum-based footwear) and a dance of highway-pullover-liquorstore additive. There we go. The trouncing troubadour has always been a fantasy, but I always reckoned I'd get beat up. I'm not talking the minstrel annoying the piss out of you while you and your mates discuss over brewski's the delights of humping legs or last night's football game. I'm talking highway cornfed braindead inbred roadstop. Standing there, annoying Iowa, with a big triangular shaped cabeza, chucking up all over a Martin or some obnoxious acoustic, standing there, waving like the prom queen or this year's Wheat and Barley County Fair Princess... drag has always been a part of this I'll have you know. A slippery penchant for eelsuits. But anyway, par for the course; the most depressing job in America is working at a fastfood joint, and then having to go out in public in your fastfood costume and get people to entertain the notion of eating at this place that simultaneously employs and humiliates you. Taking this a step further, and there's the one-man-crank-folk-sturgeon. The imaginary driver sees this and wonders to himself, "what's he doing? waving at us in fronta' that restaurant... awwww nuts, he's puking up stuff, green foamy, oh god, oh god change the channel, wait, this isn't tv, speed up honey, shiiiit, hurry, just drive, don't look at him in the eyes..." Ah you know. It's a fantasy afterall. Sonic folk puke dumb. I like the giddy glee in annoying, but not hurting people. I can't explain it. Maybe it's because revoltion is so bland when sung by angry dung beetles and their acoustic guitars... I remember thinking when I was fourteen or so, how cool it was to be hanging out with my older brothers and their friends, they were all arty and out there (they used to be, I should say), and well... then they put on some doinking Woodstock ape LP's, and I was severely disappointed. Expecting I guess, something I hadn't heard, not this worn weary hippie stuff none of us had any part in and our dads were into (if they were all doobie-puffers back in the day). I think the next year I had uncovered ol' Blixa and company by some chance operation, as Cage woulda' nicked, and so guided by hushed German voices and clangor, never looked back. 8. An ill wind blows. What did initially wet your interest in broken music, circuit bending and bubblegum goofball noise hysteria? What had you been up to before that era? I feel as though it was pretty natural in the inclination department. But I can say this as a grown-up, thankful and grateful to be past his spring chicken phase. There was a point of delish and savage delight in discovering these hilarious tape-pause button techniques could be in of themselves, worthy of a college degree and also be something that someone other than my own idiot-gibbering self would do and appreciate. Prior to that epiphane, I'd been solitarily detesting the options of musical pursuits. Music, in the popular radio 1980's format, was understood early on to be a drab cover for something far more homely. I liked punk then, as it wasn't so much about having a haircut that escaped The Breakfast Club. But eventually all of music depressed me. I liked the raw power of it, but couldn't fathom how to write songs that would propel me elsewhere. Plus there was this erroneous habit of recording things funny that I just did out of habit. Again the only thing I drew connections to was Neubauten's "Patient OT" record. I figured, "ART" was probably "more" tolerant, so I went to the establishment of fingerpainters and drafting table pariahs for help. I didn't find it immediately, but did eventually. Underneath the muddened lenses of stool softeners and designer dorks and tender dancer girls, there was an entire world understanding the need to break away from sedate carpet of blandular culture emphatics; a world dedicating itself to breaking knobs off of gas stoves to use them in collages, to record quick edits of their roommate's hiccup problems (and make copies to share with other home-tapers in Estonia or wherever else that may have an interesting home-taper and gastrointestinal recording underground... not to mention, snappy-looking national postage stamps), and best of all, could allow for a guy who liked to dress up like a fish and jump around in front of people defaming the pursuit of smug retentive museum-longings. 9. How did being at the full controls of your artistic output, shape your idea about actually being part of a band with other individuals? Are you comfortable alone behind the knobs in true King Tubby tradition? It's the other way around. Bands always help in some sense in that they endear the juices with other human nuances and ideas. Yet my inertia comes from my own stubborness and need to pound paper or recordable media with scratchings. That's my truest form of centering and meditating and gaining perspective... all seeds for further inspiration. Like a garden, Jimmy. I can't handle the band-band thing, as it's so TAKEN for granted and in my experience, suffers from life more. Like the dude in the band who has a girlfriend problem, it just erases any creativity on his part, thusly erasing that night's session or improv or live show. I really really really dig working with other people, but because of everyone's got their thing, it's never as secure as I'd like it to be. I'm a perfectionist in an odd way. So rather than harsh on people's emotions by being a tyrant, I work alone with the knobs m'self. That way it's just me to blame for a shitty job, and I'm most comfortable there. I guess I miss some band things... being able to share all of the highs and lows, the genuine humanity of expressing sound as one unit, FEELING the sound come out as a solid singular entity, larger than the sum of its parts. That effect of the simultaneous "moment" is quite incredible. But... I've tried time and again to get people involved with soundmaking, and it's tough, man. That highest plane of achievement just isn't in everyone's vocabulary or desire. 10. I've been spinning these ethnic radio sound-collages issued by Sublime Frequencies on replay for the past weeks. The label, spearheaded by the wonderful Sun City Girls presents raw and above all pure traditional sounds from way out there. The differences in notion, time, rhythm and percussion, compared to Western folk traditions are immense. You almost feel an abductee in another heavenly world. Have you been influences by the bringers of the Eastern gift? You know I'm such a sucker. I've never heard the Sublime Frequencies / Sun City Girls' collaged/eastern radio pieces. Heard OF them sure, but never in my own paws. As for the gift of the east, I'll gladly ignore my own murdering culture and cast a line into the affirmative direction. I devour eastern music these days. It all got triggered by a trip to Turkey (back along in the planarian phase) which threw me for a loop. At that point I'd started to realize things were much much bigger than my own punk-ass; I was backpacking, dirty, had given myself up to the void (you might say), and then there it was: the land of hotbaths, bactrian camels, public address systems crackling with the call to prayer, pomegranates, bazoukis, late night raki-soaked belly-dance watching... oye. The east meeting the west in a thousand dialects, Balkan conundrums, strange strange skies and mountains of astonishment at the sudden intake valve of feeling the Oriental tug. Fastforward a bit, and it's obvious that all this culture is being siphoned out, by gunpoint or by oil tanker, to feed the need of an obese American in their SUV, oblivious to everything coz he's late to pick up the kids from soccer. And that's the grand betrayal being accepted under such ridiculous political Orwellianism. Here in the states, there's little acknowledgment in the mainstream, that when a culture goes, everything goes. Mesopotamia and ancient Sumeria? To me, much more interesting than an episode of "Friends". But I needn't have to remind you of this. As to IT, the music and the traditions surrounding it... of course I'm influenced by it. Does it fit into what I do? Sure. The eastern gift acknowledges something more to existence than what the western convenience store has on the shelf. 11. How does your haunting picky electronics clutter fit in with your mechanical half-human half-android drawings? Did you ever published them in a snotty outsider art magazine or are they strictly visually accompanying the guttural noise? I don't get too many offers to publish pictures, so I keep 'em underneath the covers. Even worse, is I don't give myself enough time to work at 'em, or maybe that's just these days... where I spend more time on the computer than anywhere else. As to how they fit? The visual is a crucial component, no if's, and's, or but's. The sound is a visual creature to me, a plague of rubberband footed amphibeans, crinkle locusts, doplar fish, you name it. So I draw them, or slather pieces of wood and paper together here at home, to make crusty wall pieces that embody the noises as I see 'em. It's the artschool thing too, pre-musical tendency was a deliverymode in the wee toe-headed boy who was first and foremost, visually inclined. Before I was doing anything, I was drawing pictures. So at the moment, they accompany the sounds or occupy my walls. I don't get them out much. But they need each other... visual lines and smears of paint and creatures burbling up from the bog are the water-bearing inspirations for this here clatter. The reason for the electronic-doot is to provide the soundtrack for the imagination. It's that something we all possess, this idea of what our voice sounds like. Some of us choose to voice it in humanspeak, others silence their maws, and a few of us decipher it with augmentation. Them's the sturgeon in the crank, the rusty clunk in that there old codger fish, get it? It's much more fun to me to try and be a human being that way. 12. With all the hidden messages and talking between performing, one could conclude you are the Derek Bailey of junknoise. Um, no. I wouldn't draw that distinction, partly because I have little concept of Derek's chats, meaning, uhhh... what do you mean by that? Noise is an enema. People have gotten too used to staring at the floor during a show, and for me that doesn't cut it. So being a gibbering idiot is one way of attempting to bust down that gap between viewer and performer. What I do is what I want to see happen as a show... something that combines public addressing (so that I can poo-poo all the bad art lectures I've had to sit through), inept old man tripping over his gear, a magic show, having a breakdown, trying to conduct some sort of visual and/or science experiment, on and on and on. There's the attention to doing a noise event while simultaneously producing an action, in between all the lines (so to speak) is the fallout: the happy accidents that occur, the fuck-up's and rancor of it being "live", and in keeping with this frequency, there's a residual chatty weirdo that accompanies this heightened state of consciousness. I know it sounds like total bullshit, and I really don't know what the hell I'm saying. I blabber on between noises mostly because I'm nervous, and also it's part of the stream of conscious dialect that sorta' intertwines with the stew. It's part comma, part story or thesis, part instructional guide, part garbage. Talking is also a means of getting people to shut up and pay attention. And with that I stop being serious. 13. How did you hook up with Ron Lessard's highly influential RRRecords? Did his twenty plus years of dedicated involvement with the international noise/industrial scene made an impact on you? I saw Ron years and years ago at an artschool experimental sound festival, maybe 1990? 91?. Through all the flotsam of typically boring and painful student and local avant-schmaltz, the one little flashing red light to the brain was Emil Beaulieau. He blew me away! He was up there making this most god-awful distortion with what looked like a mad scientist's dream: his infamous four-armed stylus "Minatoli" turntable... plus a cassette player with a wobbley spring contact-mic configuration... and a smug very self-assured grin. Add a bad suit and a big red necktie to that... I was confounded by him. There he was, this odd duck, who would up and pluck his stuff, stand back, arms folded, look around into the audience, smile, plop a record needle down, look around self-satisfied, smile again, do it again... aaaaaaah yes, YES!!! I thought, HE is SHOWING US HOW TO DO IT. It was a total overthrow of the artschool "watch the very important artist" routine (or the acclaimed professor with his/her speech)... he was just up there trashing everything for me. Making it that much more real... busting it all down. Total rock and roll. As I started making my own cassettes around that time, which eventually turned me on to the whole underground cassette frequency, RRRecords would always come up. Friends would say, "oh ya gotta go to RRR" (I lived in Boston at the time, making RRRecords about thirty minutes away) or "ya gotta send Ron yer tape" and so forth. So, seeking anonymity vs personal interaction, I sent him one of the first Crank Sturgeon cassettes, and well? the rest isn't history, heh heh. He sent me some of his tapes back, that was it. My moment of self-effacement and firsthand contact with Uncle Emil came to the the proverbial litmus test at some basement art gallery noise show in Boston, 1995. A friend invited me to play last minute. It was a high profile show featuring Con-Dom, Sounds for Consciousness Rape, Thomas Dimuzio, Emil, and us new kids, (me and Skincrime). So I brought my rig (which was a table top telecaster, contact mics, and electronics) and as my turn came up and I was busy plugging in, Ron approaches my table and is making all these faces, saying shit like, "what's that, a guitar? You're gonna be playing GUITAR? What the fuck's that all about" Soon enough, Ron has Thomas and a bunch of these other guys, all looking pretty hostile, gathered around with what seems to be the sole intention of criticizing my rig, while I'm about ready to evacuate my lower intestine. To top it off, they're BOO'ing me. Specifically Ron, instigating the whole thing with name calling and I'm just thinking, "these fucking noise guys, I'm gonna just do an ambient guitar thing, some rattley e-bow stuff, really quiet and annoy them, I've had it (blah blah blah)"... but then, wouldn't you know, I did an accidental whoopsie: I potted up the wrong switch on my mixer which let out this immediate feedback squeal, followed by the realization that I was screaming through my head-mic/guitar pickup configuration and basically stirring up as much audio-violence as I could muster... smashing the instrument with metal plates, cans, magnets and gadgets, just torrents of unknown, unholy walls of the best guitar crescendo I'd ever done up to that point. And well? I'm not boasting or anything, haha, but they stopped boo'ing... for sure. Particularly that Ron. Now it's one of our favorite stories to bore people with how-Harry-met-Sally. Truly though, Ron's the greatest. 14. What's your point of view on the digital revolution and the switch from archaic tape releases to shiny CDR discs? Assuming cassettes and their typical hiss will remain a charming vital ingredient of the bedroom nerdy noise community. At first I was apalled. Digital was and probably still is suspect, but the caveman maleability issues are sink or swim. So when I finally conceded and got a CD Recorder (a standalone model, similar to a cassette deck), realizing I could organize my thoughts in convenient track marks, I was sold. In this respect alone, I'm fine with the disc change. Tapes are cool too... I still love 'em, still rely on them, they're much more forgiving and "wacky" as things go, recording and wubble and imparting a sound that no disc could ever achieve. But with CDr's, I don't have to sort through a c90 to get to the piece I want, worry about duplication/generation loss, all of that. Plus, it's the same thing in the end (this cassette vs CDr stuff), CDR's can be just as handmade and charming too. It's just another way of making it easier for everyone to be their own noise factory (start to finish). Plus, I like that CDr technology (and home recording) bugs the industry types. It doesn't matter what the medium is, so long as (and here comes the rhetoric) th' people have access to it, can do it, can make their own music or whatever. 15. What's your secret golden process in creating new Sturgeon assaults? Do you invoke your inner demons and wait for them to rise from the ashes? Or is it more a matter of excorcism theraphy that leads to great imaginative improvisation? It's just keeping busy. Sometimes I have to invoke the demons, pull them from the innards by force or with violent grabbing motions... other times it's all there; staring at me like a pile of breakfast remnants and I have to plow the the stack of dirty dishes in order to keep clean, sane, and maintain good hygene. The process isn't there without the working hands. Those hands are more devilish than the mind I would imagine. There's something to be said about allowing the autopilot trust nodule (I think we all have one, located somewhere behind the optic nerve), to give it the procrastination-free-autonomous zone every now and then and just let it go forth and scribble. That's probably the most divine source of energy... the blank state and the willingness to let your beast do the work. Once the mules are in full tripped-out oat undulation, you'll notice tiny sparks around their mouths and near the earth where the plow is gulping worms-for-tubers exchange programs (similar to students international). The hygene here, while a bit brown, is this deep unfathomable fertile, and suddenly it leaps up like some cheaply rendered animated form, suctions to this aforementioned nodule, which, through the eyes you'd think would be frightening, but in the ensuing passion play (we're all about that here, now aren't we?), the love canals spirit themselves in the wooze and glue of slapping gondolamen, a mental image of this precariously balanced and choreographed display, tying mind spirits between the cuffs, or oar-swats, all in a breathless din, your one sigh is this gusty, "must be communists!", and then, voila, it's back to Eno. 16. What's going on with all the
profanity? How long
do we have to wait for the suicide, murder and heresy Which profanity? Mine? You're shitting me, right? I've never uttered a bad word in my life. My favorite curse-tosser is Chris from Sickness. I remember the shows we'd put on at our old porn theatre in Portland, and he'd be up there on the stage, totally dissing all the electronica kids who were only there for the turntable doods. At first it was uncomfortable, a little bit of the disbelief of "whoa, harsh" but then it became gradual acceptance. He was acid tongued, wry, and in a cruel cruel way, right on target. Wake 'em up from that pink pill stupor. As for murder, I doubt he had it in his capacity to uncurl the scimitar from his anvil case of gobs. Nor do any of us. Emil kicked a kid at a show once, right in the chest. I've thrown a few plastic army guys and the occasional cow fluid, but check it out: we're not in this for the killin'. There's no assassin cult that goes in tandem with the American black-shirted noise-brigades. You're mistaking us for those Michigan militias or the small pockets of "sleeper cells", usually landlocked salmon who've had too much sodium bicarbonate and Saturday afternoons watching local wrestling... the brain goes a bit sluggish and soon everyone's yer enemy, trying to take those cherry groves away, and you're flummoxed with eyes on the prize on hacksawing any one who breathes a sigh of relief when when the words "yay" and "gay marriage" are uttered in the same paragraph. That's not me or us. We voted for eugenics for republicans a LONG time ago. Doesn't seemed to have been used much or even gone into effect since the second Roosevelt. 17. Any comments to spit on Mel Gibson's big Hollywood production of the life of Christ? Jewish rights protest-groups strongly oppose the script, are they being the martyrs again? They're probably being martyrs again, not to sterotype or anything. I didn't see the movie, though. I could give a rat's ass about it. The more attention something in this vein (entertainment) receives, the more shit it stirs up. Ignore Mel Gibson and he won't have a job. I love how religion acts as a justification to do things though: be it evangelical Christianity (ie., George Bush), Fundamentalist Islam, and speaking of fun, who could forget those Israelis? Me personally, I sympathize with the underdog, if indeed there was a Jesus, he was probably one. So making money off of Christ is a perfectly lavish Roman orgy type thing to do. Coming from Hollywood, I mean. And especially coming from ol' Mel, the son of a father who denies the Holocaust ever happened. So maybe there's some kinda quasi nazi-nazareth-nasa conspiratorial element in there too. I'm sure there's a website dedicated to it, but I'd rather go for a walk. 18. There's some rawkus coming this way in the shape of a nefarious dirge (Dixieland) team-up of you and XV Parowek. Is it a transatlantic patriot hymn about Polski noise potatoes and neatly fingered holes? Yep. I didn't have as many fingers then, when we recorded together. It was a good time though. Bartek (XVP) had one book in English that I read cover to cover that week in Warsaw. It was Kerouac's "Dharma Bums". Other than this, it was a week of walking through Warsaw and recording (these walks) while eating kielbasa, or mackeral salad from a tin, and occasional beer. When we'd get back to his flat to record-record (noise type scrimmages), Bartek kept saying, "we should try and record quietly, like mice"... so the two of us would attempt this for hours, hovering over his computer, gently clicking mics and plucking wires and clomping pedals... always though, always, it would get rumbling and a bit too SEVERE for the pitter patter of rodent feet. So as a result, about four or so hours of documented stuff got plomped to disc, our Dixieland being the proud child whose home-schooling proved much more charming to the advance of the world of navigation than the Prussian clause of hierarchical sausage-stamped cerebellums. It's good, trust me... loooong and sooooothing, then it busts like a keeled over street busker in Praha, having eaten from those parvek stands and getting the cramps. 19. The Sturgeon forehead keeps getting bigger with every bludgeon you unleash. How did Leipzig's Scrotum Records unearth your 7 year old excursions with Houston based blastbeat therapist Richard Ramirez? Do you chaps still frequently play berserk ball? Nope. Richard and I last spoke when he wanted me to masturbate on video for his noise-artists-doinking themselves release. I gave him instead, about 20 minutes of a camera shot looking up from my scrotum, with an abstracted head-piece, a speaker I think, where my head should be. I just couldn't jerk off for the camera. I can't even jerk it for my friends. Sorry. AS to how the hell Bjørn (coincidentally of Scrotum Records?) received our noise-cabal from what, 1996 or so? I dunno. He's a clever sneaky man, that guy. I think I made a good impression on him last spring when I played in his hometown. He came up to me and said he didn't like my recordings, but loved my live show as it was (I quote) "FUU-KING HAAARSH"... so since then, Bjørn and I have had a good time sending each other our duds... I even recorded a piece about baby-food for him, which is mostly spoken-word, barely harsh at all, and he dug that. I'm glad he got the Richard collaboration... that one I barely remember. I re-recorded to cassette a bunch of Ramireznojz with my own clutter through an old all-in-one stereo that played both the playback deck and record deck at the same time... cool collage. Though my master's got nothing on the remix. I just-JUST received a sneak peak of the disc from Scrotum and I barely recognize any of it; which is good, because I like what Richard did, and so it makes me think I'm a partly responsible for something good. And not just pretending. 20. There's not a hell load of press commentary on your virtual home, is that part of the under construction theorist syndrome or has granddaddy Cranka never been a press favourite? Like everyone, I'm curious to see if anyone is listening. I guess mine is at a minimum because, well? maybe you answered it. There's not much out there? Or maybe I'm not looking hard enough, or perhaps I'm not a press fave. Honestly, it's not my main concern to put on my site what other people have to say. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of putting my work out there and receiving responses... but it's so entirely personal, this idea of information, ala message-in-a-bottle, being tossed into the ether and coming back with other archaic responses... to make connections with other folks, finding them and meeting them in person, THAT is what it's all about for me. THAT RULES! But press commentary is sort of a sideline... it's good that we have access to it, that folks want to do the work to talk music or noise or art. I salute anyone with the love and desire and patience to print words and spread the wealth. There are websites dedicated to reviewing, online zines and the like. This is fantastic. And there are those folks who dedicate their websites to what others have to say about them. To each their own, but really, who cares? Not to sound like a dick or anything, I find that commentary doesn't always depict what I'd like it to (I usually know right off the bat, whether or not this person "gets it"), so I acknowledge reviews with a grain of salt and put up just the choice phrases on my site. 21. Have you ever been leveling across the land, hippie packed and noodle necked, playing country fiddle on a shady acoustic guitar and smuggling hashish in your rectum? Several times. The Ottomans tried to get me to do it, laughing, saying stuff like, "oh it's not like that movie, 'Midnight Express' here in Turkey.." but I wouldn't buy their assurances. The clouds had lifted at that point, and I've since sworn off the herb. Now it's just qat and coffee. And my balalaika, which I wear as a helmet. The hippie shit has got to go, okay? You keep hoping that I'm down, but man, the sixties are over. What unattainable level of nirvana do I have to achieve to get you to appreciate that there's more to this, than this dreamy Dylan Nyoukis-scented sense of Americana and troglodyte rock? I'm not down with Deep Purple or any of yer folk-Baez stylings. Belgians, man. Always bogarting the joint. 22. When will Crank Sturgeon be nailed to the cross and stabed with the spear of longinus? Or have you embarked on an endless crused to bring the fishnoise gospel to New Guinea? I'm not familiar with the Greek philosopher, Longinus. Though I don't like the sounds of him. I guess we all get stabbed though, it's sad to think we have to pack the bags and right ourselves in position for the cleaver. If I could end up in New Guinea before the metaphors crash along the rocks or into some public building, that'd be fine. Keep in mind, I could give a damn about gospel or truths. Let's not get heady or egotistical thinking we're onto something while the rest of the world isn't. To be famous is shameful. To be arm flexing and rich isn't very communally-oriented. If I could end up in a silver airstream trailer or a bright copper sunshine-powered yurt, both with appointments of someone to laugh at or WITH (this equation varies day to day), then that's good too. But I'm not thinking about it in the throes of panic strife or the world's comin' to an end. I have way too many questions about how to put all my stuff in a suitcase and come and visit you. That, my friend, is what guides the next day and the next day after that: how to be in the midst of one's connective tissue, with the world, with one's buds, with one's little street corner of piezo-mic eaters. Somehow, it's not hurting the world to seek newness. I can't fix dis shit, so I'm going for broke and taking you with me (this is my love note to you by the way). The "where ya gonna be?" questions are always loaded-merit-thumbtack cues for me to go, "uh huh, yeah, okay, uh huh, okay, right, uh huh..." I don't know what I'm doing necessarily, that's why I also try and travel out for visits and lap up some yucks with you guys. To realize we're all in this strange self-guided missile is comforting and good for the underlying vibration, that same tremble that also makes you like to drink fresh water and vote for nice people and play in the dirt while rooting for truffles. I guess there's some irony as well as game-poking and a few well-placed slams that go along with the life schematic; at the end of the day, I'm pleased to be doing this, that I'm able to, you know? Where or when it'll end? When I stop being curious, or when I decide that there's no more of this need to wake things up or get out of bed. 23. Any last poetic contribution? Gracias for this in-depth rollercoaster into the netherworld of the Sturgeon beast. Spit out the rotten teeth and throw me the Frisbee! I think I can safely put my pablum to rest. I thank you for the allowance of time, the diagnosis of dimensional split (I'm working on the fourth right about now, as 3D is too aloof), to pander to my ego (yes that's always good), to hankie-wipe my eyes when I'm cold, and to give a man a chance to get on his soapbox and do the old fashioned filibuster; to issue sprays and musky-scented testosterone packs that you can now get with your burger at McDonalds (instead of mayo), to feel fine about not only the introduction, but the middle too, and by all means the end, that I can rest easy, full and well in the knowledge that I've spoken endless torrents, gotten choked up, and have allowed the vestigial gills to air out a bit. You're an opulent gem among the pearly strands of jewels that accomodate and complement fine eveningwear. I thank you, my parents, and even my enemies. As a shitty ex-landlord used to say, "it's all good". Man, I hate it when people say that! |