interviews

Radio Cosmosis - KRFN-FM - Nashville TN - May 2009

Zappa's Grubby Chamber - KHUM-FM - Humbolt County CA - January 2008

Musical Transportation Spree - KFAI - Minneapolis MN - December 1997

Dr. 13's Audio Lab, WAIF-FM Cincinnati OH - February 1997

THE LIVING ARCHIVE OF UNDERGROUND MUSIC - FEB. 2011

INTERVIEW BY DON CAMPAU

How did you first hear about the tape scene? And what was your first involvement or trade?

I suppose I first became aware of the concept of people releasing home-produced music on cassette and considering them to be "releases" from reading Maximum Rock And Roll magazine. What I mean by that is, I had been writing and recording my own music for about 4 years, but would have never thought that there were people out there doing the same thing and then taking it a step further and creating album titles, artwork, and multiple copies of their recordings. Before that, this was something I just did for my own amusement in secret. I would have been horrified if anyone at school would have found out. Generally no one ever heard my tapes other than myself and one friend (drummer Mike Myers) who participated in my earliest recordings. It wasn't until finding out about punk rock and then later encouragement from additional friends that I "released" a real tape. Over the next year or so, I sent a number of tapes to Maximum Rock And Roll, hoping to be reviewed. I'm guessing my tapes were ignored either because they were coming from an address in South Dakota, or that they weren't "punk" enough, or maybe they just sucked. Either way, being ignored by Maximum Rock And Roll pushed me to look for other avenues...which led me to Sound Choice and Option...who also pretty much ignored me! Ha!

The first person I ever traded tapes with was Paul Caporino of M.O.T.O. I dug his stuff because it had a comedic flavor, and he seemed to like some of my stuff, too. We became pretty good mail friends, and have even met in person a couple of times.

What year did your first tape appear?

Mike Myers and I were making tapes as early as 1982 under the band name MINOR 2049er, but they were not "released". There were only ever 2 copies made. One for each of us. MINOR 2049er dissolved after Mike and I became confident enough to seek out a bass player, at which point, we dropped all the original songs (that we would have been embarrassed to play) and became a hard rock/metal cover band called STAINLESS STEEL. We played KISS, ZZ TOP, and whatever other stuff that was popular at the time and that we could manage to play with our limited chops. Attempts at the more complicated stuff like IRON MAIDEN or DEF LEPPARD usually ended in frustration, mainly because none of us could sing that high. STAINLESS STEEL lasted for a couple of years, and all the while, I was still recording my secret originals. In 1985, I started discovering punk rock, thanks to NEVER MIND THE BULLOCKS and the REPO MAN soundtrack. By 1986, I began releasing tapes under the "fake band" name TEENAGE SLOTS. This eventually spawned a live band that played a couple of shows, but it was mainly just me and a drum machine on the tapes. The TEENAGE SLOTS moniker lasted a couple years. By then I was fully into "releasing" tapes, and briefly went by the name "RBS" before dropping the "band" ruse altogether and just started putting my real name on stuff.

Give us a quick rundown of the evolution of your recording gear up until the present.

1982-1987 was ping-pong recording. Usually recording myself playing a guitar part along with a Matel Synsonic drum machine (ordered out of the Sears catalog), then playing that tape through a little mixer and overdubbing other parts onto a second tape deck. In 1987 I bought a Tascam Portaone 4-track. In 1995, I moved up to 8-track cassette. Around 2000, I had to sell a whole bunch of my recording stuff due to monetary problems. A couple years later, I started having some shoulder problems to the point where I could barely bend my left arm around a guitar neck anymore. I was pretty convinced around 2003 or so that I was done recording forever. Eventually my shoulders got better and I started messing around with software recording. I had bootlegged copies of Cakewalk home studio and Sonic Foundry's ACID. My computer didn't have enough power to record audio in Cakewalk, so I developed a system where I would create basic midi tracks in Cakewalk, mix them down, import them into ACID and do the audio recording there. This became a pretty decent system, and gave me the inspiration to start recording again. In 2008, I got an Mbox 2 and Pro Tools LE and have been using that ever since.

Do you remember getting your first guitar?

It was a nylon string classical guitar. My original musical inclination was that I wanted to play banjo, because I was a huge Steve Martin fan. My mom took me to the music store and they told her "well, if he wants to play banjo, he should really learn how to play guitar first." I'm guessing they probably didn't even have a banjo for sale, much less anyone to teach me. So guitar it was. I was okay with that...after all, KISS didn't have a banjo player. The next thing they told my mom was that I should start with an acoustic guitar. "Wait," I thought, "Ace Frehley doesn't play one of these...he plays one of the cool ones!" It was no use. I was saddled with the classical guitar and the evil Mel Bay book. Learning to site-read "Down In The Valley" didn't last very long before I demanded an electric guitar. I don't remember the exact details, but my first electric guitar was a Les Paul copy made by Lotus. Shortly after that, I learned what a power chord was, and gave up on lessons in favor of writing and recording songs with Mike.

I’ve always considered Zappa and KISS to be your main influences but is this actually the case? Who else and why?

KISS was the first band I ever listened to. I was quite precocious : I bought ROCK AND ROLL OVER the week it came out, and I was 7 years old at the time! All the neighborhood kids were into them, and when you're 7, what's better than a band that breathes fire, spits blood, smashes stuff, and look like monsters? For the next few years I mostly got KISS albums and radio singles. I used to listen to Kasey Kasem religiously every Sunday afternoon and bought a lot of 45s. The next band I got into huge was DEVO. I didn't get into Zappa until a few years later after seeing some live footage on "Night Flight" on the USA network. In 1983, I bought my first Zappa album, which was "Man From Utopia". Not the greatest introduction, but it was the latest release at the time. It was, however, weird enough that I was instantly hooked. I went and found all the Zappa I could after that, which wasn't much at the time, because the older albums were all out of print and CDs hadn't kicked in yet. It took me years before I had finally heard all of Frank's albums. Some other bands I consider really important as far as influencing the sound of my own music were THE BEATLES, BLACK FLAG, BUTTHOLE SURFERS, HUSKER DU, WEEN, and THE RESIDENTS...so many more. I have a tendency to cop sounds sometimes...so I could totally point to countless things I've recorded over the years and say "Oh...that's me ripping off GUIDED BY VOICES" or "Oh...that's my PRINCE song."

Jovial Milkman was your label in the early days. You did some compilations, notably, ”Where’s My Waitress”: a tribute to Frank Zappa, but did you ever release any music by other artists?

Technicly no. There were other names on the roster, but they were all just different things that Evan Peta and I did together in 1992 & 1993. Bands like MOTHER INFERIOR, THE MICHAEL KENYON SEZIURE, and ELVIS HATED STEREO were just me & Evan fucking around. At the time, I was heavily inspired by the WHEELCHAIR FULL OF OLD MEN label, which was the home of `SOCKEYE, plus about a hundred other bands which I think were mainly just the same people. I got the impression that those guys just got together and recorded a new album once a week.

You have had several band projects even since the beginning of your own “solo” work. Did you ever tour or play out of the local area?

After moving to Sioux Falls in 1994, Mike Myers & I reunited musically and formed a band called TEN CENTER which was kind of like TEENAGE SLOTS part 2, in the fact that it was my originals and some covers. We played a lot of shows in Sioux Falls and surrounding towns that were rarely attended by anyone. There was quite an active local music scene here in the mid-90's...but a lot of it was of the WILCO/UNCLE TUPELO country-rock vein, and we quickly found that no one was interested in a band that played weird, loud, distorted originals and BUTTHOLE SURFERS covers. It was a real let-down in that respect, but still the best band I was ever in. After that I ended up joining two different bands that were already established before I came in. I've actually played two "solo" shows in the past. One with MP3 backing and the other backed by a Drum/Bass box.

You have become the curator for the work of late home taper, Scott Johnson, also known as Love, Calvin. How did that happen? What is it about his music that appealed to you?

A few years before Scott died, I asked him if he would consider gathering together all his 4-track masters and lending them to me so that I could digitally remaster all his old releases for CD. He agreed and brought me a box of tapes around 2001 or so. I started slowly going through them to find the masters of the songs he had released on the Love,Calvin tapes....the key word being slowly. My original idea was that I was going to mix down every song he ever recorded. This was a daunting task, and when I would run into the songs that were actually on the albums, I started becoming pretty frustrated that I wasn't able to mix them to end up sounding like they did when he had originally mixed them. I eventually slowed to a halt, and the box sat in my closet for a number of years. In 2007, something made me pick up the project again, and again I quickly realized that no matter what I did, Scott's original mixes sounded better. probably because I had heard them so many times that they just sounded weird re-mixed. I still wanted to get all his old albums out on CD, so what I ended up doing is just mainly using his original mixes for 90% of the stuff. I cleaned them up the best I could, and they finally all came out on CD. Bryan Baker gets credit for the remaster of "Mr. Joy". He had at some point transferred that one to digital and put it up on his website...and he did a great job, so I just downloaded and used his versions. I'm not sure if I even told him that, so, thanks Bryan! You are an official part of the history of your favorite Love,Calvin album! I finally finished all this in late 2007. In April of 2008, I finally got Scott's box of masters back to him. He died a month later.

I'll leave the second part of that question as a teaser for the upcoming print issue of Gajoob. I've written a feature article on the subject which will appear there.

Who are some of your other favorite home tapers?

This is the part where I forget someone and they feel bad. M.O.T.O., Love,Calvin, Evan Peta, Dino DiMuro, Don Campau, The Rudy Schwartz Project, Wayne Butane, Barbara Lard, Aric Pringle, Sockeye, Kevyn Dymond, Tom Furgas, Eric Hausmann, Ken Clinger, The Screamin' Popeyes...I'm trying to jog my memory to "the old days"...but that's the best I can do right now. Oh...who could forget Alvaro the Chilean with the Singing Nose? I also fondly remember some other band, who's name escapes me, but the name of the album was "Preparation H. It takes 10 minutes to eat and 10 hours to vomit. Why Can't it be the other way around?"

Your music is energized and sometimes complex, with lots of power, humor and sarcasm to me. Do you have a good idea of what you want a song to sound like before you begin? Are you a perfectionist?

Sometimes I have an idea of what something will sound like, but a lot of times I just sit down in front of the recording equipment and start something with no pre-planning. I did sooooooo much recording between say 1985 and 1990 that I really doubt a day went by when I didn't write and record a song. Or even more than one. Of course a lot of it was crap, but it was just what I did. I'm definitely not a perfectionist...I quite often leave mistakes in recordings. Sometimes If I'm recording a guitar or bass part and make a mistake, I will try to make the same mistake again when that particular figure cycles around the next time, to make it sound like I meant to do it the first time.

Do you write a score for your complicated keyboard pieces? Do you do them with computer software?

I wrote a lot of scores on paper from 1991-1995. I pretty much gave it up at that point until getting Pro Tools recently. My earliest scores I would mail to people like Tom Furgas or Ken Clinger, who both had the keyboard equipment to be able to reproduce them. I flirted with it briefly in 1994 when I bought an Ensoniq ASR-10 sampler/sequencer...which I traded in the next year for an 8-Track recorder. I recently discovered that there is no trace left of the 90's scores. I probably threw them in the trash at some point, thinking "well, I'll never need THIS again". That kind of thing starts to happen when you move a lot. After getting Pro Tools and learning how to use it, I started writing on paper again occasionally. The step recording process in Pro Tools is the best thing that's happened to me technologically since buying my first four track. I can now write any kind of wacky poly-rhythms and tuplets on paper that I can conceive, and then be able to easily program them into midi form. I've been having a lot of fun with that feature, and my next CD will feature a lot of weird instrumental scores.

You have made all of your music available for free. What’s the URL for that?

www.russstedman.com

What have you learned about yourself from recording your own songs?

One thing I've noticed about myself over the past 10 years or so is that I'm much more in love with production than songwriting. I think I'm kind of burned out as a traditional chords/lyrics songwriter. The real fun in making music for me these days is the actual recording process more than the actual writing. I guess that's why I always tend to record a lot of covers. I enjoy recording much more than writing. I'm so relieved to have a decent idea, because then the REAL fun begins! I get to RECORD it!

What inspires you now?

I think what has always inspired me to record so much music is to be able to listen to it when it's finished. I've never understood the attitude some music people have of "oh...I never listen to my stuff once I'm done with it" - I listen to my music all the time! There are some things I've done that I'm not very interested in hearing again, but most of it I'm proud of. So I guess my main inspiration is my own entertainment.

What’s the next project for you?

At this very moment, the following things are forming...who knows if/when they will be finished ; 1. Re-recording a collection of TEENAGE SLOTS songs for their 25th anniversary this year, 2. My heavy-duty, music-head, written scores/guitar freak-out, tentatively titled "Blowing Chunks Of Theory", 3. A collaboration album with Dino DiMuro.

(See the page Here.)

QRD #42 2010

INTERVIEW BY BRIAN JOHN MITCHELL

QRD – What was your first guitar & what happened to it?

Russ – It was a Les Paul copy made by a company called Lotus. I traded it in for my 2nd guitar.

QRD – What’s your typical set-up from guitar to effects to amplifier?

Russ – I don’t really use an amplifier anymore, as I don’t play live anymore & I live in an apartment. Most of my playing is done through various plug-ins in Pro Tools.

QRD – What’s the most important part of your rig – guitar, amplifier, or effects?

Russ – Well, I guess the guitar is pretty important. The effects can be just as important, however. I don’t feel inspired to play if the right tone isn’t there.

QRD – What’s your main amplifier & why?

Russ – The last amplifier I owned was a Marshall JCM 900 half-stack when I used to play in bands. Haven’t owned an amplifier for about 10 years now.

QRD – What’s your main guitar & what are the features that make it such?

Russ – It has most recently become an LTD Viper 300-FM. It is comfortable & has nice active EMG pickups with great frequency response.

QRD – If you had a signature guitar, what would it look like & what would some of its features be?

Russ – It would be a mid-70s Gibson Les Paul Goldtop Deluxe if I could afford one again.

QRD – If you had a signature pedal, what would it be & what would some of its features be?

Russ – I always liked the original Ibanez Tube Screamer from the 80’s. Very Metal. I also had an imitation Scholz Rockman from the Sears catalog that had a bitchin’ over-the-top distortion sound.

QRD – How many guitars do you own?

Russ – Two. The LTD & a custom built Flying-V.

QRD – How & where do you store your guitars?

Russ – In my apartment, on a stand, or leaned up against the wall.

QRD – What do you wish guitar cases had that they usually don’t?

Russ – A snack machine. But seriously, I don’t take my guitars out of the house anymore, so cases are kind of irrelevant.

QRD – What features do you look for when buying a guitar?

Russ – Something that’s easy for me to play. 24 3/4” scale. Thin neck.

QRD – How much do you think a good guitar should cost?

Russ – The Viper was around $600. I think that was pretty fair.

QRD – Do you upgrade & customize your guitars or just stick with what you get?

Russ – Changing strings is about the extent of my upgrading.

QRD – How thoroughly do you research or test a piece of equipment before buying it?

Russ – Long enough hopefully.

QRD – Do you change your rig around often?

Russ – I gots no “rig”, so no.

QRD – Are you after one particular guitar tone & locking into it, or do you like to change your tone around a lot?

Russ – I like all kinds of crazy shit, but most of it involves lots & lots of distortion.

QRD – What are some guitars, amps, & pedals you particularly lust after?

Russ – The aforementioned Les Paul. I would also dig having my 2nd guitar back which was a Westone Concord III... but I’d be willing to bet I wouldn’t play it much.

QRD – What do you think are some important features to be on a person’s first guitar that aren’t always there?

Russ – Low action.

QRD – What have been the best & worst guitar related purchases you’ve made?

Russ – Best - The aforementioned Les Paul that left me in a time of dire financial straits. Worst - Some sort of Epiphone with a Floyd Rose.

QRD – What are some effect, amp, & guitar brands you particularly like or dis-like & why?

Russ – The ever-elusive skinny-necked Les Paul. I like Marshall amps. I don’t care for 99.9% of strats or anything pointy with skulls. Bolt-on necks bite.  Amps with no master volume are right out. Single-coil pickups are wimpy.

QRD – What’s the first thing you play when you pick up a guitar?

Russ – Probably just some random wanking.

QRD – How old were you when you started playing guitar?

Russ – Thirteen.

QRD – At what age do you think you leveled up to your best guitar playing?

Russ – Probably 17 or 18.

QRD – Why do you think a guitar fits you more so than other instruments?

Russ – Because KISS LOVES YOU, ROCK & ROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

QRD – Do you think guitar should be people’s first instrument as often as it is?

Russ – No. More people should play cello or bassoon. I wish I would have learned to sight-read when I was a kid.

QRD – Do you see your guitar as your ally or adversary in making music?

Russ – Depends on the music.

QRD – Who are the guitarists that most influenced your playing & sound?

Russ – Ace Frehley, Bob “1” Mothersbaugh, Eric Clapton (pre-1970 - really anything after Cream is useless to me), Jimmy Page, Frank Zappa, Dave Gilmore, Robert Fripp, Billy Gibbons, Prince, Steve Vai (Pre-1990 - before the guitar-god albums).

QRD – Do you think people anthropomorphizing their guitars is natural or silly (e.g. naming their guitar)?

Russ – Completely daft.

QRD – What’s the most physical damage you’ve done to a guitar & how did you do it?

Russ – Do you mean by accident or on purpose? Dropped my Westone down a small flight of concrete stairs once but the worst that happened to it was a little chunk out of the back of the neck. On purpose I once attempted to fuse an acoustic guitar & a bass into a new instrument which I dubbed “The Gabajar”. That did some pretty serious damage, let me tell you.

QRD – What do you do to practice other than simply playing?

Russ – What else is there?

QRD – How many hours a week do you play guitar & how many hours would you like to?

Russ – Sometimes I do not play at all in a week. It would be nice if I could find an hour a day, but it rarely works out.

QRD – What type of pick do you use & why?

Russ – Dunlop. The yellow ones. They’re nice.

QRD – What gauge strings do you use & why?

Russ – Ernie Ball 08-38. Never understood why people want to torture themselves with anything heavier.

QRD – How often do you change strings?

Russ – Whenever it seems pertinent.

QRD – How often do you break strings?

Russ – Rarely. Usually I have decided to change them before they break.

QRD – Which do you feel is more proficient, your strumming hand or fretting hand & how does that effect your style?

Russ – I think they’re about equal... at a skill level I would call “Medium-Rare”. I don’t try to play fast anymore because I don’t have the chops for it or the time to develop them.

QRD – Do you set-up your guitar yourself or send it to a guitar tech (or not set it up at all) & why?

Russ – It stays pretty set-up on its own in its comfy indoor home.

QRD – What tunings do you use & why?

Russ – Standard tuning down 1/2 step because that’s how KISS did it.

QRD – Do you prefer tablature, sheet music, or some other notation system for writing down your own ideas?

Russ – I don’t write down guitar ideas, therefore the question is moot.

QRD – How high do you hold your guitar when playing (strap length)?

Russ – Gut-level, which can be tricky with a substantial gut.

QRD – What’s a bad habit in your playing you wish you could break?

Russ – Repeating familiar patterns.

QRD – Playing what other instrument do you think can most help someone’s guitar playing?

Russ – I find it much easier to visualize & build chords on a keyboard. Not sure if that really helps guitar playing or not.

QRD – What’s a type of guitar playing you wish you could do that you can’t?

Russ – Classical.

QRD – What’s a guitar goal you’ve never accomplished?

Russ – Making anything Lydian or Locrian sound believable.

QRD – What’s the last guitar trick you learned?

Russ – Creating a fake wang-bar sound by bending the note with your right hand behind where you have it fretted with the left.

QRD – What’s your favorite guitar gadget (ebow, capo, slide, string cutter, etc)?

Russ – I had an Ebow for a while... it got boring pretty quickly.

QRD – What’s a guitar technique you’d like to master, but haven’t?

Russ – More weird chords.

QRD – Did you ever take guitar lessons & if so, what did you learn from them?

Russ – I took guitar lessons from a couple people very early on. I learned that it’s mostly best to just teach yourself.

QRD – What would you teach someone in a guitar lesson that you don’t think they would generally get from a guitar teacher?

Russ – Play hard, play fair, nobody hurt.

QRD – What’s something someone would have to do to emulate your style?

Russ – Practice a whole bunch for about 5 years & then just slack the rest off.

QRD – What’s your take on tremolo systems?

Russ – I would love the Floyd Rose if it came with a personal guitar technician to be at your beck & call 24/7. Too annoying to deal with maintenance-wise.

QRD – How often do you adjust your tone knob?

Russ – Only if I want to sound like Santana, which isn’t very bloody often.

QRD – What do you see as the difference between lead guitar & rhythm guitar players?

Russ – Size of face in album artwork.

QRD – If a band has good guitar work, can you ignore the rest of the band not being good?

Russ – No.

QRD – What famous musician’s guitar would you like to own & why?

Russ – I know I just said Strats suck (which they do), but it would be cool to have that blondish Strat that Frank Zappa played on the ‘84 tour... but it has a Floyd Rose so there would have to be a personal guitar tech that came with it.

QRD – Who do you think is currently the most innovative guitar player & why?

Russ – Mike Keneally. He plays like a mother fucker & writes funny & interesting songs.

QRD – Where can people hear your best guitar work?

Russ – All of my 80+ releases since 1982 are available for free download at www.russstedman.com

QRD – Anything else?

Russ – Every Good Boy Does Fine.

Autoreverse 2003

INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL J. BOWMAN

MJB: Is there anything you're feeling particularly mouthy about at the moment?

RS: I would like to ask George Bush 2 questions. 1) Where are the weapons of mass destruction? 2) Why is my gas still $1.50/gallon ? What else ? Oh...Tool is a very boring band. Drugs are dumb. It is the springtime of my loving, the second season I am to know.

MJB: Word. Musical influences?

RS: Kiss, Devo, Frank Zappa, Guided By Voices, The Beatles, Pink Floyd (Roger Waters albums only), Led Zeppelin, Robert Fripp, Brian Eno, Husker Du, The Didjits, David Bowie, Butthole Surfers, Buzzcocks, Grandaddy, The Knack, Lee Harvey Oswald Band, Supersuckers, Lou Reed, Prince, The Residents, Vibrators, Ween, ZZ Top, Weird Al Yankovic.

MJB: Wow, Kiss! Ian's gonna love this interview. What's your home recording setup?

RS: I have currently given up home recording, or any recording for that matter, so I don't really have one at the moment.

MJB: OK, so what was the classic Russ Stedman rig when you were making what I consider to be some of the better homemade rock music out there?

RS: I started with two tape recorders. After that it was a Tascam 4-Track followed by an 8-Track. Then I got a digital 8-track. After that I also did some stuff in Cakewalk Home Studio 2002. Didn't like that much. My favorite was the digital 8-Track I had, a Boss BR-8, which has sadly been discontinued. It was a great little machine.

MJB: How do you write songs?

RS: Many different ways. A lot of times I just sit down and make them up out of thin air with no pre-planning.

MJB: Like while the tape is rolling? Do you do drums first? Just lay down riffs and see what develops? Lay it on me.

RS: Not with the tape rolling...but I don't do a lot of demoing and refining...I just sit down and make up a song and record it. Usually I would do the drum machine first, just depends I guess.

MJB: Why do you write songs?

RS: Probably because I got tired of jumping around my room playing a cardboard guitar and miming to 'Kiss Alive!'. It also had something to do with the Beatles, I'm pretty sure.

MJB: Oh shit, Ian is going to LOVE this interview! You either work or have worked in record stores, right? I mean, the record store and everything in it has to be some kinda motivator, it was for me. I was like "Hey, I wanna make records and CDs too." Although I never worked in a record shop.

RS: I have worked in a record store for the past few years and plan on staying as long as I can. I'm not sure if it motivated me to write songs. I think a lot of my motivation was taken away by having a job I like so much. The best of songs come from the worst of times.

MJB: Are you active in your local music scene?

RS: Not anymore. I was quite active in the mid-90's. Since then, our best live music club has closed and it's just not the same any more.

MJB: Were you in a performing band, or did you only ever make recordings?

RS: I had a band in 95-96 called Ten Center that did my songs and covers. Nobody really cared for us, of course. After that I played guitar in a couple of Pop/Punk bands called The Sneakies & Stickler. It was fun, but then the live music scene died and there was no reason to be in a band anymore. Since then, it's come back, but not in any form I can relate to.

MJB: What music are you excited about right now?

RS: The new Grandaddy album (Sumday) totally kicks my ass. I love those guys.

MJB: They had the only good cover on that stupid movie soundtrack that was all Beatles covers. It was "Revolution". My sister said, "oh I love the Beatles covers, but why did that one band have to ruin Revolution?" I told her "Duh, it's a fucking musical Revolution, get it?" I guess she didn't.

RS: I haven't heard that, but Grandaddy's 1st album "Under The Western Freeway" is one of my all-time favs. Check it out !

MJB: Do you like being associated with the 'hometaping' movement, whatever that is?

RS: I like being associated with it. I feel very disconnected from it these days, however. Back in 1997 when I bought my first computer, I had this idea that the Internet would bring home-tapers together into a huge family. That never really happened. All the Internet did for me was make me lazierabout sending things in the mail, so in effect, it kind of ruined the home-taper excitement for me.

MJB: Well, it musta happened to everybody, because the amount of mail action totally died down.

RS: Exactly...everybody went into e-mail mode around '97 or so. Too bad you can't teleport a cassette. Downloading MP3's and sending e-mails just isn't the same.

MJB: Everybody got an mp3 page or something. I also thought burning CDs was gonna set the world on fire like. Get it, burning, fire? Uh, yeah. Whatever. I like having a computer to do stuff like slicing and dicing tracks, stuff I woulda had to do with physical tape edits or lame pause and play bounce techniques in the past. Did you get into using the computer as
part of your recording rig?

RS: I mostly got into the computer because of the internet in general. I also did Tech Support for Gateway for about 3 years, which taught me enough about computers to be able to pretty much build and fix them, and also earned me a nervous breakdown before I was done. The 90's were so great for the technology sector...and then it all came crashing down.

MJB: Yeah, computers suck. Hey, what would you say someone who is just buying their first multitracker, dreaming of the hundreds of homemade albums they are going to crank out?

RS: Try your best to be as self-indulgent as possible. Fuck what other people think.

MJB: Who were some of your favorite hometapers? Are you "Love, Calvin"? If not, who or what is "Love, Calvin"?

RS: Good lord no ! Love Calvin is my dear old friend Scott Johnson who currently resides in a tiny little town about 50 miles north of me called Madison, SD. He is a great guy who's had some tough times over the past 10 years, but is on an up-swing at the moment and getting ready to do his first recordings since about 1993. He is one of the greatest songwriters ever, and in fact, I am currently in the process of remastering all his old stuff for him...which will take forever, but it will be worth it. As far as favorite home tapers go I'd say the short list would be : Dino Dimuro, The Rudy Schwartz Project, Sockeye, M.O.T.O., Dan Fioretti, and a bunch more I can't think of right now.

MJB: On your website discography, some recordings are described as "art rock dogshit". Explain.

RS: That description comes from a project Evan Peta and I would work on occassionally called "The Michael Kenyon Seizure" (named after the real-life "Illinois Enema Bandit"). It was really just improvised noise and sonic clutter.

MJB: Do you still feel the need to make your older recordings available, or do you see them as "of the moment" stuff, like people were either in the scene and scooped them up, or interested parties now can just "fuhgeddabowdid"?

RS: I don't see any reason to make them 'available', unless someone specificly requests one.

Gajoob 1997

INTERVIEW BY BRYAN BAKER

Here's a guitar, play me something/anything right now. (What are you playing?).

Probably some KISS song. I love KISS, the first rock record I ever bought (age 7) was "Rock N Roll Over". I’ve seen the new reunion tour twice now. I was a complete metal-head as a kid until I heard the SEX PISTOLS album when I was 16. It’s the ultimate cliché , but that album changed my life. I will give Heavy Metal credit for the fact that it inspired me to sit around playing guitar scales all day for a couple years as a teenager. It’s much easier to be interesting musically if you have a good command of the instrument. Then again, there are millions of ‘Fabulous Musicians’ that have about as much creativity as a bucket of cauliflower, so whatcha gonna do ? Gimme a ‘C’, a bouncy ‘C’ ! Dee Dee, Daa Daa, and whatever the hell else you wanna put in there !

Did you ever spit fire from your mouth?

Wow ! What a question ! I never have. Never even considered it. Put on the make-up plenty of times though. But…I was in a band called THE SNEAKIES. The most enjoyable band I’ve ever been in. Anyway, one of the high-points of our show visually was our bass player (Sideshow). Not only did he breathe fire on stage, but he also did this weird trick where he would suck a condom up his nose…grab the other end through his mouth…and squeegee it back and forth between orifices like some kind of twisted dental floss. Sadly, THE SNEAKIES have broken up, and no video of ‘the trick’ exists.

I used to do the fire with lighter fluid…why did the Sneakies break up?

The band broke up because the other guitar player decided to move back to his hometown, which is about 2 hours away. It’s really too bad. I had just joined the band about 8 months prior to the breakup. The band had actually been around for almost three years, originally as a three-piece. We had just won "best local recording of ‘96" in a local music paper, and Tim at Mutant Pop records was pretty interested in releasing a 7". Too bad things had to fall apart when they did.

Have you ever broken a guitar string while performing? If so, did you keep playing, or did you stop?

Well, these days I keep a back-up guitar on stage with me, so it’s not a problem. I do, however, continue to play until the current song is over. I do recall one time at an outdoor festival with one of my old bands (TEN CENTER), I only had one guitar with me. I broke a string early on in the set and decided that since no one in the audience was paying us any attention, that I would just play 5-string guitar for the rest of it. It was the high ‘E’, so it wasn’t too hard to adapt to.

What's your favorite Frank Zappa song?

There’s no way I could possibly narrow it down to one. My favorite era has always been the Flo & Eddie years. I’ve always wanted to be in a band like that, one that could lyrically improvise on the moment. Flo & Eddie were GENIUS !That kind of situation will never be equaled in music again. If you’ve never heard "Illegal, Immoral, and Fattening"…go get it! No offense to Frank (of course !), but those boys don’t do too badly on their own. On the other hand, half of the band on that album are Zappa alumni, so that could have a lot to do with it. I guess those songs just wouldn’t be the same without the occasional, unusual vocal quality of Jim Pons sprinkled here and there as well. The credit ultimately goes back to Frank for assembling such an ‘on’ group of people.


What in the hell is "Shop Vac" (a song from one of Russ’ tapes) all about?



An interesting story, and a pretty long one too. A couple summers ago, some friends (including Evan Peta of Mother Inferior ‘fame’) and I traveled to Minneapolis to see King Crimson. We had decided that after the show, we would be driving straight back home (a four-hour trip). So, early in the morning hours after driving up, walking around Minneapolis and almost getting heat stroke, seeing King Crimson, and driving back…our brains were pretty fried. Evan and I somehow started discussing ‘Cosmos’, which is a tourist attraction in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It’s this place where they claim all this wacky, physics-defying stuff takes place…like they supposedly have a stream there that flows up-hill. Anyway, the joke was…‘Yeah, that stream flowing up-hill is just some redneck up at the top with a REALLY BIG Shop-Vac, sucking the water up-hill.’ Hence the lyric ‘Okay Cleetus, turn on the shop vac, and start the national anthem…’ Quite a lot of my songs over the years have evolved from convoluted jokes between Evan and I . He’s kind of like my own personal Flo & Eddie.

Whatever happened to Mother Inferior?

Well, the first Mother Inferior tape was just basically done as a joke. Then we ended up getting ‘the letter’ from Tom Sarig, A&R for TVT. After that we got all serious for a few days and tried to make a demo to send to this guy. Which we did, and he rejected of course. At that point we recruited a drummer and tried to start a live band version, which never got off the ground. I still remember,we were going to cover "John Wayne Was A Nazi" by MDC. That would have gone over REAL well around here !


Tell us about your recording set-up.

Currently it’s the Tascam 488 8-track cassette recorder, ART Proverb effects, a stereo compressor, Roland TR-626 drum machine, a SansAmp 2, and lots of other miscellaneous stuff. At one time, I had an Ensoniq ASR-10…but it left me feeling rather stale at times, so I dumped it for the 8-track and got back to analog land where I belong.

Are you happy with the 488?

I like it a lot, but I’m kind of pissed that right after I bought it, they came out with the 488 ‘Mark II’, which has some nice features that I wouldn’t have minded having…like the ability to plug low impedance mics straight in without the stupid adapters, and a counter that counts real time. It’s kind of like buying computer stuff. Buy it today, they’ll make a better one tomorrow.


So what's the satisfaction for you, beyond the necessity to create?
Do you still get into the networking aspect of hometaping?

My satisfaction comes from a number of things. Recording something that I just know is really ’on’…like I spent a bunch of time on it and it came out great. Seeing reviews (good or bad) in Gajoob or Factsheet Five.When people ask to have a copy of a tape. I just want to be loved ! I used to do A LOT more sending of tapes when I lived in Mitchell, probably due to the boredom of living in a town so small that you could be anywhere in the city limits within 5 minutes. These days, I struggle to keep in touch with my favorite home-tapers, and seem to find little time to look for new friends. Which sucks on my part.

You're not interested in doing any sort of mass marketing for yourself?

Well, a good example is The Sneakies, who put out a disc early on in their existence, and now are broken up, and there are still hundreds of copies collecting dust. That’s a big fear. I think I’d be a lot more willing to make a CD if I could get 200 pressed for a proportional amount of money. The most copies I’ve ever distributed of one tape are probably under 100, so what in the hell would I do with 1000 CD’s ?



If you put together a tape of cover songs by other hometapers, what would they be?

(…off the top of my head…)

"Jimmy Swaggart" – The Rudy Schwartz Project
"Ice Cream Soup" – Ken Clinger
"Boring Al Wankovic" - Dino DiMuro
"Fuck Me, Fuck You" – Joe Shmoe
"Head" - Love,Calvin
"Young And In Love" - M.O.T.O.
"Waiting For Martha" – The Koel Family
"Graveyard" – The D-Cups
 

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