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Interview with Culture Documenter and Author Audrey Golden

Audrey holding Ana’s 1979 Raincoats tour diary. Photo: Shirley O’Loughlin

Just a few days before the U.S. publication date of Shouting Out Loud: Lives of the Raincoats, we caught up with the New York writer-editor-journalist and cat mom Audrey Golden to ask about her process, the music she loves and her life. She also wrote the great oral history I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women at Factory Records, which finally unearthed the stories from the women behind the famed Manchester label. Scroll all the way down to see where some upcoming book events are and read our excerpt as well. (Photographs courtesy of Audrey Golden)

READ: Our excerpt from Shouting Out Loud

chickfactor: What are you up to today?
Audrey Golden: I’m listening to a new Lung Leg song that’ll be out in October, and I LOVE it. It’s so powerful, and so fun and cathartic to sing along to. I’m writing a piece about them and the music scene in Glasgow, and I’m trying to finish that up today.

I’m getting ready for the publication of and a lot of upcoming book events for Shouting Out Loud! I’m getting ready to head to Seattle and Portland next week (for events on July 17 and 18), then some events on the east coast (Rough Trade NYC on July 25 and Mass MoCA on July 31) before I head to Europe, where I’ll be joined by The Raincoats for events. Since the book is out really soon, I’ve also been doing interviews and some publicity for it. I’m so excited for it to finally get into readers’ hands! And really hoping it’s what all the lovers of The Raincoats are hoping it’ll be.

Where all have you lived?
I’ve lived in a lot of places, actually! I grew up on the east coast, in Connecticut and Florida, mostly. I went to college back in CT (at Wesleyan), law school in North Carolina (at Wake Forest U), and grad school in Charlottesville, Virginia at UVA, where I got my PhD. Being in academia, I also ended up in some places I didn’t expect but loved living, including Iowa City. I’ve spent the most time living in New York – both the city and the Hudson Valley, where I live now.

Inside cover of Audrey’s own Raincoats book notebook: “I start a new notebook for each project I work on,” she says

What was your family like? What were you like as a teenager?
Oh, man. There is so much I could say here but won’t (haha). My family was a little dysfunctional, and I’m the oldest of four kids who are all sort of close in age. Like any dysfunctional family, though, there were good aspects, too. I grew up in a family of readers, and I’m really grateful for that. Even when we barely had any money, my parents made sure we had books, and always let us pick out new books. It made me a person who values books and reading immensely. (I’ve definitely long been a believer in that John Waters quote, “if you go home with somebody and they don’t have books, don’t fuck them!” I think I’m getting that mostly right.)

I had a lot of responsibilities that a teenager probably shouldn’t have, and I felt really discouraged by what I saw as a really sexist world around me that just wouldn’t budge no matter what I did. I listened to a LOT of music and I loved making mixed-media art. I generally did really well in school academically (and I was lucky that I could do that without putting in very much effort), but I also hated high school so much — all the social bullshit, all the sexist, racist crap from the school administrators and teachers. I must have forged maybe 100 notes from my mom so I could have “excused” absences — there were so many days where I’d let my younger brother out of the car in the student parking lot, and as soon as I saw him go through the doors, I’d drive off and bring a note the next day that “explained” I had period cramps and had to stay home. None of those idiot administrators wanted to get into a conversation with me about that! Always worked like a charm. I listened to so much Nirvana, Veruca Salt, Soundgarden, Bikini Kill, Team Dresch, Screaming Trees, Letters to Cleo, Mudhoney, REM, Velvet Underground, NIN… and I took myself to so many movies when I skipped school. I got a lot of my music knowledge from film soundtracks, and I loved sitting alone in those theaters seeing Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides and Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous and dreaming of another life.

A notebook page from when she was working on Shouting Out Loud

Do you play music? Karaoke?
I started playing piano when I was 3 years old, and violin a few years later. I really hated taking lessons and playing classical music, but it was good training for being able to play different kinds of music later on. I’ve only recently gotten back into thinking about the violin, decades later (after playing up to college, with a symphony) because I recently bought a Fender electric violin that I can plug into pedals and really mess around with (I mean that in the best possible way!). I’ve never really stopped playing piano and keyboards/synths, and it’s a mix of just messing around in my music room and playing covers, playing a little bit on some of my partner’s music, and writing a little bit of my own (under the pseudonym Warm Druid). I also love playing ukulele, and I have way too many ukuleles depending on who you ask (haha!). Every time I see one that sounds just a little bit different, or has a cool design, I can’t help myself!

Tell us about your radio show — is it still going?
It’s on a little bit of a hiatus right this moment (largely because of time I just can’t seem to find!), but it’ll be back up and running very soon. The show is called “Breaking Glass,” and it highlights women in music — as musicians, obviously, but also women doing “behind the scenes” work that often doesn’t get recognized. And there are a lot more women doing that kind of work than I imagine most people suspect. We should be celebrating them more, and really encouraging younger women to get into some of those roles that are still dominated by men. I have a pipe dream of opening a small studio to train women as sound engineers, and at some point, I really want that to become more than just a pipe dream!

Did you always want to be a storyteller?
Yeah, I did, I think. Does everyone say this? I was constantly writing stories as a kid and making my own books. The latter is something I’ve actually continued to do, too — I make my own artist books and archival clamshell boxes. I really love the detail and precision work these require, and I especially love making miniature hardcover books and books with various Japanese bindings. But yes, back to the question, I think I’ve wanted to be a storyteller since a very young age because of how much I loved reading stories, and I’m on a constant search for books that make me sort of stop in my reading tracks, if you will. It feels like an incredible kind of thing to be able to contribute to the world. And my dad was also a wild storyteller (orally though, not in print), and maybe I’ve inherited a little bit of that, too.

Do you have any stories about hilarious/difficult/standout interviews you’ve done?
In terms of standout and hilarious interviews, and Shouting Out Loud-related, I LOVE interviewing Liz Naylor. I’ve talked to her now for three different projects (I Thought I Heard You Speak: Women At Factory Records; Shouting Out Loud: Lives of The Raincoats; and a draft a just finished, QUEERCORE for Bloomsbury’s new 33 ⅓ “Genre Series”), and she’s always such an incredible storyteller. She often will say she doesn’t have a great memory for X, Y, or Z thing, and then she ends up having a really fantastic and detailed memory. She’s also witty and hilarious. I hope I end up interviewing her for every book I write!

As for a sort of difficult one: I interviewed Mark Arm of Mudhoney several years ago for an article in advance of their first European tour after the pandemic lockdowns. I’m a really big Mudhoney fan, and I was very nervous to talk to him. I felt really self-conscious during the whole thing (over zoom), so I probably wasn’t at my best. Anyway, I got the sense he wasn’t having a good time talking to me, and I think I was getting a little flustered. At some point, I made a comment about my having been “around for grunge” (argh, I regretted it as soon as I said it), but yes said it, and he ran with it a little. I still feel sort of stupid about the whole thing, if I’m being honest. It feels good to let my embarrassment out here, ha!

Do you have any rituals or do’s and don’ts regarding interviews? Tips or advice?
In terms of do’s, always do research in advance, and as much as you can. Especially when you’re doing oral history research, it’s really crucial to have a lot of background information so you can ask the kinds of questions that are going to produce information that’s helpful to you. As for don’ts, this is probably obvious, but yes-or-no questions are rarely useful unless you’re really just trying to clarify a point or get someone to confirm some sort of “fact.” I really like oral history research — regardless of whether you’re ultimately gonna write a book in an oral history format — because of the way it creates a dialogic process of storytelling. So my techniques and approaches are always about trying to develop the kind of rapport with a speaker where they know they can trust you (and I hope most of the people I’ve interviewed for oral history research feel that way!), and where you’re able to actually engage in a kind of dialogue through which you can dig deeper into their responses with the knowledge that’s necessary to do that.

A tip/advice that I always like to do whenever I’m doing any kind of oral history interview research: give your interviewee the option (within reason) to come back and tell you that something they said is off the record, and that you’ll agree to keep this private. I think this is really crucial if you want to get as full a story as you can, and to ensure that you’ve attended to your interviewee’s emotional and psychological needs, and their own comfort, as well. I don’t ever want to be in the business of telling something that someone wants to keep private, and I feel like that’s a good rule for anyone doing oral history work to follow. It’s different, of course, if you’re interviewing an artist for an article about an upcoming record or tour, and you’ve gotta get the piece out in a couple of days. Essentially, use your good judgment, and always think of the ethics of the work you’re doing.


Why did you decide on the oral history format for I Thought I Heard You Speak? What are some of the challenges and benefits of doing an oral history?
I knew that book needed to be in an oral history format because of the stark exclusion of so many women’s voices from the history of Factory Records. I wanted their voices to be the thing in that book and to really shine — especially those women who did so much work to make that label work and weren’t even mentioned once by name, or were mentioned once in existing books and got their names misspelled.

You know, I originally wasn’t going to name him, but after some recent stuff, I feel like I really should. Can I do it here? I heard from one of the women I interviewed for that book (and who’s in the book), that she’d mentioned to James Nice she was interviewing with me, probably back in 2020 or 2021. She’d told him about my book and relayed to me that he’d replied with something to her like, “who’d want to read that book?” and I thought UGH. Up to that point, I’d loved reading his book on Factory, and loved knowing a lot of those stories. I’d hoped I Thought I Heard You Speak would be something that he and anyone else who’d written on Factory would see as this wonderful thing that enlivened the music history they loved so much, too. Anyway, on top of that comment, I saw Faber just reissued his Factory Records book, and in all the marketing and announcements, he’s doubling down on calling his book the “definitive history” of the label while adding stuff about how, essentially, everyone who is anyone agrees with that description. And people wonder how certain voices get marginalized from histories? It’s because of that insistence on the “definitive” label (as I’ve said a million times, I suspect, and in so many places, no history is EVER definitive), and the refusal of anyone to just own something and say “wow, can’t believe I missed some of these voices. So glad there’s something out there that really makes this history fuller!” Honestly, it only makes me want to break down all this male gatekeeping even more. For fuck’s sake. It bums me out, but I’m also not that surprised in the end. Sad about it, and demoralized, but not that surprised.

But let me also say a couple more good things about the oral history format and its challenges!!! Because this is also how I did a lot of the research for Shouting Out Loud. I knew I wasn’t going to write this book as an oral history (which Mojo got really wrong after reading it, which made me sad!) because there was a lot more research going into the book beyond those oral history interviews, but I also really wanted this to be a book with my narrative voice telling the story.

Oral history research can be really challenging because it can be REALLY difficult to track some people down, and it can be difficult to connect with people in interviews sometimes — no matter how much background research and work you do before the interview (so my advice about this is, give yourself a little grace if you’re doing this kind of research and an interview just doesn’t feel like it clicked, or that you got anything great out of it — it’s not always you!). And when you’re planning a book in an oral history format — like I Thought I Heard You Speak — you can feel a real need to get ALL of the voices you want in there, but if you can’t track someone down, or just can’t convince someone to speak, you can feel this sense of incompleteness. Ultimately, I think you’ve got to just live with that, and I like to provide a note about who I really wanted to talk with but couldn’t for whatever reason. One of the great joys of oral history work is that you become this interlocutor in the collation of a narrative and oral archive, even if it never leaves your own hard drive, and even if a lot of the material doesn’t end up in the book you’re writing. You become a collector of stories, and the histories alongside them, and I adore that aspect and find it really meaningful.

Audrey with Shirley, Ana, and Gina at a London pub dinner one night after she had been archiving their stuff

How did the political moment the Raincoats formed in shape their character?
So much, I think. They were thinking about the DIY rise of punk, the anti-racism and anti-sexism of the political moment in London (especially coinciding with Rock Against Racism and Rock Against Sexism), and I think they took all of that to heart and did something distinctive with it.

What are some classic Raincoats lessons we can apply to the current moment?
They saw that these converging moments (that I noted above) meant it was possible to truly make something your own way, and do it on your own terms. I love this quote Ana had when we were talking for the book, which I used in Shouting Out Loud, and it had to do with a fan coming up to her and Anne Wood at a 2010s show in Japan. The fan, a young girl, said she wanted to be like The Raincoats, and Anne essentially told her that you can be like The Raincoats by being yourself! What a great life lesson, and it reflects (to me) the line in “Fairytale,” that “no one teaches you how to live.” I wish I’d had that advice when I was a lot younger. I probably would have had a lot more self-confidence, and it wouldn’t have taken me until I was in my 40s to feel like I had a true sense of myself and what it means to really exist as yourself in the world. But I do now, I think. Thanks, Raincoats!

Audrey at a book event in Austin

The Raincoats’ music seems like one element in their life’s work. They also show us that art is something you do into your older years, and many get better at it. Why do you think they have stayed relevant and what’s the secret to their longevity?
You know, I was just telling a friend something my grandmother said to me a few years before she died (and she lived a very long life in terms of years!). She said something like, “I always feel 25 yrs old when I’m just sitting here thinking, or watching something, and we all mostly do, until we try to stand up (she was having mobility issues at the time).” And, she added, “it all goes by like lightning.” What she meant, or at least how I took it, was that we don’t feel like older versions of ourselves (or oneself) at any given point in time. It’s still possible to have so many of the feelings we had a long time ago — sitting in an art classroom, and dreaming about the future, for example, or sitting in a park with a walkman while listening to Nirvana — time collapses in that way, and we still have access to the senses of wonder and possibility that are so characteristic of being young. I don’t know for sure about The Raincoats, but I think this is one of the things that makes it possible to feel like there’s no expiration date on creativity. And especially for women — that idea is such a product of a misogynist culture.

I think The Raincoats would also say that artists of varying generations becoming interested in their music has sort of re-catalyzed them, in turn, to come back to their own music and to want to make more art anew. They’re constantly inspiring, and being inspired — this circular process that’s really lovely to be able to track and to witness across time and space.

And, of course, in terms of the longevity of their music, there’s just absolutely NOTHING that’s tethered to a particular temporal moment in any of their songs or albums, and that is something that’s so amazing to me about their work. It feels like it could have been written at the same time the Fluxus artists started dipping into sonic expression, or just recorded yesterday. That’s one of the ways their music lives outside time (in addition to their intentionally arrhythmic time signatures), which is something that I really wanted to come across in Shouting Out Loud, and something that I think is so special about their music.

Audrey in a grizzly bear mask she sculpted with some ‘found’ grizzly jaws

The Raincoats had their community in the UK in the early days but seemed to fit in with the NYC scene more when it comes to music. It seems like a common theme with women musicians of that era – they were not taken seriously even though they turned out to be legends. Why was that?
Yeah, as I hope anyone who reads Shouting Out Loud will see, there’s a really indelible connection between The Raincoats and NYC. Their sound fit in (not by being similar to sonically, but by having a similar experimental approach to) so many of the no wave bands coming out of the downtown scene at the time. And so many of those artists were women! And as to the women-musicians-not-being-taken-seriously, argh, it’s so true, and I think it’s so much a result of women just not being taken seriously in general. I think a lot of that is because the gatekeepers were men — and by gatekeepers, I mean the ones writing the music journalism, running labels, overseeing venues, etc etc. I talked to Vivien Goldman about this for Shouting Out Loud, and in more detail for a profile I just did of her for Gusher magazine, but she was among the only women in this crucial role. For the most part, I think, you just weren’t getting male music journalists and A&R guys (and yes, they were mostly guys) celebrating female artists. I think that’s changing a little, but not as much as it could. I mean, look at the data coming out from UCLA’s Gender in Popular Music project. Female-fronted bands are still few and far between on major festival lineups, at the controls in sound booths, and on. And the same goes for so many artists of color, and women of color. There are still a lot of gatekeepers with ideas that don’t seem to have progressed from the 1970s and 1980s, at least when it comes to a lot of music stuff that isn’t in indie spheres.

What is it about the word feminism that many people have a hard time with, even feminist trailblazers. Is there a different word we should use?
I think there are different issues surrounding its use. Within The Raincoats, the band members who didn’t want to explicitly call themselves feminist definitely shared a belief in female equality and power but didn’t want to be pigeonholed. There’s also the question about (or lack of) intersectionality that became prominent in riot grrrl communities, and that’s quite obviously a significant and salient point — the way the term feminism was imagined was often a very white one. Even if there wasn’t an intentional exclusion of women of color, there was often a de facto one in terms of issues addressed and the way in which a “feminist” was envisioned.

I go back and forth myself about how I think of the term, and I think there are pros and cons of its use (but NOT pros and cons to the idea that women, including women of color, are equal to men). I don’t know if there’s a better word for that… EqualRightsist doesn’t quite have the same ring to it! Sort of pathetic we have to even think about defining ourselves in ways that make clear we believe women are equal, but that is indeed where we (still) are, and perhaps more than we even were a couple of decades ago, in some ways given the current political situation in the US.

Audrey with a Peruvian street dog

Since we are facing a democracy crisis in the U.S., tell us how the idea of democracy worked for the band.
I think, like a lot of bands, The Raincoats really wanted to be a democracy, and it was their ideal. But, in practice, nothing ever really quite works that way, right? There were shared ideas that were always brought to the group, and they shared royalties very equally and fairly — everything to do with money was absolutely equal, no matter who wrote a particular song or came up with the bass line or whatever — and that’s something that remains really important to them. But I think when you put several very strong-willed and powerful women together in a group, a true democracy isn’t necessarily possible. Ongoing friendship and compromise, certainly! But true democracy, probably not really in the end (but perhaps it’s true to say they came closer than many other bands trying to get there!).

Tell us a story you had to leave out of the book for whatever reason.
I learned from The Raincoats that Anton Fier (of The Feelies, Lounge Lizards, Pere Ubu, and more) had auditioned to be their drummer at one point in the early 80s. I’m a HUGE fan of The Feelies, so I wanted to explore this a lot more. It turned out it wasn’t something that had stuck in the memories of The Raincoats as much as other things had, and unfortunately, Anton Fier had already left this realm, so I couldn’t get in touch with him to hear more.

Audrey’s hands at a 1/4″ tape reel to reel

What part of NYC do you live in?
I actually live in the Hudson Valley now! I was one of the NYC departers during COVID. I honestly love living near a train and being pretty close to the city now but having a backyard with a garden, and more wall space to hang more art! I feel really lucky to live in such a cool old house where I can still have access to NYC in all the best ways.

What are you working on now? Any other books in the pipeline?
Yes! I have a book for Bloomsbury’s relatively new “Genre Series” coming out in the nearish future on QUEERCORE, which was a total dream to write. I turned that manuscript in not too long ago, so I’ve now completely immersed myself (research and writing-wise) in my next big project, which is a biography of Mark Lanegan. I’m doing oral history research for this one, too, but unlike other books I’ve written, I’m planning to really craft this one in the form of a novel for all kinds of reasons that are constantly running through my head.

Audrey in a Guerrilla Girls paper cutout mask while sewing

What are you reading, watching, eating?
I’m one of those people who is always reading several different books at once, and in little spurts. I’ll go from one to another without finishing one, is what I mean. I’m currently revisiting Stefan Zweig’s The Royal Game, and I’m in the middle of Markus Werner’s The Frog in the Throat, Karen Russell’s The Antidote, and Nick Cave’s book of interviews with Seán O’Hagan. I’m also always going back to and reading new little portions of Walter Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, or rereading portions that I’d forgotten I’d read. There’s always something in there that brings meaning to me at some random moment.

Watching: I’m such a sucker for British detective shows, so that’s usually what I’m watching if I’m looking for something to interest me for a given 50 minutes or so! I especially love the detective shows with female leads.

I also recently watched Andrew Haigh’s film All of Us Strangers and loved it so intensely. And I also just saw The Ballad of Wallis Island, which warmed my heart like no other film has in recent memory — I loved it.

As for food, I’m always eating pasta and desserts… haha, maybe that doesn’t sound too great. I’m especially a sucker for really delicious pies.

Audrey combing through 7-inches

Day jobs, pets, hobbies?
I work a regular 9-5 day job as an editor at Bard College. Writing books would be totally impossible, financially speaking, otherwise! I was on university faculty for a long time at a few different institutions, but I ultimately decided to leave academia in 2021 after a lot of careful thought, and I’m honestly really glad I did, although I miss teaching some of the great students I had over the years!

As for pets, I am a really ardent animal lover. Currently, we have three cats (two newly adopted 2-yr-old bonded siblings, Ozzy and Augustus Pablo, who are super sweet). Our third cat is Marguerite, a 13-yr-old weirdo, who we’ve had since she was a kitten, and who I love for who she is! I recently lost my sweetest boy, Matin, a 13-yr-old tabby cat who we’d also had since he was a kitten (some friends found him, along with his sister Marguerite, in pretty bad shape in the woods, and we rescued them). He was the best animal, and I miss him every day, honestly. I’ve also had and fostered dogs in the past, and I’m constantly pestering my partner about adopting another dog (he’s sort of agreed to move forward with that plan in January, after my book travel settles down). I’ve also been trying to convince a couple of local farmers to let me “invest” in two sheep on their farm (meaning, basically, I’d have two sheep of my own at their farm). I’d honestly have a whole menagerie of rescue creatures if I had the space and finances to do it.

And hobbies! I’m a book and art and record collector, and I play a lot of music in my spare time. I also love fashion design and try to work on my own clothes when I find cool new textiles, or something at a thrift store I can dye and repurpose.

Upcoming book events for Shouting Out Loud: 

  • July 17, Seattle, Hex Enduction Books and Records, 6pm (part of Art Walk, and there will be a singalong!)
  • July 18, Portland OR, Powell’s, with Gail O’Hara, Corin Tucker, and Sheri Hood, 7pm
  • July 25, NYC, Rough Trade NYC, with Evan “Funk” Davies of WFMU, 6pm
  • July 31, North Adams MA, Mass MoCA, 5pm
  • August 30, Dorset UK, End of the Road Festival, In-convo with Gina Birch, 10:30am, signing 12pm
  • August 31, Bristol UK, Rough Trade Bristol, with Ana Calderon of Digital Resistance, 5pm
  • September 3, Glasgow UK, Glad Cafe, with The Raincoats, 7pm
  • September 6, London UK, Rough Trade East, with The Raincoats, 7pm
  • October 14, Porto PT, Termita bookstore, with Ana da Silva
  • October 18, Lisbon PT, Well Read Lisbon, with Ana da Silva
  • TBD:
    • Los Angeles
    • Boston

Records Audrey cannot live without

  • New Order, Power, Corruption & Lies
  • Ramones, Rocket to Russia
  • Hole, Live Through This
  • Townes Van Zandt, Live at the Old Quarter
  • Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room
  • Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
  • The Feelies, Crazy Rhythms
  • Mark Lanegan, Whiskey for the Holy Ghost
  • The Raincoats, Odyshape
  • Bikini Kill, Pussy Whipped
  • Nirvana, Unplugged in New York
  • Velvet Underground, Loaded
  • Team Dresch, Personal Best
  • Bob Dylan, Blood on the Tracks
Audrey with Ana and Shirley, leaning over a record label in their living room, trying to help them figure out if that was an original 1979 The Raincoats vinyl label or a 1993 reprint for Rough Trade (it was in a folder of Ana’s stuff)
Audrey looking at a color photo slide while cataloguing the Raincoats archive in Ana and Shirley’s kitchen. Photo: Gina Birch
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Lightheaded Interview by Jen Sbragia

Lightheaded — Courtesy of Lightheaded

We are so feeling LIGHTHEADED

Cynthia Rittenbach and Stephen Stec founded LIGHTHEADED on the Jersey Shore in 2017, aligning with a rotating crew of drummers, guitarists and backup vocalists. After releasing their debut EP and debut album the following year, they have already embarked on some big tours and played some prestigious janglefests—even playing alongside legends like Heavenly, The Softies, and The Ladybug Transistor. Next up is Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming!, out in late June on Slumberland in the U.S. and the UK’s Skep Wax label. It was recorded on the right coast with Gary Olson and the best coast with Alicia Vanden Heuvel, with Fred Thomas adding some reverb from the country’s midsection. The songs contain all the swoons and la-la-las of all great pop and feature guest spots from Starcleaner Reunion and Trinket. We caught up with them about their new album, favorite records and summer plans!

Interview by Jen Sbragia / Images courtesy of Lightheaded

On tour in the Bay for Oakland Pop Fest/recording ‘Thinking Dreaming Scheming!’ Courtesy of Lightheaded

Chickfactor: Please introduce yourselves, and tell us what instruments you play.
I’m Cynthia, I play bass and the xylophone. And sing.
I’m Stephen, I play guitar.

Tell us about the new songs!
Cynthia: we recorded them with only the best. We had a huge group of all of our friends and some of our biggest idols to help record and produce. Recorded it on both coasts in New York, San Francisco, and Philadelphia. Some songs with Gary Ladybug, others with Alicia Aislers. Crash Landing of the Clod stands out, all the heartbreak ones always do. Same Drop really, too. It’s sort of an endearing little tune that makes me think visually of umbrellas and binoculars.

Stephen: they’re all newer stuff for us, too. Pretty short songs. Everything pretty much written in 2023/2024 during a sort of wilderness period. Most songs are about falling in and out of love, besides the super obvious one. I think overall, this batch of songs are a little more direct than we’ve been in the past. Maybe we were just going through a phase? We also had a really good group of pals hanging out with us to track on both coasts. Jo and Adam from Starcleaner Reunion added a ton on this album, as did Sara and Madison on quite a few tracks. I hear them so much on the songs they played on, it makes me quite happy.

What is your songwriting process like? Is it collaborative or do you each come to the table with fully formed pieces?
Cynthia: I think most songs are very much a combination of our ideas melted together. Some start with my musical melodies… other times some chords, or a rhythm I like. Other times, just Stephen’s lyrics can be inspiring. But either way, I do really enjoy adding the finishing touches. That part of the process always stands out as one of the most fulfilling. I had a lot of fun on this record doing things we never really did before, like bird sounds and xylophones.

Stephen: yeah, for every song, it’s a total collaboration. There’s never been a single Lightheaded song where we both don’t contribute a lot of ideas to whoever started the initial thought.  Like, even if Cynthia writes a whole song, I’ll still write the lyrics for everything, which are very important to the direction of a track. And if I write a whole song, Cynthia will still completely influence the sound by writing the rhythm parts and adding melodies. That openness is really important and freeing to what we are.

Courtesy of Lightheaded

What are some of your influences that might surprise people to learn?
Cynthia: I’ve been really into ’90s rave lately.
Stephen: She’s been playing a lot of Method Man and Wu Tang.
Cynthia: Oh yeah, Wu Tang. Shout out Wu Tang. Also, I started following a new playlist. It’s called ‘Best Gregorian Chants’…
Stephen: I myself rip off a lot of Arthur Rimbaud and Tupac.

Courtesy of Lightheaded

Are you inspired by non musical things, like art or fashion…?
Cynthia: learning about how computers work has been influencing the world around me. Life is all about systems. It’s made me try to look at things more efficiently. It’s sort of given me a fresh view on my process of creativity.

Stephen: hm, maybe some old video games with 8 bit graphics and memorable soundtracks, I’d say WWE Wrestling, surrealist poetry too, but mainly for me, it’s my students. They are very inspirational in a lot of different ways. The things they do, the comings and goings of their life that they share. Sometimes I’ll even grab a lyric from something they say, or that I’ll say to them. It happened once with ‘Crash Landing of the Clod,’ when I experienced a sixteen year old very loudly trying to have ‘a one on one conversation in a quiet room’. I was like “you have to stop, it’s silent reading,” lolol!

Where would you like to tour or play that you haven’t been yet?
Cynthia: Japan and Germany.
Stephen: Das uber cool, Cindy. Yeah, for us, it was always really France and Japan, but we are crossing France off the list in July. Wee wee! Pretty exciting stuff! Uhm, so that leaves Japan for me, then, I think… New Zealand…?!

Set list for Ladybug Transistor tour at Tubby’s NY. Courtesy of Lightheaded

Tell us about your day jobs.
Cynthia: I am a computer science major right now. Looking forward to an internship.
Stephen: I am a teacher. I love the kids and summers, but the profession has its tribulations. It’s changed a lot. I might leave one day. I keep a list of jobs I think I’d be good at if I didn’t teach English. My top 3 right now are an ambulance driver, meteor hunter, or taste tester. I guess I’m open to job offers.

If you could have a time machine, what long-defunct bands would you go see?
Cynthia: John Lennon or John Legend.
Stephen: The 3 Stooges.

Cynthia and K waiting for Heavenly show. Courtesy of Lightheaded

What’s next for Lightheaded?
Cynthia: I’ve recently gotten a Fostex tape machine, Tascam mixer, and Pro VLA II compressor that I’m looking forward to tracking our next record with in upstate New York with my friends. It feels like one of the most promising lineups yet, to play with Gavin and Madison… hopefully Jacki more, too. We are going to make something special.

Stephen: For the meantime, we have an EP coming out on a great green vinyl for Slumberland/Skep Wax called Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! on June 27, 2025. Featuring hot new indie pop trax about binoculars, magic carpets, Amelia Fletcher, and a whole lot more you can shake your tambourine to. The b-side of the vinyl will have our debut EP, its first vinyl release. We’re going to play a fun album release show with our buddies Jeanines, Love/Burns, and The Frenchmen, before heading out to Paris and the UK to tour the album for two weeks. We are particularly excited to play July 19th at the Lexington in London with HEAVENLY and to close out the Glas-Goes Pop Festival with an after party at Stephen Pastels record shop. But truly, tell us what’s next for Lightheaded. Drop us a line wherever you can find us!

Bowling alley hair check. Courtesy of Lightheaded

Thinking, Dreaming, Scheming! is out June 27. The first pressing LP is on minty green vinyl. The cassette version only includes songs 1-5; the rest are on the Good Good Great! tape.
BUY: Slumberland Records is releasing it in the U.S.
BUY: Skep Wax Records is releasing it in the UK.
LISTEN to the first single here. 

Courtesy of Lightheaded
This show already happened. Courtesy of Lightheaded

Records Cynthia Cannot Live Without
Margo Guryan ‘Take A Picture’
Masculin Feminin soundtrack
The Pastels ‘Truckload of Trouble’
The Smiths ‘Strangeways Here We Come’
Dusty Springfield ‘Dusty’
The Particles ‘1980s Bubblegum’
Kraftwerk ‘Computer World’
Belle and Sebastian ‘The Life Pursuit’
Grimes ‘Visions’
Lush ‘Split’

Records Stephen Cannot Live Without
Felt ‘Strange Idol Patterns and Other Short Stories’
The Monkees ‘Greatest Hits’
Beat Happening ‘S/T’
The Magnetic Fields ‘69 Love Songs’
Jonathan Richman ‘I, Jonathan’
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart ‘S/T’
Masculin Feminin soundtrack
The Byrds ‘Younger Than Yesterday’
Rocketship ‘A Certain Smile, A Certain Sadness’
The Feelies ‘The Good Earth’

This show is in the past. Courtesy of Lightheaded
Group shot to commemorate the Ladybug Transistor tour. Courtesy of Lightheaded
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Sometimes I Want to Return … Sensitive Live Is Out Now

Sometimes I Want to Return: Sensitive Live (Watch now!) 

On the evening of February 12, 2025, in a tiny venue deep in the heart of London’s West End, a very special group of people met to celebrate the launch of the album Sensitive – An Indie Pop Anthology. Available today is sometimes i want to return ~ sensitive live, directed by Tim Sidwell, a filmed version of the record release party where a band called the Sensitivities backed up various singers in celebration of the compilation on Needle Mythology. Watch the trailer here. 

In the mid-1980s, a new wave of independent music emerged in the UK.   Supported by fanzines and DJs such as John Peel and Janice Long, the musicians emerging from this scene were defiantly DIY in their outlook.
Record labels such as Creation, 53rd & 3rd, The Subway Organisation, and Sarah became synonymous with this emerging scene.
Fusing the vernacular of 60s girl groups, psych-pop and the poetic daredevilry of post-punk trailblazers like The Smiths, Altered Images and Orange Juice, these groups helped define the indie zeitgeist.
Forty years later, in central London, a very special concert took place to mark the release of ‘sensitive’ – an anthology celebrating this scene.
Playing with a very special “house band”, singers from these groups travelled from all over the UK to take part.
What ensued was an unforgettable evening. A emotional one-off celebration, featuring classic songs from the era, which can be heard in their original form on the ‘sensitive’ album.
‘sometimes i want to return’ is the film of that evening. (From the film website)

(Editor’s note: Many of us couldn’t be there so thank you Pete Paphides for making it possible to us to watch this now! This music is basically exactly what made Pam Berry and I start this fanzine. Watching the film is both joyous and life-affirming but also a welcome distraction from the pain of living in the U S A in this moment.)

Pete Paphides and Amelia Fletcher. Photo: Ken Copsey
The film features the following artists:
James Knox from The Waltones
Amelia Fletcher and Rob Pursey from Talulah Gosh
James Roberts from The Sea Urchins
Sean Dickson from The Soup Dragons
Phil Wilson and Frank Sweeney from The June Brides
Beth Arzy (Jetstream Pony) who sang “Somewhere In China” by Shop Assistants
Pete Astor and Andy Strickland from The Loft and The Weather Prophets
Clare Grogan from Altered Images
Convening for one night only were “house” band The Sensitivities:
Amelia Fletcher (vocals, gutar)
Rob Pursey (bass guitar)
Bob Collins (lead guitar)
Ian Button (drums, backing vocals)
Clare Grogan singing the Primitives’ Crash. Photo: Ken Copsey

Ian Button: There was the bit where Sean D was handing over to Clare G at the practice. I think they knew each other but not sure?

We’d just played “Hang Ten” with Sean but we’d done it really fast, and as he was leaving he told Clare, “Watch out for these guys, they’re punk rockers!” 

I didn’t pluck up the nerve to ask Clare if it had been her in a beret across the room from me at a dark and quite empty Theatre of Hate gig in 1980/81. I wouldn’t wear my glasses back then, and I’ve often told people it was her. I don’t know if I want that memory confirmed or shattered! 

Rob Pursey: One of my favourite memories of the rehearsals was Pete (Paphides) sitting cross-legged on the floor, listening intently as we worked through the songs. He seemed very happy, and serious at the same time, and I suddenly had a very clear idea of what he’d have been like as a teenager.  I got glimpses of teenage versions of loads of people that day.  Everyone still seemed able to tap into the idealism and the sheer excitement of the music that defined their youth.  I think that’s what made the occasion so wonderful.

The gig was a blur, and we had to concentrate really hard on all these songs we’d only just learnt. But when James started singing ‘Pristine Christine’ a shiver went down my spine and I remember thinking ‘try to remember this moment’. 

Andy Strickland and “silver fox of indiepop” Pete Astor from The Loft and The Weather Prophets. Photo: Ken Copsey

Amelia Fletcher: My main memory is trying to carry on doing backing vocals and playing guitar correctly while my childhood hero, Clare Grogan, leant against me and shared my mic, in a rock n roll manner. 

I was shocked at how everyone on the stage, and in the audience, looked exactly the same as they did in 1987.  The lighting may have been favourable.

The house band in their natural habitat: rehearsal space

Bob Collins: For me, some highlights

1. Also on Clare G entering the room and going from extremely nervous to her immediately putting us at our ease, laughing and joking and not being precious about anything. In particular a great snapshot memory for me is Clare and Amelia doing a quiet practice of the Crash harmonies while i accompanied on guitar. That was a real ‘pinch yourself’ moment.

2. Sean also being super friendly and giving us the long version of the story he tells on the film (it was worth it!)

3. James from the Sea Urchins appearing hugely nervous at first in rehearsal (hope he won’t mind me saying that) but then carrying it off just perfectly. His singing (as evidenced on the film) is fantastic. And the gasp from the room as he took the stage from people who knew who he was, the second gasp from the people that didn’t when he introduced himself, and the third gasp when we actually started the song! This was a song I didn’t really know before we started rehearsing but it became possibly my favourite one of all and, by the time we’d performed, it felt for me like the all time classic that other people already knew it was!

Courtesy of Bob Collins

I’ve attached two images – one is obviously the notes for the chords and structure of “Pristine Christine,” and the other is my annotated list of songs. I thought this would give a tantalising glimpse into a couple of songs we didn’t perform (and one one we did but isn’t on the film), but I also thought it might work as a fun competition for chickfactor readers to see who can work out what the annotations next to each song mean (not entirely sure I can remember myself!)

Pete Paphides, Needle Mythology: Rob Pursey was kind of joking when he said that this is the indiepop Last Waltz. In fact, I know he was joking a bit. But I don’t think that’s too far off the mark really because it really dawned on us in the rehearsal room as we saw all the singers coming and going one by one to do their vocals for the only time prior to the concert which was happening that evening that this had turned into something really unique and special and possibly unrepeatable and certainly on the evening that absolute magic, that absolute fizz in the air that you really were watching something you were going to remember for the rest of your life. I’m so glad that for once in my life I had the foresight to ask a camera crew to come along and film it—and a really good one by the way—and there’s an absolute magic in the air.

Pete Paphides. Photo: Ken Copsey

Everything was a highlight really. It was wonderful to see James Knox give such a charismatic performance of “She Looked Right Through Me.” Beth Arzy really did justice and more to “Somewhere in China” – I think she really got the fragile beauty of that song. The house band were just amazing, they were at it for more than an hour, just incredible, turning their hands to the peculiarities and brilliant detail in every single song. James Roberts from the Sea Urchins just comes strolling into that room like it was only the day before since we’s last seen him and not 30 years ago  His voice sounded so beautiful on ”Pristine Christine.” Phil Wilson unleashing his inner rock and roll star, a complete change of personality in stepping on to that stage, it was incredible. Pete Astor, the silver fox of indie pop now, just really imperiously locking into the brilliance of those songs and Andy next to him. Sean Dickson who relived the riotous, carefree energy of Hang Ten, so charismatic. And then of course Clare Grogan, the pure starburst of brilliance and charisma and loveliness, she just charmed everyone around her as you can see in the film. And then that emotional climax, Amelia stepping forward to do “Sensitive,” really doing the song justice, just fantastic, and of course the version of “Talulah Gosh” was just as moving for all of us who were there.

available to purchase and download
Courtesy of Bob Collins
Clare and Amelia in rehearsal; courtesy of the Sensitivities
The force of nature that is Clare Grogan. Photo: Ken Copsey
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An Interview with Mark Goodall About His El Records Book

ON THE PASSAGE OF A FEW PEOPLE THROUGH A RATHER BRIEF MOMENT IN TIME: él RECORDS

40 years since the start of él Records there is now a burst of activities commemorating Mike Alway’s pop-art label él Records. Stefan Zachrisson talks to Mark Goodall about his new book Bright Young Things. The Art and Philosophy of él Records.

”If él wasn’t a label it would be a restaurant or a bar, one of those old bars where there’s no music at all, loads of good conversation, where you have this special relationship with the barman – though not too pally – the idea of something private and delicately euphoric.” A very Buñuel influenced Mike Alway quote from a lengthy Sounds feature on él Records in 1986.

The people hanging around at this metaphorical bar during five years in the mid to late 1980s would other than Alway be such eccentric aesthetes as Philippe Auclair, Nick Currie, Simon Fisher Turner, Bid, Nick Wesolowski, Cat Rees, Julia Gilbert, Matt Lipsey, Jessica Griffin, Vic Godard, Richard Preston, Karl Blake, Jim Phelan and Kevin Wright, to name just a few. During that brief time this group of people contributed to what became a really special record label.

Would-Be-Goods by Nick Wesolowski

él founder Mike Alway loved 1960s pop culture but, like many of the él musicians, came out of the post-punk era; an environment where pretentiousness and curiosity really could thrive. He was a&r for Cherry Red in the early 1980s, releasing the classic Pillows & Prayers compilation, introducing Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt to each other, and generally introducing ”light music” as a way forward.

Many of the él influences came from film; the name is from a Buñuel movie and directors Powell & Pressburger and Orson Welles were constantly mentioned as influences by Alway. When ”indie” was at its most mundande in the late 1980s Alway instead used él to create a kind of parallel fantasy world – in an admittedly low-budget way – suggesting personas, concepts and titles for the musicians. Some of the results were glorious failures but mostly it really did work.

What is the legacy of él today? Most people cannot name one record that él released. But like many of the best independent record labels of yore él was about more than actual music, even though a lot of great records came out of it. It’s a kind of fleeting spirit, which for me, regarding él, has lived on not only through a great influence on Japanese pop but also with the stylish playfulness of someone like Tyler, the Creator.

Louis Philippe by Nick Wesolowski

So él may seem obscure but it’s not completely forgotten: Spring of 2025 sees the release of two major retrospectives: Mark Goodall’s book Bright Young Things. The Art and Philosophy of él Records and the compilation The Rubens Room. Él Records: In Camera. Furthermore, several former él artists are releasing new music and doing concerts (Louis Philippe, Momus, Hotel Artesia, The Monochrome Set, Would-Be-Goods), while él as a name has for some time been re-activated as an archival/reissue label.

To highlight these happenings I interviewed Mark Goodall about his book. Goodall’s also the author of Sweet and Savage, a book about mondo films, and Gathering of the Tribe about music and the occult. He co-produced and directed the film Holy Terrors based on the stories of Arthur Machen, and is the singer/guitarist in the group Rudolf Rocker. (Text and inteview: Stefan Zachrisson)

Bid from the Monochrome Set; courtesy of Tapete Records

Chickfactor: It’s a book about él – how would you describe your relation to
the label and its music?
Mark Goodall: It was only through conceptualising the book that I realised the scope of él records. Up to that point I had loved bits and pieces of their output – the first Momus LP, the Flair 89 LP, The World in Winter – and of course The Monochrome Set before that. I loved the post-punk/new wave scene and thought it was the most innovative period in pop music history since the 1960s.

What was your main motivation writing the book, the point you wanted to make? 
With the book I wanted to explore the unique qualities of the label. There were lot of indie labels, but only one él. To me, the label had a ‘philosophy’ rather than just a modus operandi that stood it apart. That came of course from Mike Alway.

él records founder Mike Alway

How would you, in short, describe that kind of “philosophy”?
The él philosophy to me seems to be:
1. The aim to create great (musical) art by synthesising other art forms, especially film, fashion and graphic design
2. The idea of creating new music by re-inventing 1960 pop sounds into a new wave
3. To combine the hit factories of the 1960s with Andy Warhol’s ‘Factory’ into a creative form of collaborative practice
This is kind of what my book is trying to explore.

Was there something surprising that you realized while writing the
book, some new insight/understanding?
Through interviewing almost everyone involved in the label, I learned more about the working methods of the label and the artists. The collaborative nature came across in a way that was not evident. Through assembling the records as a distinct body of work, the beauty of the visual aspect of the label became more apparent.

How was it for those involved to look back and talk about their él past? Did anyone say no to being interviewed?
It was forty years ago so memories were somewhat frayed! I think the timing was right – not so long that those involved were no longer around, but long enough for any resentments to have mellowed. I think it was mostly an enjoyable experience and a confirmation of the excellence of the work that they did. The only person who did not respond to an interview was Julia Gilbert (Anthony Adverse).

If you’d pick one él artefact – a song, a record, a cover, a lyric, an image, etc – as the pivotal one, what would it be and why?
Difficult to choose as there are so many classic LPs of course – The Camera Loves Me, Choirboys Gas, Royal Bastard – but probably for me the Marden Hill Cadaquez LP is the most extraordinary combination of originality, variety and skill. In short form, the 7-inch and 10-inch sets are incredible.

Marden Hill

él was influenced by things like the past, art, movies etc and created something new. Is there anything going on culturally today that you’d say function a bit like él did?
No, it was totally original, unique, because of that combination you mention, and while the spirit is evident in other labels and artists there is nothing like it today and probably never will be. The world has changed and could certainly do with another ‘él’ but I can’t see it. It was a product of particular historical moment…

Mark Goodall’s book Bright Young Things. The Art and Philosophy of él Records is published by Ventil Verlag on April 11.

A Q&A with Mark Goodall and Louis Philippe about the book takes place at the Rough Trade shop at Denmark Street in London on April 14.

The 25-track compilation album The Rubens Room. Él Records: In
Camera is released by Tapete Records on April 11.

New albums by former él artists this Spring: Louis Philippe, The Road to the Sea, Momus, Quietism, and Hotel Artesia, Everywhere Alone.

Stefan Zachrisson is a librarian in Stockholm, Sweden, who’s also the administrator of Adeste Fideles, a Facebook group about él and writes the CORRESPONDENCE newsletter. Previously he’s been involved in the international pop underground through BCNVT, Friendly Noise and Benno.
Oh Constance / Photo by Peter Moss
Photo by Peter Moss
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Songwriting School with Kendall Jane Meade

Kendall Jane Meade by Jimmy Pham

Songwriting School
Ten singers and songwriters who have inspired me always, and on my new album, Space. By Kendall Jane Meade

1. Joni Mitchell 
An old boyfriend gave me a copy of Blue after we had broken up, and I was instantly hooked. I remember also getting The Softies album It’s Love around the same time. Both albums influenced me like crazy, and still do.

  1. 2. Vashti Bunyan
    Gordon Zacharias turned me on to Vashti’s album Diamond Day. It was produced by Joe Boyd, who also produced Nick Drake. I loved how incredibly gently she sang. People are always telling me to sing louder in live shows, which I kind of love not doing as an act of rebellion. Vashti would approve. So would Mark Linkous. They both taught me there is strength in softness, too. You just need to find your audience who want to listen to whatever you’re doing.


3. Margo Guryan
My kind of pop queen. A delicate vocalist with a voice like no other. “Take a Picture” and “Think of Rain” are so beautiful, and “What Can I Give You” has a rollicking, party-like quality that I have always wanted to capture in one of my recordings but never get there. Maybe my next album. 

4. Christine McVie
Truly an icon. Her solo album, Christine Perfect (Perfect is her maiden name), is amazing. There is a song, “When You Say,” that is always on my eternal playlist. There is a string interlude in the song that’s completely unexpected but works. It’s quirky. I also relate to her as being totally cool with being part of a greater group in Fleetwood Mac. She didn’t need to be in the spotlight, yet she was quietly writing all the hits. I’m also going to cram in here that I love Stevie Nicks’ solo album Bella Donna.

Kendall Jane Meade by Jimmy Pham

5. Sandy Denny
I cover one of her songs, Solo, on my new album, Space. That song is one of those tunes that I have loved for decades. I feel that it tells my story as of late, so I finally recorded it. Sandy’s voice is stunning and airy and also ethereal. Her work in Fairport and her solo work are otherworldly.

  1. 6. Kirsty MacColl
    Gail (Chickfactor editor and longtime pal) turned me on to Kirsty. Her strength and confidence is what I admire. There is such life to her voice, and her songs are so brilliant. I would say that “Days” is one of my favorites. A little-known fact is that she sequenced U2’s The Joshua Tree because her husband at the time was U2’s producer, Steve Lillywhite.
Margaret White and Kendall Jane Meade at SXSW – Photo: Shelby Meade

7. Joan Baez
What an absolute icon. Totally brave, outspoken, and a truly sensitive soul with the balls to take an antiwar stance from such a young age. “Diamonds and Rust” and “Sweet Sir Galahad” are two of the songs she wrote during the heyday of her career, and they are both stunning. I highly recommend the recent documentary about her called I Am A Noise.

  1. 8. Patsy Cline
    While she didn’t write many of her songs, her voice and delivery broke my heart and soothed me at the same time. I remember being a college student at Boston University, finding her music at a used record store and hyper fixating on “She’s Got You” and, of course, “Crazy,” which was written by Willie Nelson.
Kendall at SXSW this year. Photo: Margaret White

9. Juliana Hatfield
I was a huge Blake Babies fan and later a fan of her solo work. She can do it all and is still one of the strongest performers out there. I remember seeing her solo shows back when I was in college at TT The Bears in Cambridge. After one show I saw her in the ladies’ room and she was dripping in sweat, that’s how passionately she performs.

  1. 10. Kim Deal
    She was the coolest part of the Pixies, and the Breeders albums were a massive influence on me. So catchy, cool, and effortless. I’m so happy she has a new album out. Just thinking of her makes me want to crank up “Divine Hammer” in my car and drive fast. You can hear this influence in the choruses of my new song “Stereo” off of Space.

Listen to Kendall’s new record SPACE here!

Kendall and pals at SXSW. Photo: Shelby Meade
The gang at SXSW. Photo: Anet Prinz

 

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Dancer and Whisper Hiss Interview Each Other

Dancer. Photo: Chris Hogge

Glasgow’s Dancer and Portland’s Whisper Hiss Team Up for Split album and chickfactor co-interview

Whisper Hiss (Meredith Butner, Rhiannon Flowers, Jenny Rahlf, Jon Schlaffman) are a four-piece queer post-punk band from Portland, Oregon, and have been the go-to local opener on most indiepop and post-punk house and DIY shows for bands touring through Portland since 2017. Dancer (Gemma Fleet, Chris Taylor, Gavin Murdoch, Andrew Doig) are a four-piece mutant disco post-punk band from Glasgow, Scotland, that only formed in 2023. Split is a split 12-inch featuring six songs each by both Dancer and Whisper Hiss. This split release came about by chance. The label HHBTM pitched the idea of the bands recording a few extra tracks and doing a split 12-inch as a way of connecting them.

Whisper Hiss by Lukas Taylor @nonameynonamey

Dancer has been pretty prolific in a short time of being a band, can you tell us a little about your songwriting process?
Gemma (she/they): I’d say we are all songwriters in the band and we mix up the process all the time. It might be a fully formed song brought into practice that we all add our bits to, on bass (Love) or guitar (Bluetooth hell), vocal (Passionate Sunday) or a song that started with a drum beat (rein it in) – The split LP songs were played out all together and came together in pretty much one practice apart from You Saint that Chris brought in and Gig Economy that Doig had.
Chris (he/they): We’re just all fiends for a new song. We had a writing moratorium at the start of the year and the second we ended it there were 8 new songs we’d written individually for Dancer in secret from each other. It’s a compulsion for all of us I think. I’ll often be getting set up in practice or just idly playing and Andrew will suddenly ask “what’s that?”. I try to repeat what I did and 5 minutes later everyone else has turned it into a song. We just pounce on them when they appear sometimes. I think we write so much because there is no set process other than, “does anyone have something new that sounds good?”
Andrew (He/Him): Yeah it can be quick, I think we are developed and there is an almost gleeful energy with the songwriting. Dare I say it’s confidence sort of propelling us? Maybe that confidence has not always been there in past projects you know? So it’s infectious. I think we all think the band is good and the prospect of another song is always exciting so they keep coming.
Meredith (she/her): I love what you said about confidence! I’ve mostly played music with other women and self-taught musicians and we’ve had trouble fully owning that word. In my first bands, just being on stage itself was an act of bravery. I’ve written in bands where self doubt hovered around or we were sometimes too apologetic about our ideas with each other, and when it comes to booking or promotion I’ve also feared asking for too much or appearing too confident which has led to missed opportunities. It’s something I’m really working on looking at. It helps to have Rhiannon as a front person and co-conspirator  — she’s such a force, and not a person who makes herself small. With Whisper Hiss, I feel that infectious spark you mentioned in a clear way… like I actually know that what we have is special.
Rhiannon (she/her): It’s so ingrained to cut ourselves down a notch. Saying you have something special doesn’t take away from other people or mean they aren’t also special. I want to see people around me feeling empowered and celebrated. The more I witness it in others the more inspired I am to fully show up as myself. I want that feeling and I want it for those around me.

Dancer. Photo: Chris Hogge

Lyrically, are there any themes that come up often or tie together your songs on Split?
Gemma: Priority Girl is about the ‘Karen’ phenomenon and how distasteful it is to be pushy but remembering too that men complain all the time. The moral of the story is if you have a Karen you use them to do good. Gig economy follows this theme as is about someone ordering Deliveroo in a snow storm and complaining when it arrives then the driver in their haste to correct, gets in an accident ! I’m concerned that people working in the gig economy are not protected by employment law and sick pay is hard to claim.
Rhiannon: I felt instantly connected to your lyrics Gemma, and honestly felt a kinship. I feel like we both have a storytelling aspect to our songs. My lyrics are mostly autobiographical and come from my personal and internal world, then I make connections from that to things around me. I write a lot about anxiety and breaking free. On SPLIT the songs stemmed from the song Movable Objects which is mostly about freedom from stagnation and the idea that there are many paths to get somewhere.. and how a lot of what’s pressed on to us in society literally doesn’t fit anyone or make anyone happy. Fawn tells a few stories but actually was inspired by a time I was recently assaulted on a bus. A man cornered me and it was really scary! I was able to get away with the help of another woman and got off. The song is about the lose-lose where if you are noticed you are under threat, but then when you are more invisible people also don’t respect your personal space or stomp on you. Envision Another chorus actually came to me in a dream! It had the melody and everything and I actually remembered when I woke up for once!

Do you have any before show rituals?
Gemma: Shadow boxing whilst jogging a loop around the venue as the Rocky theme tune plays over the PA. In my head.
Andrew: I spend some time trying to remember my parts, as they always seem to get vague in my mind around show time. Recently I have been playing the beginning of Passionate Sunday wrong every time we play it live. The mind does weird things under mild duress.
Chris: For me, it has always been trying to find the perfect balance between time/coffee/food/alcohol. It feels like there’s this perfect combo for playing live and the constant variables (mostly how much time between arrival and show, and how much of that time is already planned for) keep it interesting. It sounds complicated but it’s mostly about not getting too drunk even if you have 3 hours to kill at a bar that doesn’t serve food or coffee.
Rhiannon: Chris that sounds a lot like me! You’ll find me in a dark corner of the bar measuring out exactly how many sips of one cocktail I’ll have and at what hour before going on stage. And strategically eating dinner 1.5 hours before doors. It’s very precise mathematics and science! I also like to do power pose, that’s a good before show move.

Whisper Hiss. Photo: Alisha Flowers

You are all active in other bands, is it hard to juggle the various schedules?Gemma: I think it’s harder to juggle a full time job. I really enjoy my job and doing bands so try to keep things relaxed, In the past I’ve done mad things like played in Paris, driven back to London, slept for 3 hours then went to work or gone to work directly off of a flight from Texas.
Andrew: Yes and no. There are certain weeks where every night is a band practice or a show and sometimes that feels like living a dream and sometimes it just feels like too much. Personally I have a habit of taking a lot on with music stuff. But then you think what would we all do otherwise?
Chris: This is usually the case (and certainly is for everyone else in Dancer), but for the first time in my life I am in only one band and it is my only active project. I have enough freedom in Dancer that I can use pretty much all of my guitar ideas so I’m pretty satisfied with the situation. I’ve noticed recently that the only kinds of shows that get me out of the house are improv or heavy stuff, perhaps because it’s less often we play with bands like that. I’d like to do something in one of those spheres again maybe.

What do you each do for fun outside of music?
Gemma: Watch YouTube videos of Idlewild at the Brat Awards with lovely big mug of tea. Oh, that’s still music. Maybe just the tea then, in silence?
Andrew: See above, sometimes not much else! I force myself to read, it’s one of my favourite things to do but I rarely feel relaxed enough to concentrate. Cinema. Food is good. Riding my bike. Glasgow is very grey and rainy even in the Summer sometimes so there is tendency to stop everything and go outside if good weather happens.
Chris: I’ve rekindled a childhood love of video games in recent years, which has been surprisingly rewarding. I can’t say it’s entirely unrelated to music as the soundtracks make up a lot of my listening these days. So long as you completely ignore any online community involving games whatsoever, it can be a lot of fun. I try to always play stuff that is nothing like anything I’ve played previously, which has been pretty doable mostly. There’s a lot of really great and unique stuff out there, much of it that couldn’t exist in another medium. It’s a good time for it. Other than that and music, my wife, cats, food and travel keep me happy.

Whisper Hiss. Photo: Alisha Flowers

What is the Portland music scene like? Supportive? Difficult to access? A bit of both?!
Jon (he/they): Portland is overflowing with bands; so many bands that there’s no way that I’m aware of even a fraction of them. From teenage bands playing house shows and whatever few all ages venues there are, all the way up to dad bands and literal grandparents playing shows every single night all over town. Legit DIY venues to play are dwindling, it seems, since I moved here in ‘08 – there used to be a lot more small spaces/dive bar type of venues where you could catch a random incredible show on any given evening. I wouldn’t say it’s particularly difficult to access, but it depends on your goals, I suppose. The punk-adjacent/queer/weirdo art and music community that I feel like I’ve become a small part of has been nothing but supportive and inspiring. That said, I’m sure there are tons of other “scenes” or music communities in Portland that aren’t on my radar at all.
Jenny (she/they): I think it is supportive and there are also some mini scenes within the larger Portland music scene. There are a lot of bands here— I feel like you have to know someone to get in with certain venues. Honestly, I’m the most hands off in the band when it comes to booking/ promoting— I very much appreciate my bandmates for getting us out there and making connections.
Meredith: Whisper Hiss has been so well received by audiences and I generally feel so much support from other local musicians and bands but, with a large number of bands in town vying for a limited number of slots, it can feel difficult to break into larger rooms with bigger crowds. Sometimes when we don’t get on a show we’d love to play we joke that, because our band name starts with a W, we must be on the bottom of all the alphabetized booking lists.
Rhiannon: Oh yes our name starting with a W has led to our obscurity, that’s gotta be it (Laughing). I feel like we have a really sweet scene of bands where shows sometimes feel like just hanging out with friends and sharing art. There’s a lot of photographers in the scene too. I met my friend Colette from the band Perimeters, because she kept posting these cool photographs of us after our shows, and one day I wrote her and was like “Come say hi next time!” And she’s such a gem.

Are there any great Portland bands that have been around forever but might not have hit the UK that we should check out?
Jenny: The Prids are the only ones I can think of that have been around a while— not sure if they’ve toured the uk, but worth checking out. It seems like many bands that had been around when we first started out sadly disbanded during the pandemic. There are so many bands here and I’m sure ones I haven’t named that deserve recognition.
Jon: Sad Horse. The members of that band also own one of the few remaining DIY show spaces in town – Turn, Turn, Turn
Meredith: Yeah, my suggestions maybe haven’t been around forever… Yuvees just moved to Brooklyn, but they are an ex-Portland band putting out great stuff. Public Pleasure’s first full length is coming out mid-October and I’m really excited to hear that. Collate, Love in Hell, and Perimeters are all great bands and friends. I’m happy All Girl Summer Fun Band are playing shows again.

Dancer. Photo: Chris Hogge

We want to know about the Glasgow scene too! Does it feel inclusive? What bands should we check out?
Andrew: There is so much to say about this. Obviously there is a whole lore around Glasgow and music, it is much romanticised. Firstly none of us (now) are actually Scottish in the band, so as an English person coming into the ‘scene’ at a certain age, having lived in London for many years previously, has been fascinating. It definitely lives up to expectations in some senses, but as with all scenes the idea that everyone knows each other etc is exaggerated. But then again it can feel small and concentrated enough that you do tend to see some of the classic Glasgow characters around quite easily. There are so many different strands too – improv, electronic and clubbing scenes, beyond the expected indie pop or whatever people might think. It’s diverse and exciting, for such a small city there are loads of venues and stuff is going on all the time, but then on the flip side it can feel repetitive at times. Like there is this great venue The Glad Cafe, its ace, but I have been there like 6 times in the last couple of months and starting to get cabin fever! It’s better to get out and about though, of course, and for me and Gemma (a married couple in our 40s) it has certainly given us a fresh and new social aspect to life that we weren’t maybe getting in London so much anymore. We have met a lot of nice people who have supported Dancer and other projects we have done, so yeah it feels inclusive to us right now.
As for bands to check out there is L, Guests, Essen, Errol’s Hot wax is a cool label, Goldmold another label of note (who released our first 2 EP’s), Nightshift and Set Piece are 2 other bands I play bass in who I like haha, Come Outside, Onat Onol, Susannah Stark, Simone Antigone, Coolant, Radio Banter, Edwin Stevens, Buffet Lunch (technically Edinburgh), Nightschool records, Dragged Up, Even Sisters, Coffin Mulch, Pink Pound, R.Aggs. The list goes on and on and these are the artists within Dancer’s gravity really, there is a universe of other far out things happening. I will say that even though they don’t seem to live in Glasgow anymore, Still House Plants latest LP is pretty much my album of the year, that record blows my mind!

Is there anywhere in the world you would really like to take Whisper Hiss?Meredith: We really haven’t been many places with this project yet. Getting to know you all and working on Split has us dreaming of coming to the UK for sure.
Rhiannon: Right now coming to the UK sounds dreamy and I’d also love to tour other parts of Europe. I’m basically itching to tour! Take me everywhere!
Jon: Oh jeez, yeah, I’m up for whatever! I’m the most recent member of the band, so I haven’t done any touring as a Whispie yet but I’d love to get this batch of songs on the road in front of new faces. I think we’re alldreaming of a Euro tour; we’ll see what opportunities present themselves! Touring the west coast kinda sucks since there are really only a few cities over here, and there’s a great deal of distance between them. It’s basically Seattle, maybe Oly, Portland, and then nothing for over 600 miles (965 km for y’all, I googled!) until you hit the bay area. I envy east coast (and Euro) bands who can get in the van and play a ton of shows back to back in different rad cities each night for quick little tours or whatever. You don’t have to spend a whole day driving just to get to like Sacramento or something lol.
Jenny: UK tour with Dancer!

Like us, you guys have maybe been in other bands previously, tell us about them and do you currently do any other projects?
Rhiannon: My first band ever was called Drastic Plastic. I was only 19 and had just moved to Portland because I heard it had the most lesbians per capita. I didn’t know what per capita meant but it sounded promising. At the time there was a thriving queer punk scene, and even though I was a tad too young to have been part of riot grrrl, I was heavily influenced by all those bands from here and Olympia. I’d had this realization about being a fan. These feminist and queer bands were about building community, not hero worship. I realized I wanted to be part of a community of artists creating social change, instead of idolizing others. My next band was called Seagull and Wave, it was the first time where I played keys and sung. It was a new wavey project with just guitar, keys and drum machine. It was fun but terrifying to sing and play at the same time. It was very new. Whisper Hiss is the first band where I really found myself as a musician. I realized I can naturally play by ear, and key parts just sort of started flowing for me. Right now Whisper Hiss is my only band, but I’ve been jamming with a friend of mine on an Italo Disco/new wave inspired project that I’m excited to develop!
Meredith: In college and just after, I played guitar in a riot grrrl band called Athena Starwoman. In the early 2000s I was in a pop project called 10¢ (the dimes). This was a cool time for Portland DIY and I was active in lots of stuff like zines, crafts, running a tiny venue and recording studio called the Portland Robot Steakhouse, and hosting Handmade Bazaar a backyard summer buy/sell/trade sale with food and bands. I took a bunch of time off from music and then started a band called Anther who I played with before joining Whisper Hiss. Sometimes I write and record songs with my husband at home.
Jenny: My band history dates back to my late teens. I played in several bands up until my mid twenties when I fell off playing music for about 8 years! I left all my gear in my ex partner’s moms shed. When I went back to collect my gear I felt nostalgic and realized how much I missed music! Long story short, Whisper Hiss was born and that’s the only band I’ve been playing in since—unless you count Untitled Bedroom Project which really just consists of me and my girlfriend informally jamming out in the bedroom.
Jon: Whisper Hiss is all I’m doing at the moment (I work full-time in comics publishing and I just don’t have the youthful energy I once had lol). I played for years in a garage-punk trio here called BOBBY PERU which morphed into another band called BARB. I did a noise rock thing called HAUNTED HEAD for a little while and there was also a dub-influenced punk-ish project called COOL FLOWERS with some homies who have all been in dozens of other bands. Getting to open a show for Anika was a major highlight of my time with that band!

Whisper Hiss. Photo: Alisha Flowers

Whisper Hiss is a fun band, How does it feel to play together?
Rhiannon: Thank you, Dancer is very fun too! Playing together feels electric. There’s a magic that happens and we all love experimenting and being creative together. At shows we have a lot of fun. I sort of jump a lot and I like to hop over to my bandmates when I’m not behind my keyboard.
Meredith: We do have fun! I can be a kind of moody or intense person when left to my own devices, but group projects bring out a different side of me and creative collaboration really helps me access joy and let go. I’m actually such a fan of my bandmates, both as musicians and people, and I feel lucky every time we play together that I get to add my ideas and energy to the mix with theirs.
Jenny: We don’t call ourselves moody and the beat for nothing! We all bring our own unique brand of moodiness that I think we embrace and believe makes us special. We also have a lot of fun! I’ve never been in a band where writing songs is so exciting and I’m so incredibly proud of everything we do! I admire my bandmates—they are endlessly talented!
Jon: So good! It’s all felt very natural to me and the band environment has been full of love and support. They’d been a band for a while already when I joined so there were a bunch of songs that I needed to learn right off the bat, which was a new experience for me, and a lot of fun. Going into the band, having studied and learned the songs, I knew I’d be working with talented and creative songwriters so I was super excited and I’m very proud of the work we’ve done together since then. Very much looking forward to the next batch of songs – I love the whole process of songs taking shape and seeing everybody’s ideas falling into place. For me, the excitement of building up to a recording session, and ultimately an album is hard to beat, and I feel like we’ve proven to ourselves that we can kick out the jams in a pinch, if need be lol!

How do you tend to record Whisper Hiss? Do you have someone who records you regularly? and how is Portland for rehearsal spaces and recording studios in general?
Meredith: My husband is a recording engineer and we worked with him on the majority of our recordings. They were each done in different studios, I assisted and then he and I mixed at home with input from the band. Our full length tape was difficult to mix and ended up going through a lot of different drafts and taking a long time. When Jon joined the band we were still mixing that. With Jon’s new energy we quickly wrote three songs and wanted to get them recorded to have a representation of the new line up. We rent a practice space in a building that has a record store, a screen printer, rehearsal rooms and a recording studio. Jon had recorded there before and floated the idea of using it this time. It sounded so easy – we wheeled our amps down the hallway – and I loved the idea that I could just show up and play bass and wouldn’t have so many roles. Split was recorded there with Eric Crespo. He mixed at home and we went back and forth through email with notes.
Rhiannon: Recording has felt really different over the years! Our sound has distinct threads that make it Whisper Hiss, but also has changed a lot over time, and that reflects in our mixes. For our cassette we were trying for a big sound, and recorded each instrument separately. For Split we went a different approach and performed live for our takes with overdubbed vocals, bells and handclaps. I actually used a front desk bell for the beginning of Come Feel Me. I wanted the feel of working behind a front desk and someone is trying to get your attention in an insistent entitled way. I got a bit bell-happy and pushed for even louder bell in the mix, but I’m glad I got convinced that less front desk bell is more front desk bell. I want to figure out a Velcro situation on my synth so I can use the bell live.  We had more fun ideas of accents and noises to add this time. I hope to keep experimenting with cool sounds even more next album! Also Meredith brought a huge tin of peanuts to recording, I will be expecting that luxury item going forward.

Whisper Hiss. Photo: KC Jonze @thelonius_punk

In 2015 Gemma and myself spent 24 Hours in Portland, checked out the Donut shop, walked around in the sun and generally buzzed off of how cool it felt to be there. The city has a reputation (to us anyway) of being one of the coolest in the USA, how would you challenge this perception? Or is it in fact just very cool?
Rhiannon:  I love Portland, it is very cool in my opinion! There are some real issues with gentrification which has been happening for a long time. Another recent thing that’s come up is the music scene speaking out against Live Nation making a venue here. We try to support independently owned venues, and keep corporations from controlling and messing with the music scene. Portland is the last major city to not have Live Nation competing with local venues. Portland has changed a lot since I moved here as a teen in 2001, but it still holds its magic. In the spring there’s incredible cherry blossom trees with petals falling all over you like you are in an enchanted forest. There are small business like bars and cafes in old cute houses, and there are still parts of town that have the old feeling. There’s a lot of amazing people who I love here too. There’s a meandering feel on sidewalks, like no one is in a huge rush to get somewhere. A lot of music and creativity has come from here, and you can feel it.

Do you have a most memorable show?
Chris: Playing Pies Pala Pop Festival in Rennes earlier this year was very special. It was our second show outside of the UK, outdoors in good weather with a crowd that was as into it as we were. The festival had a great line up and really looked after everyone too. The whole thing was like a dream.
Andrew:  The Pies Pala Pop fest in Rennes (France) back in June. Our second show abroad (the first was the day before in Paris) – awesome outdoor stage at a fest with loads of cool bands, good weather, big and responsive crowd. Total dream!
Gemma: I loved the gigs we did supporting Dry Cleaning, it was nerve wracking because it was a big crowd  but people were not there to see us and I really thought we would be ignored or people would just chat. Surprisingly people were really engaged and we were a true warm up for the gig, by the end of the set people were really buzzed.

What is your biggest challenge as a band?
Chris: Getting to do it enough really. I’d get together to write, rehearse, tour or record every day if we could.
Andrew: Keeping it all together I think. Maybe it’s not a secret to mention we have recently changed drummers. Bands are hard. Group dynamics are hard and being on the same page is hard. For all the 99 percent of fun and awesomeness, it’s that 1 rogue percentage that can derail everything.
Gemma: Making music is always the easiest part, it’s the other stuff like organising tours and finding time to look at emails , that sort of admin stuff.

Dancer. Photo: Anthony Gerace

What are your live shows like?
Chris: Very very fun. It sounds like a cop-out answer but it’s an honest one. The comment we got most after coming off stage in Rennes was about how “smiley” we all are. It brings me more joy than anything, and there’s plenty to go around so that’s what we project. People pick up on it, send it back our way etc. Our best shows are just joy feedback loops between us and the crowd.
Andrew: Always great I think! We have definitely improved this year and have been reacting to some great crowd buzz.
Gemma: I really can’t help but dance around a lot, I am definitely the Dancer in Dancer. In previous bands I’ve played the bass so it’s been really freeing and new to work on the performance, I love to use the length of the stage and jump high.

Are there any places you’d like to take Dancer on tour as well?
Chris: Broadly speaking, North America as that’s where the highest concentration of people that listen to us are. I’d love to tour Japan, or really anywhere I’ve never never been. More specifically, I’d like to play The Empty Bottle in Chicago. A great deal of my favourite art and music was made in Chicago, and I hear that place in particular is a lot of fun to play.
Andrew: Well USA is of course a dream, but the money it would cost to do it legally is enough to bankrupt even the wealthiest group these days. I am not sure why it costs so much to get into the USA? For me, playing on a warm Summer’s evening somewhere in Portland with Whisper Hiss would be the greatest. But they just cut creative funding here in Scotland, so the options are shrinking by the day!
Gemma: Italy, it’s the most beautiful country and best food. I have played a few gigs there in the past and absolutely loved it, other countries in Europe have a bit more funding and appreciation of live music than the UK I think.

 

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Catching up with Kristin Thomson and Jenny Toomey

Tsunami. Photo: Michael Galinsky

You chickfactor readers already know that Kristin Thomson and Jenny Toomey were very involved in the independent music world in Arlington/D.C. in the ’90s. Jenny cofounded Simple Machines Records with Brad Sigal and Derek Denckla, and then she and Kristin went on to run the label (with Pat Graham and Mickey Menard) and were involved with the Future of Music Coalition. (Our zine started around the same independent universe/era, and our festivals were surely inspired by their events.) Like many other folks at the time, I had a copy of Simple Machines’ guide to starting a record label, which made it seem like something we could all do (and many of us did!). Tsunami (which also featured John Pamer and Andrew Webster, among others) reformed in recent years to perform and have just released a big fancy box set of their music and are preparing go on a tour early next year with Ida. These two lifelong friends chatted with us recently about indie confessionals, mechanical bulls, and “shorting it up,” among other things.

Hey nerds: check out Loud Is As, the new Tsunami retrospective on Numero Group: 62 tracks over 5LPs collecting together 11 7-inches, 4-track demos, 1993’s, 1994’s The Heart’s Tremolo, plus 1997 A Brilliant Mistake on vinyl for the first time ever.

Read our oral history of Lotsa Pop Losers

chickfactor: What did you guys do this weekend?
Kristin Thomson: On Friday night I went to see Duster, technically a labelmate. Curious to see them since I didn’t really pay attention to them when they were active in the late ’90s. Saturday I drove to Lancaster to see Jawbox, and they are a force to be reckoned with.
Jenny Toomey: On Friday night, I tested the makeup for an insane little joke unboxing video, which basically is me opening the Tsunami box set, pulling them out and throwing them to the side as if I didn’t care about them at all because I’m trying to get to the electric face mask underneath. When I put it on, it burns the word Tsunami on my forehead. So I was working with an actual makeup artist, and it took about 2 1/2 hours. I went out to drinks at the little punk rock club in town. Brian, my husband, who’s a journalist, was down in North Carolina. He got home Saturday. We have this huge CSA because we live in farm country, and I always complain to Kristin that I feel like I have another child, which is all the vegetables I have to find a home for in my stomach by the end of the week. So we did a lot of cooking and watching horror films.
Kristin: Baby Kohlrabi hanging out with you or something?
Jenny: We got Kohlrabi, which was in the share. We’ve also got a weird new vegetable, which is a mixture of broccoli and lettuce or something. How often do you say, “I’m 56 and I’ve tasted a vegetable I never had before”?

Jenny and Andrew

CF: Where do John (Pamer) and Andrew (Webster) live these days?
Jenny: John is a professional photographer and lives in LA. Andrew is a green architect with his own firm and lives near Amherst.
CF: What are your day jobs? Tell us about your pets, kids, hobbies, whatever.
Kristin: I am director of special projects at Media Democracy Fund, we’re an intermediary between the very large foundations and grantees that do work on everything from broadband access to fighting racialized disinformation. There’s a very small team, only eight of us, so we have a lot to do, whether it’s making grants and contracts or doing events or leadership development, building coalitions and things like that. My son Riley is upstairs, but he goes to Saint Joseph’s University and works in the box office at a venue in Philly. Jenny could talk about pets.
Jenny: I can. One of them is currently trying to interrupt our interview. He’s our new rescue, Iggy. I’ve worked at the Ford Foundation for 16 years. I started a technology portfolio where we support organizations working to put rules in the internet environment to protect the public ….
CF: That sounds easy.
Jenny: You don’t know the half of it. Not only have we not managed to do that, but for many years, I watched as we ignored what was coming. Few of my peers thought what was happening in the tech space was all that important. They were all doing social justice work, so they didn’t care about “fancy technology issues,” … and I’m like, “Oh, no, it’s coming for you!” And they’d be like, “I’m not interested, and I don’t have to be.” And I’ve been like, “Oh, no, get ready for the horror film that is going to be your portfolio.” I’ve been working with the president of the foundation because he immediately got it—how dangerous tech was and all the areas we cared about so he’s kept me around. For the last five years, I have focused on building the field of Public Interest Technology. This boils down to training technologists in a more cross-disciplined way so they’re more effective in environments beyond the private sector. We’ve also been creating pathways for them to go into government and civil society so the next generation of technologists can tell their parents, “I just got this costly computer science degree, but it’s OK, I’m going to go work in government, and there is a role for me, and you don’t have to be scared that I just wasted all of that money.” I’m leaving Ford at the end of this year, and Kristin is also leaving her job. So we’re basically just Thelma and Louise-ing the next year.

Tsunami by Pat Graham

CF: That’s awesome. Did you come from musical or artistic families? What were you like as teenagers?
Kristin: The thing that people find most interesting is that we moved a lot. My dad was in corporate real estate, so there was bouncing back and forth from Canada to the United States. You get used to moving and starting fresh with new people and new experiences. I took regular classical piano lessons growing up, but I was listening to music and going to shows and getting more interested in bands mostly by the time I was in high school  when you could maybe go to a show in some weird all ages space or listen to music based on what other people were listening to in your very small school, things like that. By the time I got to college, I was part of the college radio station at Colorado College—KRCC—and was part of the concert committee.
Jenny: With regards to music, we always had music playing in the house. As soon as they came home, they put on the turntable. In junior high, I sang in a professional choir called the National Children’s Choir, which Amy Pickering and Kate Samworth were also in. It was like three practices a week, a month of summer camp and dozens of performances during the holidays. So I sang a lot, but it wasn’t until I was in college that I got into a band. I was such a punk rocker in high school. Many punks went to BCC (Bethesda Chevy Chase high school), and I was lucky to make friends with the Bloody Mannequin Orchestra guys, who would drive me to the punk rock shows in DC. Once that started, I lived from show to show. It became like the most important thing to me. Then I got into Positive Force, which also put on tons of shows. Still, I didn’t start thinking I should be in bands until Dave Grubbs and I were friends in college at Georgetown University, and he asked me, “Why aren’t you in a band?” And I hadn’t thought about it, probably because there weren’t that many girls in bands, and I didn’t see the pathway, but once he asked, it was just like, “Oh my God, sexism, there it is!” I’m doing an undergraduate degree in sexism, and I’m obsessed with punk, but I don’t know I can be in a band. I called my friend Derek Denckla and said, “We should be in a band.” That’s how Geek started, and that eventually led to Tsunami.
CF: When you look at a lot of those old punk photos from DC, it looks like all men in a lot of them. I know there were women there.
Jenny: There was a time before that, like before Minor Threat, where it was a smaller scene, more new wave and weird and I think there were more women in bands then. That’s why Dave Grubbs could ask me that question: Louisville also had a weird, small scene where Tara Key was one of the most influential musicians, and everyone looked up to her. So it didn’t seem odd. But it wasn’t until I was in college, or maybe close to it when I was in college, that Fire Party started. And right then what I couldn’t previously imagine was happening before my eyes.

CF: What was your first concert? The first record you bought?
Kristin: I definitely know the first record. I bought the B-52s yellow record with my own money in probably 7th grade and I loved it. I mean, I must have almost worn it out playing it. I loved it so much. I think the first show I actually saw was the band Chicago, but it was free because they were playing at the New Mexico State Fair. And I just wandered through the crowd. You know how Chicago named lots of their albums numbers? They were on like #19 or something and I was like, “a band can have enough music for 19 records?” That’s amazing. I think the next one was Tom Petty.
Jenny:  I don’t remember seeing a lot of big concerts. The first punk shows that I went to were 9353 shows. They played all the time, at least once a month. I was obsessed with them. They are entirely undersung. Before I went out to shows, Bloody Mannequin Orchestra would play at the BCC talent show, or I would go over to Whitman and Geoff Turner from Gray Matter would be playing at the Whitman talent show. It wasn’t until the late ’90s when I started reviewing music for the Washington Post that I went to large concerts. And I think that’s the only period when I did that. Though I remember I got tickets to see the Michael Jackson Victory tour in high school. But I don’t remember going to many big shows or paying any attention to those types of bands. I never listened to The Beatles to even know what The Beatles were.
Kristin: Now you can listen to The Beatles and like them. It’s a whole new thing for you.
CF: What was Arlington like when you guys were there? It was so chill then. Now it might be the most expensive place to live in the D.C. area.
Jenny: When I went to Georgetown, I really didn’t want to stay in the dorms. So I didn’t most of the time. I lived part-time in a group house with some of the Beefeater folks, Nicki Thomas from Fire Party and some other punks, but by freshman summer, I was staying at Positive Force. I didn’t have a car, so I would ride my bike back and forth to Georgetown from Arlington, and at 8 or 9 p.m., the streetlights would just start blinking yellow. It was that quiet a town. The streets rolled up when Sears closed for the night. Simple Machines Records started in Positive Force house and operated there for many years until we felt the need to start our own house.

Tsunami via their FBK page

CF: How many people lived there?
Kristin: About 10 people at any given time.
Jenny: That would be the worst-case scenario. But you know, people had sweethearts, others would crash at times. The Positive Force meetings were held in the living room. At a certain point, it felt like I’d lived there too long. So, no shade on folks we still love from the house, but we were ready to start a new chapter. I remember when we first moved to the first Simple Machines house, we’d moved in the springtime, and there was a cherry blossom tree blooming in the front yard, and I had my window open, and it was quiet and there were no dishes in the sink, and I just felt soooo happy.
Kristin: I mean, the other part of it is like that we were within a 4-minute car ride or maybe 15 minutes on your bike from Teen-Beat house, Dischord, Dischord Direct, John Pamer’s parents’ house, where we practiced at the beginning, from other bandmates. So there were so many things. Yes, Mount Pleasant had named houses, lots of people lived there, but there were similar lots of connective tissue in Arlington.
Jenny: I’m going to say that if it’s the most expensive place in the world, Kristin, your father gave us bad advice when we were trying to get that house.
Kristin: That’s right. We were like, should we buy it here? He did say don’t buy it. It would have been worth a lot of money. It is sad to say that there were three different houses we lived in. None of them are standing anymore. They’ve all been replaced. Knocked down and something else put in there.
CF: I bet Cynthia Connolly documented it all.
Kristin: And our housemate Pat Graham, who took tons of photos. Pat is amazing. He took tons of Polaroids at the time.

CF: Do you have any stories about being involved with Positive Force, events or actions?
Jenny: How long do you think you lived in the house, Kristin?
Kristin: Maybe two?
Jenny: I was there at least five years, if not more, because I also spent the summers in the first Positive Force house, which could get to like 15 inhabitants. When another house closed down, they just moved everybody into the basement if they needed a place to stay.
Kristin: The show that was the most high stakes in my mind was during the March for Women’s Lives. It was April 1992 where we had Fugazi play two nights and one day it was Bikini Kill and L7 and the other night was Scrawl. I have the flier somewhere. I was already working at NOW and I thought it’d be a great way for people to be attracted to D.C. to come to the March, and also be a fundraiser for Planned Parenthood. But there were also attacks on abortion clinics in the DC region that were timed with the March. So there’s high stakes clinic defense stuff going on, we were raising money for Planned Parenthood—this is where Pat took those very famous photos of Bikini Kill, the one where she’s sitting on the ground—it was a very intense show. And if you read Kathleen’s book, it was an intense day for her too. We pulled it off and it was just very intense.
Jenny: For me, some of the earlier Positive Force things stick more. Events like the Dupont Circle Festival were formative. I was underage; I was too young to get a permit, but somebody older than me went to sign the documents. And we had to do everything ourselves, like building the stage. I took a bunch of bad photos of that Alternatives Festival, and it’s just so interesting to see the range of performers.You had black poets and then Julianna Luecking and then the Morning Glories and with Peter Hayes, and I think Fugazi and the Hated and also my band Geek played. Back then it was easy to do a free outdoor festival. All you had to do was imagine what you wanted, and folks would come together and make it happen. I did something similar at Georgetown. I asked Jeff Nelson to do a poster for it. He silkscreened this very complicated poster because Jeff Nelson has a predilection for very complicated things. He drew all of these people pulling on a rope as one side of a tug-o-war, and he asked Ian MacKaye to do all of the poses so that he could get the musculature right. But if you look at this poster, which I still have, it’s this beautiful multi-color screen print of 4 Ians pulling … like a woman Ian and a black Ian and a long-haired Ian.
Kristin: I also liked the stuff that was very routine, like that we were on schedule for, like, spending the night at the Community for Creative Nonviolence to cover for the staff. So you’d show up at midnight and stay till 5. It was a lot of just making sure there wasn’t an emergency, but the constant working with the Emmaus Services for the Aging to help. A lot of just community service stuff and you felt good helping.
Jenny: It’s a natural tendency for people to be creative and help one another. It’s so strange right now because the media and misinformation are constantly cultivating our distrust of everyone. But even so, over and over again, when there’s a crisis like a hurricane or a flood, the first thing that people want to do is to help each other. And I wonder why it’s hard for us to remember that outside of crisis.


CF: Let’s talk about Simple Machines. What were some of the challenges, proudest moments or biggest achievements? Funny stories?
Jenny: Every element of it was fun, even the end. The gift Kristin gave me, though it initially felt like a punch in the stomach, was when she said, “If we keep working this way, I’m probably not going to love it anymore.” She was right, so we decided to end on a high note. There were moments near the end where it felt like a slog. It could be overwhelming at times … mostly I’m proud of everything. I’m proud of the weird cassette series that we put out. I’m super proud of the music that we put out … I mean, we put out Scrawl records! Come on, how lucky is that? All the events like Lotsa Pop Losers, Working Holiday, or the final Kick The Bucket funeral show. I particularly loved just putting together thousands and thousands of seven-inches and sending them out.
Kristin: Working Holidays fest had the kissing booth too.
Jenny: Kristin, you’re forgetting, though, it wasn’t a kissing booth, it was a confessional.
Kristin: I stand corrected.
Jenny: Different band members held court on one side while audience members sat on the other side and confessed punk rock sins. We’d announce from the stage, “Richard from Versus will be in the confessional between Eggs and the Coctails’ sets.”
Kristin: During Working Holiday, we had a ghost postage situation. Franklin Bruno wrote a song about it. Because we were sending out so many 7-inches routinely, like every other month, here goes 800 packages, we had this standard Pitney Bowes you’d rent and you have to get it refilled at the post office. This is old school, people. You pay some money and they’d reset the numbers on the dial so you had X number of hundreds of dollars of postage. Well, the lady at the post office who we probably saw every other day by accident gave us not $500 but $5000 of postage just by clicking the wrong dials. We realized the error when we got it home, but we didn’t say anything so we used the postage for like 8 months. At the very end when we had no dollars left and we had to take the machine back in.
Jenny: We shouldn’t have done that. We should have just said it was lost.
Kristin: But we went back and it was the same postal clerk who in a panic realized that there had been an error. And I don’t know if she recognized in her handwriting or whatever, but she was like, no, you owe us $4500 and there was no getting around it. We owed them $4500, which we paid and I can’t remember how.
Jenny: Jim Spellman loaned us the money. “Moneybags Spellman.”
Kristin: Adventures in mail order. Otherwise one of us would have an idea, we would rev each other up like, “well, what if we also had a birthday single?” “oh, wait a minute, how about we do a special stamp?” and then … ideas became like AHH and then we would do it.
Jenny: Kristin and I trigger each other’s obsessiveness around this stuff. And it was funny because when we lived in Positive Force house, I’d have to walk through her bedroom to get to my bedroom, which was a freezing sleeping porch. I’d walk through the upstairs defunct kitchen (which Simple Machines turned into our office) and through her bedroom to get to mine. So if she heard me doing Simple Machines work in the kitchen, she’d get out of bed and come out and work, too. And if I heard her going into the kitchen to work, I’d get out of bed and work. So it was this very unhealthy but productive relationship.
CF: Very strong work ethic. (We talk about music categories and getting lumped in with certain artists and how indie rock is kind of a pointless term that doesn’t say anything). Discuss.
Kristin: Indie rock isn’t really the sound. It’s more like the hierarchical status of the band, like they’re not signed to a big label, they’re not a pop star, all those things. So it seemed like an easy way to say like, well, they exist in this layer, even if it’s like everything from the Tinklers to Tar. There was a giant swath of bands that were on decent sized indie labels that played guitars. It’s a catch-all that doesn’t really describe the music.
Jenny: We talked a lot about this on Tom Mullen’s “Washed Up Emo” podcast. For people who believe in emo—and who am I to deny that emo exists?—there have been layers, generations, and waves of music on which people have written dissertations. But being someone who was in the town watching the punk rockers before there was that terminology, it seemed like a strange joke, right? It will always seem revisionist as opposed to factually accurate. Though, of course, it is both. It’s the same thing with riot grrrl.  When people put a name on a genre … tying a band to a specific type of music … I don’t mind if it’s helpful for people to encourage them to try it out … but when this happens, it’s usually because somebody is on a deadline. It’s a bit of a shortcut.
Kristin: These days it’s almost like a drop-down menu of particular genres and like a UX on something being uploaded.
CF: A lot of the stuff that we all cared about back then—integrity, creative control, feminism—still matters because it’s ingrained in our DNA, but feels like a luxury at a time when it’s so hard for bands to make any money. How have things changed for you? Both of you have proper jobs so it’s not like you have to take time off from bartending or whatever to go on tour. What were some of the challenges that came along the way?
Jenny: One of the reasons Kristin raised the concern about whether we should continue the record label was because it got to a point where we couldn’t do anything well. We couldn’t work an interesting day job because we had to take chunks of time off to tour. We couldn’t tour enough to cover all our expenses because we had to be home to get the records out. We found ourselves in an impossible scenario. Some labels solved that problem by getting a financial partner, selling the label, or bringing someone in. The things taking up a lot of time at that point were press and promotion, which had little to do with why we wanted to put the records out in the first place. Sometimes people tell us, “It’s so cool that you didn’t sell out.” But let me tell you, there weren’t a lot of buyers. And of the people who took deals, there weren’t many great successes. I may have felt a twinge of jealousy when a band got a lot of attention, but anytime you got close to these major label people, you could see these relationships were pretty transactional. Even when I was on 4AD, the folks were nice but they’d always talk about music that “was going to happen” or music that was “over”. Everything was rated in this flat commercial binary. In the year that I got a salary from 4AD and didn’t have to work a job, the whole process killed the joy of writing music.
Kristin:  I wanted to insert something in the record so we don’t forget it later because we’re sort of in this category. While we were busy on tour with Tsunami—especially as we did fewer sort of elaborate projects involving many bands like a Working Holiday series or the Machine series, and it was like we’re helping the Raymond Brake or Scrawl or Franklin Bruno with the actual record—that was when it became more challenging for Tsunami to also put out records and go on tour because we had responsibilities. Pat Graham ran our mail order, Mickey Menard ran our distribution, and did tons of bookkeeping. So, when we were on tour, they were often there keeping everything going.I also think we should mention that I was not around at the beginning of Simple Machines; it was Derek and Brad who started it with Jenny. Because we’re talking about this moment where we were like, I’m not sure this can work anymore because how can you balance out all these responsibilities and do it well? Because both of us are very driven to do things as well as we can and not to blow stuff off. So there were a lot of things piling up that we were responsible for, and we had to make our decision with the label. We were trying to be responsible for the bands that were around us to make sure everybody was whole.
Jenny: It was also a good time to take stock. Some of the SMR bands were getting major label interest and were beginning to leave, and we wondered, “are we going to replace these bands with other bands? Are we doing this to be a label, or are we doing this to help our friends?” And at a certain point, we realized we were ready for that next challenge. I was excited about doing the solo music—Liqorice and the Jenny Toomey stuff—and starting afresh and being in a band without carrying around all the other stuff. So, there were things we were giving up, but there was other great stuff we were getting. Kristin was getting to live in the same city with her husband Bryan, and to start that life, I was getting to move out of the group houses and work on new music.

CF: The DIY spirit, support and camaraderie were some of the great things that came out of D.C. and Arlington and the East Coast scene.
Kristin: Yep. It was nice to go on tour and meet bands or pass through scenes who had similar cohesiveness to them. There was obviously a lot of stuff going on in Olympia, WA, but there were things going on in Portland and there were things going on in Chapel Hill. It was very fun to go even brush past some of those other scenes and see what their lives were like or play shows or whatever it is.
Jenny: And that gets to a question you were asking before about genre. We came out of punk … earnest but also silly. The label started a year before the Geek tour with Superchunk and Seaweed. So, in the beginning, there were DIY and indie labels, and then there was this punk rock/young rock kind of thing. But we really came into ourselves when we met bands like Versus, Small Factory, Velocity Girl and, of course, Unrest. That was the beating heart moment of what we were doing with Simple Machines.
CF: Did Tsunami have any preshow/postshow rituals? Special elixirs, backstage snacks?
Jenny: When we toured Europe, we had a rider that was a little bigger. John Pamer put Dr. Pepper on it, which we got maybe three times. We asked for postcards and stamps, which we would get every once in a while.
Kristin: Who was it who had tube socks and batteries?
Jenny: That was the Butthole Surfers. They would come into the venue and refuse to load in. They’d say, “Where’s the tube socks?” And they would peel their socks off, leave them on the floor, and put the new socks on.
Kristin: We didn’t have any preshow rituals. Not really, no. We were like, “there’s 75 people here, let’s stand in the front row really closely”. It became kind of a habit where if you’re not playing, you’re in the front row to support the other band.

A look inside the beautiful booklet that comes with the new Tsunami box

CF: Did Tsunami have any stagewear rules? Were shorts allowed?
Jenny: There were a lot of shorts. I remember the Nation of Ulysses was against shorts, but Tsunami shorted it up!
CF: You know it! Velocity Girl too.
Kristin: She always had great outfits and still does. Jenny, you had a pair of those classic D.C. shoes, like the canvasy ones that had the ridgy sole and if you stepped on your Rat pedal, it would get stuck in the ridge. We would swap shoes sometimes. So I would wear your shoes and you would wear mine.
Jenny: We wore lots of thrift because we love thrift shopping. I loved 40s dresses … I dreamed in gabardine and rayon.  Unfortunately, I can’t get into any of them anymore.
Kristin: There was that amazing thrift store in Minneapolis. What’s it called? Deadstock. Ragstock. But there were times where we would thrift in the afternoon and so we would sell the merch, put the thrift stuff in the merch box and ship it home or just bring it home with us. And we come home, we’re like, there’ll be like a merch box full of thrifted things.
Jenny: I remember on that first Beat Happening tour in Waukesha, WI, Pat Graham took us to an enormous thrift store, and there was a girl in front of me in the aisle who had like an armful of fabulous dresses, and I was like, “Shit, we were 10 minutes too late!” But then, even though I was following her, I got an armful myself. It was so rich back then, and those stores were a very strong argument for the Midwest to exist.

CF: So what about your songwriting process? How did that evolve over time?
Jenny: Our first set of songs were in-jokes, funny, and fast. Bricks inspired us; they wrote their songs in 15 minutes, which is great. Kristin had never played guitar, I had banged a guitar with a stick in Geek, and Andrew had never played bass. We had a lot to learn.  As we developed, the music began to reflect what we were experiencing: sexism in the scene and how mean people are to each other, crushes, workload and the press. The last record critiques how everything’s going, the vultures circling the independent music scene, and the gatekeepers and the people making less interesting choices, normalizing a kind of powerlessness that didn’t seem like what inspired us. We write our songs individually. We’re not a jamming band. And then we just work out stuff together in practice. It was really, really fun when we played at John’s parents’ house. We could play a couple of times a week, and because our brains were young and agile, we could learn things fast. Also, we were touring all the time; we’d get notions of new songs in the van, practice at soundcheck and then unleash them on the world.
Kristin: The lyrics have stood the test of time and I don’t know if it was just coming out of your journals or if you wrote, wrote, wrote, edit, wrote, wrote. Did they come fully formed or were they heavily edited?
Jenny: A few songs come fully formed. Most come as a feeling and shards of an idea that require a lot of sanding and reorganizing. I had a really difficult time remembering what was happening where, with whom and when. During Simple Machines, I was writing in my journals all the time, but looking back it was all crushes or bitching about something and clumps of confusing lyrics. Slogging through those volumes 30 years later feels like translating from a forgotten language. And it’s funny because I had breakfast with Ian recently, and we talked about all his archiving work. He figured out how to avoid ending up with useless journals like mine at an earlier age. He said he had a journal on his first tour of the West Coast. He saw all these punk shows. Instead of documenting them, he just wrote about how he missed Cynthia and how sad he was. And then, when he got home, he was like, “This is useless. I have to be more disciplined in my journal. What did we do? Who did we play with? What was the venue? What were the dates?” My journals have none of that which is incredibly frustrating, but I’m glad to have them because I still have access to the emotions, however gauzy and I can see how many different projects were happening simultaneously. So there are Tsunami lyrics next to Grenadine lyrics next to Liqorice lyrics, next to tour dates and production ideas and my Kinko’s work schedule, and it was all happening at the same time.

Black Cat Anniversary Show 2023: Jenny Toomey, Jim Spellman, Kristin Thomson

CF: Tell us about your friendship and how it’s evolved over the past decades and how what you’ve learned from each other?
Kristin: We’re like the Wonder Twins. Once we activate, we have a lot of additive power because we are both good at different things but they complement each other. I really like logistics and spreadsheets and being organized and all that stuff. I think we’ve been lifelong friends because we not only have shared values, but also have a way we can work together to make something even bigger than ourselves than the two of us. Or even bigger than the group that we bring together to help us do something else. I’ve learned so much from being your friend. I’m always learning every day, there’s something new.
Jenny: I feel the same way. Kristin is such a special person. She’s just incredibly open and generous. She shows up with no guile or angle. She’s enthusiastic and game for anything. That’s 100% true. How hard is it to be best friends with someone who’s that great? More importantly she always does what she says she’s going to do. We both have a lot of that in us, which makes it possible to imagine and execute crazy ideas because we will try to do it together. We have so much history, a shorthand and a shared sense of humor. We fill in each other’s memories about what happened. Numero asked us to do this a couple of years ago or floated the idea, and I don’t know if we knew we wanted to do it yet. We were sort of confused. It all seemed kind of strange and maybe too good to be true. Now that we’re in the middle of the work, it’s been a joy to dig through suitcases with Kristin.
Kristin: In addition to the box set, Numero said, OK, we’re doing this big show last February (Numero 20) and got invited to play and we were kind of a last minute addition, it was maybe November, December, so we didn’t have a ton of time. A handful of Tsunami songs are quite simple to resurrect but as we got farther into the catalog it got harder and harder, only because we hadn’t practiced them in 25 years. I listened back to all the records in order and I was like, wow, these lyrics are good! It’s just something I hadn’t thought about in a long time. It was exciting to think about them again and re-remember all the lyrics and how dynamic and fun they are to play.
Jenny: We had this thing we started doing where a bunch of the Tsunami crew were part of my wedding band. Ida was our wedding band. They learned about 35 songs, and many friends did guest spots. At our 10th wedding anniversary, Brian suggested getting the wedding band back together again to hang out. We rented this massive rocketship of a house in Rhinebeck, NY. It was so much fun. We had a karaoke machine in the living room so we could sing and play games. It was so awesome that we have gotten together every year afterward and it reconnected us all together. So we had a bit of a glide path when Numero asked us because we were already back in each other’s orbits. And then it was so much fun, like when we were practicing. I remember John Pamer said, “I just had this strange feeling like I’m 19 years old.” Playing old music does bring back the emotions, though we’ve had to do a lot of work to hit the notes again.

CF: What about sexism and hecklers? Were there any bad soundman stories or like or uncomfortable encounters on tour, weird celebrity meetings? Did you meet Perry Farrell?
Jenny: We had a lot of all of that.
Kristin: I felt like it wasn’t so bad. It was fairly easy to have a clever retort or avoid it if necessarily. Jenny, there was one time we played in Oberlin and you told the soundman “no reverb” and he kept adding reverb just to taunt you.
Jenny: I don’t remember that kind of stuff. With the heckling, the audience wants you to win. So, it’s pretty easy to turn it around, and I can be the mean one if necessary. I’m the yang to Kristin’s yin. All that stuff washes away, though. When you are younger, it feels like everything is a nerve, a pressure cooker. You don’t yet have the wisdom you get when you’re older, where you realize that none of that stuff is all that important anymore.
CF: Was that one of the most inappropriate venues for you to play? Or can you think of a place that was more inappropriate?
Kristin: I was thinking about this, this was so early. We played in Gainesville, Florida, in a bar that was basically like a shot and beer bar in college town Gainesville. I was like, this doesn’t seem fun at all! It was super-early in Tsunami so we played. The crowd didn’t care—they were riding a mechanical bull next to us. It didn’t matter.
Jenny: Yeah, and there’s that time we played at Notre Dame. There were three people in the audience. There was a dartboard on a wall to the right of the stage, and people were playing darts in front of us during our set.

Sinterklaas 2019. Back row: Bree Benton, Unicorn Brian Hartman, Franklin Bruno, Kevin Cordt, Kerrilynn Pamer, Derek Denckla, Bryan Dilworth, John Pamer. Front row: Amy Domingues, Stefan Bauschmid, Jenny Toomey, Kristin Thomson

CF: Those (Ivy League) eating clubs used to really pay the bills, though, didn’t they? Like Princeton’s Terrace Club.
Jenny: Oh yeah, the Princeton Terrace shows were awesome. We’re so lucky that my old bandmate from Liquorice, Trey Many, is booking this tour that we’re doing with Ida in the spring. When we were discussing where we should play, I asked if he could throw some of those university shows in. He gently explained that students these days might want young people to play. They don’t want a 56-year-old set of indie-twins performing. As for the inappropriate venues, we were often protected because of how we were in the world. We killed people with kindness or weren’t famous enough to attract the “just coming to fuck shit up” kind of people. But I remember in the ’90s. It wasn’t too difficult to find those assholes if you strayed into the “normisphere”. I remember going for a beer at that odd enormous brewery Bardo Rodeo in Arlington. A group of frat guys did something rude to me, and I called them out. In response, they immediately circled my boyfriend at the time and were screaming, “Do you wanna go?!” He’s like, “I don’t need to go. You didn’t do anything to me, but I’d be worried … because she’s mad at you. I wouldn’t want to be in a fight with her.” So he was cool and wouldn’t take their bait. But then they physically tried to push us outside. They were picking an actual fight! In retrospect, we were often protected from so much shit just by being in counterculture. It’s not like it was perfect, but if I had gone to a fraternity party once, I bet I would have experienced far worse than I ever experienced in punk rock. CF

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Finally We Interview Wendy Pickles from the Popguns

The Popguns in recent years, via their FBK page

Wendy Pickles from the Popguns
There are not that many songs that make me stop working and start lipsyncing and playing air drums like a crazy person: “Bye Bye Baby” is such a song. Brighton’s Popguns were on our radar back when our zine started back in the early ’90s and the fact that they’ve never played a chickfactor party is a massive oversight. I’m pretty sure it was Mike Schulman who put a Popguns record in my hand at Vinyl Ink Records in Silver Spring, Maryland, around 1990! The band formed in 1988 and are still making very good music and playing shows. At long last we are thrilled to share this new interview with Popguns singer Wendy Pickles! Interview by big fans Gail O’Hara & Gaylord Fields

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Wendy on drums at their Christmas gig last year; photo courtesy of the Popguns

chickfactor: What are you up to today? Does the country feel different post-election? Did you watch the Euro final?
Wendy Pickles: Trying to stay cool today—hottest day of the year so far in the UK! Sadly, I have no ice cream in the freezer.

I haven’t noticed a particularly different feel post-election among people I talk to—it feels as though everyone has been slowly ground down by 14 years of Tory reign so that cynicism and distrust prevail. I hope Labour can come good on some of their promises, but it’s all about the power and the money, the money and the power

I did watch the Euros final, at home with family and a tonne of snacks. I was on the Amaretto, which sweetened the blow a little.

What were you like as a child? A teen?
I was incredibly shy and self-conscious, studious, law-abiding. I spent a lot of time reading and listening to/playing music. I reinvented myself in the summer between school and sixth form, ditched my glasses in favour of contact lenses and moved from incredibly square and uncool to incredibly square and a little less uncool.

What kind of rituals does the band have (on tour, in the studio, in general)?
We have an unwritten rule that whenever we make a stop in the van everyone has to go and come back one by one, just to be as inefficient as possible with our time. Greg & I invented “soundcheckercise” – we do squats/lunges/jumps to the beat while Ken is whacking his drums during the soundcheck. We like to have a sing on the way home from a gig – “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” is one of our faves, along with “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye”. We play studio bingo – phrases include “less is more” and “that was perfect … let’s just try one more”.  We have plenty of sayings and in-jokes gathered throughout the years – some wouldn’t stand the woke test and many, naturally, are taken from This Is Spinal Tap. Simon & I watched it just the other week and it really is the funniest film ever made.

Are you from a musical family?
No trained musicians, but plenty of singing and a little guitar playing on my mum’s side of the family. They liked to sing old London music hall songs at family gatherings – “On Mother Kelly’s Doorstep”, “My Baby Has Gone Down the Plughole”, that kind of thing. Music was on all the time when I was growing up—either on the radio (always Radio 1) or on the turntable (mostly Elton John!).

The Popguns in Nottingham, 1990. Photo: Jim Bethell (sent by Wendy)

Did it seem like the Popguns got their due back in the day?
I’d say no, because I think if more people had had a chance to hear our music they would’ve liked it. Is that too obvious a thing to say? We fell into a bit of a guitar-based music gap between C86 and Britpop—baggy and rave were the in thing, and we were neither! The songs are strong, even if the production wasn’t always up to scratch

Was the band treated well in the press? What was the weirdest thing someone wrote about you?
Some people liked us, some didn’t. I was just looking through some old reviews and many of them were quite flattering (eg “Come in Debbie Harry, your time is up” in Sounds 1991 – pretty good, eh?). At least we GOT reviewed and were given a few inches of interview space. I think the weirdest was Robert Yates in the Melody Maker, who said in a live review “To chance upon her in a back-street Brixton pub is to catch Cleopatra buying half-fat milk in Tesco’s”. Can’t decide whether it’s flattering or creepy!! Of course they didn’t just write about me, but inevitably a female frontwoman in an otherwise male band becomes a focus.

Who is the comedian in the band?
Greg is the wittiest. Pat is the silliest and loves wordplay. Simon does funny things (not always intentionally!). Once during a power cut, he came out of the loo with his trousers on back to front (I promise, it was hilarious at the time!). Ken has a slew of bad jokes, best not repeated. I have a wicked tongue, but I try to hide it.

The Popguns in Nottingham, 2023. Courtesy of the band

Do you have any band rules about stagewear and banter?
Never let Simon near the mic. We’re always trying to persuade (drummer) Ken to wear a vest. Once Simon accidentally pocket-dialled Pat during a song, so I guess we should really ban phones onstage.

If we came to Brighton for a day, what should we definitely do?
Pick up a Happy Maki sushi wrap and eat it in Pav Gav (young person’s speak for Pavilion Gardens). Wander through the North Laines, being sure to visit Resident Music and to buy something colourful from Lucy & Yak (dungarees recommended). Play ‘Toad’ at The Hole In The Wall pub (toad table custom made by our friend and some time driver Garold). You should probably get some squishy donuts from the pier and sit on the beach with the thousands of other tourists. Finish off with a rock ‘n’ roll pint at The Albert (home of our annual Christmas shindig).

If you could choose any well-known musician from Brighton, past or present, to join the Popguns, who would it be, and why?
Dave Gilmour would be fun! And not at all intimidating. I like to sing a little Leo Sayer at karaoke, though strictly speaking he’s from Shoreham, just along the coast.

It’s fascinating (to me, at least) when a group records two unrelated songs with the same title. What inspired the Popguns to do an original called “Bye Bye Baby” as well as cover the identically named Four Seasons song?
I was a huge Bay City Rollers fan, so I loved that song. We actually had a Four Seasons album on cassette when I was growing up and I loved their music – but it didn’t have that song on it, so I didn’t know at the time that it was a cover. We were invited to contribute a track to an album of ’70s Number 1s for an Anti-Poll Tax album put together by a friend, and it seemed a fun idea to cover a song with the same name as one of ours – we ilke to confuse!!

Simon, your husband and bandmate, writes the songs that you then give voice to. How autobiographical are the songs when it comes to either your life or his?
Annoyingly autobiographical – what am I going to write about for my solo project?

How did you both determine which songs would be Popguns songs and which would you and Simon record for your other shared musical project, the Perfect English Weather?
It’s usually obvious: one, there is a distinction between indie rock and indie pop and TPEW definitely falls in the latter category, so they tend to be the lighter songs; two, TPEW songs are on the whole more personal to us as a couple; three, the Popguns reject it!

What advice would you give groups that contain a creative partner who is also a romantic partner so they don’t end up like Fleetwood Mac? Or perhaps they’d do well by following Fleetwood Mac’s example?
It’s not always a recipe for a successful relationship, is it? Weirdly, we don’t spend a lot of time working on music together at home. Simon writes the songs, then the rest of us contribute in the rehearsal room and studio – that goes for The Popguns and The Perfect English Weather. Maybe that’s why it works?

How did you get on with the other acts who recorded for your early ’90s label Midnight Music, or did you not interact much?
We didn’t really know any Midnight labelmates, but we got on great with The Waltones, who were on Medium Cool with us.

Who came up with calling the group the Popguns, and were you all surprised that no other band seemed to have come up with a name so basic yet essential before you did?
Well we’ve never been happy with it, we just couldn’t agree on anything else – it was a case of picking a name that no-one was happy with! Glad you think it works!

The group took a break lasting more than a decade before forming again. What have you found to be the biggest adjustment in making music in the 2020s, for better or for worse?
The studio is so much easier to use – not that I ever need it ;), but dodgy notes can be straightened out in seconds! And all those sounds at your fingertips – fun, but also potentially extremely timewasting. And so much can be done at home, which I think is a good thing, though Simon does have a habit of spending days locked away in his room doing remixes. The music making side is great, the social media side not so – not a natural world for us boomers/Gen Xers.

Has the Popguns’ musical catalogue been featured in any adverts, films, or TV shows? Do you have any problems with the concept of “selling out,” whatever that means to you?
It has! A highlight for me was “Second Time Around” on BBC’s “Homes Under The Hammer”. We also featured in a 2018 Netflix series (“Everything Sucks!” – sadly didn’t get past Season 1) and a 2020 film, “Pink Skies Ahead”, which rather excitingly had Henry Winkler and Michael McKean in its cast. There must’ve been a late ’80s/early ’90s indie revival! No ads that I’m aware of, and I would definitely want to have a say in that respect. I am a VERY ethical person!

Let’s say for some odd reason you found yourself in the need to recruit someone to impersonate your singing voice (please don’t ask why, just play along, if you may). Which singer do you think would be able to do the job?
Natalie Merchant please!

How has existing in older bodies changed how you go about touring, as opposed to 30 years ago?
Oh my God, it’s knackering!! Definitely no more than two nights in a row. And much lighter on the booze. And Greg now brings salad as a snack

The Popguns often perform A Tribe Called Quest’s “Can I Kick It.” When and how did you realize that you had the mad flow needed to rap credibly?
Haha! I trained by learning the intro to “The Lone Ranger” by Quantum Jump. That and “Cool for Cats” by Squeeze

Which one Popguns song would your fans express strong unhappiness if you were to leave it off your live set list? And, in general, how accommodating are you to playing fan favorites when planning what to perform at shows? Is it a “one for you, one for me” situation?
You’d have to ask them, but I’m guessing “Bye Bye Baby” or “Waiting for The Winter” – they’re the biggest singalong songs. We make occasional exceptions, but as some of us (me included) are quite bad at remembering the songs we mostly have to stick to the set we’ve been practising. We do try to mix it up though!

What are some memorable live shows you played in the old days and recently?
Plymouth Cooperage 1990? 91? is a fond favourite for its stage invasion. Shelly Arms in Nutley (similar time?) for its bonkersness. More recently, Hamburg in 2016 and Athens in 2019 due to the unexpectedly large and enthusiastic crowds. Every Prince Albert ‘home’ Christmas gig is lovely—so many familiar faces in the audience. Last year’s Albert gig was fun as Ken & I switched places for one song – me on drums, him on vocals. And earlier this year we played at the wedding of two of our biggest fans, which was incredibly special and moving. Oh, not forgetting Mike Joyce playing “Rebel Rebel” as our intro music at the 100 Club in London – pretty cool!

Do you have any horror stories?
Can’t really top Greg falling from a second floor window in Plymouth and breaking his wrist (a lucky escape). I don’t know, I tend to get shielded from all of the bad stuff – I’m still that square and not-very-cool girl at heart!

Have you ever played in the US?
Yes! We played New York Popfest in 2014. It was an odd one—we loved being there, but we had a late (headline) slot on the Sunday night and not everyone stuck around to see us. Of course we had to use other people’s gear and Pat borrowed a bass guitar from a very generous but very small person. The bass was a perfect fit for its owner, but hilariously tiny on our Pat (who is not a very small person!). Much chuckling ensued!

OG Popguns, courtesy of the band

Favorite place to play?
It has to be The Albert. Be nice to play Brighton Dome though. Or Glastonbury!

Do you have day jobs, pets, kids?
I was teaching pop singing to teenagers, which I loved, but stopped when the pandemic hit. Currently trying to do my bit to combat the climate crisis. I’ve started a climate choir, which is lots of fun. I completed a Masters in Songwriting last year and am now considering doing a PhD in something environment and music related. Dr Wendy! Simon still works part-time as a computer programmer. Pat and Ken are proper businessmen with their own companies. Greg works in IT at Brighton & Hove council. That’s not very rock ‘n’ roll is it, maybe scrap that answer!!!

Simon & I have two children, both now graduated from Uni. Anna is living and working in London and is a committed environmental champion, Thomas has only just graduated and is figuring out what to do next. They are of course wonderful human beings, are both very musical and have impeccable taste! We have two young, adorable cats – one ginger, one black. Not great for my environmental credentials as we feed them meat and they bring in many, many little dead bodies 🙁

Wendy says: “The Mean Fiddler poster is a bittersweet memory as it proves Pulp supported us back in the day, which is fun, but of course our careers took wildly different paths!!”

What are you reading, watching, cooking, eating?
I have a stack of environment related books to get to, but I’ve been distracted in the last week or so by the discovery that I can successfully complete a difficult killer sudoku. Maths was never my strong point, so it is a big surprise! I prefer baking to cooking – my signature dish is vegan almond macaroons. We get a weekly organic veg box so I’m often trying to work out what to do with kohlrabi or padron peppers – any ideas?

Anything else you’d like to add? News, shows, new releases?
We’re looking forward to playing with The Frank & Walters at 229 in London on 28 September. Apart from our usual Christmas gig at the Albert that’s it for the current tour schedule. Very soon we will be returning to the studio, so new material will be out in 2025.

Records Wendy cannot live without
There are a handful of oldies I always go back to –
“Swoon” by Prefab Sprout
“Liberty Belle ..” by The Go-Betweens
“Captain Fantastic …” by Elton John
any Smiths/Beatles/Jam/REM
“Young Americans” by Bowie
“Behaviour” and “Very” by Pet Shop Boys
“The Clock Comes Down The Stairs” by Microdisney
“Nilsson Schmilsson”
Mostly quite predictable. Currently though, my go-tos are the upcoming Fontaines DC album (“Favourite” is an instant indie classic!), also “A Hero’s Death” by Fontaines, “If My Wife New I’d Be Dead” by CMAT (she is AMAZING!), “2020” and “The Hermit” by Richard Dawson (almost my favourite artist in the world), “Illinois” by Sufjan Stevens, “Seeking New Gods” by Gruff Rhys. “American Dream” by LCD Soundsystem. I realise there is a distinct lack of female musicians in that list – oops! I love Laura Marling and Pearl Charles!

Popguns set list from Nottingham, 1990.
Popguns set list from Nottingham, 2023
The Popguns in Lego made by a fan. Wendy says: “I’m in the middle with short brown hair (before I grew out the grey) and our sometime backing singer Kate is the blond singer on the left. Pat’s permanent grin is well represented and then-drummer Tony has drumsticks large enough to cause injury! They also caught Simon in his (now thankfully passed) trilby-wearing phase ;D”
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The Softies Then and Now: Jen Sbragia on 30 Years Together

Happy 30th anniversary, Rose and Jen! Photo: Alicia J. Rose

Earlier this year, The Softies (two California girls / singer-songwriter-guitarists Rose Melberg + Jen Sbragia) celebrated 30 years as a band and as BFFs. They are not a band that just reformed after not doing anything since the 1990s! They have been playing shows here and there over the years (including chickfactor 20 and 25 shows in New York, London, SF and Portland), even as they lived in different PacNW towns, had kids, jobs, played music with others and so on. Still, as they just announced their brand-new album, The Bed I Made (on Father/Daughter Records and Lost Sound Tapes), upcoming tour and new single, we wanted to check in about how things were then versus how they are now! Read our post from yesterday about the new album, the vinyl reissues of their previous work and more, and then read on to hear from Jen about how things have changed. Interview by Gail

Jen in Portland, 2023. Photo: Gail O’Hara

CF: What are you up to today?
Jen Sbragia: Working on some freelance design stuff, making dinner, hopefully practicing guitar later
What would you have been up to on a day like this in 1994?
Very similar except I didn’t have Adobe Creative Suite!
Tell us about how your songwriting process worked in 1994 vs. 2024.
In the past, I would write and present a whole song of mine to Rose, she would then write a lead guitar part and a vocal harmony. For the new album, I had song ideas but also a few half-baked ideas and riffs, which we worked on together to make whole songs. It was pretty fun to do that, because Rose has studied the art of songwriting so much more than me. She inspires me to do better, all the time.
Both of you have been undergoing major life shifts in recent years; how did grief, loss, change play into the songs? How is that different from your trials and tribulations of 30 years ago?
I always used to write songs about unrequited love back in the day. This is still true for me! At this point in my life I have experienced more loss, so that is tied in too. But crushes not working out is my favorite songwriting topic, apparently.

Cover of The Bed I Made by Fumi Yanagimoto

What was a typical day in the studio like making The Bed I Made? And how does that differ from the 1990s sessions?
Analog is lovely and all, but recording digitally is fantastic. Rose and I used Garage Band to make demos for each other we could email back and forth. When it came time to record in the studio, we felt so lucky to work with Nich (Nicholas Wilbur). He has an amazing ear, is endlessly chill and patient, makes the perfect cappuccino, and belongs to the funniest and best dog, Cathy. I heard my first ever ghostly footsteps in the (haunted) studio! Rose and I slept there at night – it was a little spooky, which I loved.

Softies’ studio still-life, courtesy of Rose

What are some of your most important studio accoutrements? Snacks, tea, special instruments or accessories?
Lots of Juanita’s tortilla chips, peanut butter, strong coffee, maybe a touch of psilocybin. Anacortes Unknown has a vibraphone… it may make an appearance.
How long have you been working on this one?
I took a trip to Vancouver in January of 2023 and we ended up with the beginnings of 8 songs, and just excitedly continued from there, meeting every month or so. Sometimes we would meet in Seattle, sometimes I would make the full trek to Vancouver. I love long drives so it really didn’t seem too difficult.
How has the touring and show playing ecosystem changed from then to now?
Well, it is much better now that we don’t have to have an Atlas and a Thomas Guide! One time on tour we caravanned with walkie talkies.
We prefer that more days off need to be built in. We need ease and calm. The less stress, the better. There is a low key goal of being able to stay somewhere with a hot tub. Can we always have a hot tub? A girl can dream.

Jen in Portland. Photo: Gail O’Hara

What can fans to do help musicians have better lives?
Vote. Buy merch. Come to live shows.
Do you have a sense of how big your audience is now vs 1994? Do you hear from fans?
We used to get fan letters back in the day. I have a box of them. These days, it’s much quicker and easier with social media. But also it can feel overwhelming because everything is so immediate.
What about the vinyl reissues on K: are those all out now or coming soon?
Out now: Holiday in Rhode Island [KLP119]
Out July 26: Winter Pageant [KLP061]
Out Sept. 6: It’s Love [KLP043]

Where all will you be touring?
Glas Goes Pop festival on Friday, July 26.
Two record release shows at the end of August in Vancouver and Portland, followed by two more shows in early September in Anacortes and Seattle

East coast shows in late Sept/early October

California shows in late October

What else are you up to apart from the Softies?
Always trying to balance freelance design work, hoping for more hours but grateful when I have free time for music. I have some new song ideas for All Girl Summer Fun Band but we haven’t had time to work on them yet. I would like to get back into drawing comics and/or making prints of some kind.

What are you eating, cooking, watching, reading lately?
FOOD: I’m on a mission to sample every single non-dairy cream cheese on the market. I could eat the Moderno Bowl at Tacovore every day. Peanut butter filled chocolate covered pretzels from Trader Joe’s are my favorite food group.

COOKING: Lately I have been avoiding cooking as much as possible! I’m giving in to convenience whenever possible, although throwing a sweet potato in the oven is very easy and I love the edible sugar goo that comes out of them.

WATCHING: I’m re-watching Killing Eve because Jodie Comer is a goddess. Also watching the new season of Bridgerton. I will re-watch Broad City for the rest of my life. Listening to Rebel Girl by Kathleen Hanna. Reading Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski. Books do tend to stack up and collect dust. I’m trying!

The cassette tape is on Lost Sound Tapes

Records Jen Cannot Live Without:

Tiger Trap – S/T & Sour Grass
Lightheaded – Good Good Great
Henry’s Dress – Bust ‘em Green
Girl Ray – Prestige
Pretenders – S/T
Fastbacks – Very, Very Powerful Motor
Young Guv – I, II, III, IIII (basically anything he does)
Dolly Mixture – Demonstration Tapes
Kids on a Crime Spree – Fall in Love Not in Line
Of Montreal – Cherry Peel
Best of 1994: Boyracer – More Songs About Frustration & Self Hate
Best of 2024: Lightheaded – Combustible Gems

Preorder the Softies’ The Bed I Made, out August 23 on vinyl/etc.

Preorder the Softies’ The Bed I Made, out August 23 on cassette tape.

Order/preorder all the vinyl reissues on K Records here

Check out All Girl Summer Fun Band here

Listen to other Rose Melberg music here

Listen to Knife Pleats here

The Softies. Photo: C. Doughty
Set list from the Softies’ June 2023 show at Polaris Hall.
Vinyl reissue out now on K Records
Vinyl reissue out July 26 on K Records
Vinyl reissue out Sept. 6 on K Records
Grab a ticket ASAP, Glasgow!

 

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The Aislers Set Talk About Their Peel Session, Out in June

The Aislers Set Peel Session Is Out June 8 on Precious Recordings of London. Order yours here now. 

We caught up with Alicia Vanden Heuvel and Linton from the Aislers Set and Nick from Precious Recordings of London (the label putting out the EP) to find out more about their 2001 Peel Session! Images courtesy of the band

How did the Peel Session come about?
Linton: Sean Price of Fortuna Pop arranged it. I’m pretty certain of that.

How did it feel to record a session?
Linton: Was wild. I’d never recorded Aislers out of the garage before—given up studio control, mixing, etc. The engineers were kind and very attentive. They even tuned Yoshi’s drums and let us do some forbidden overdubs when the singing was terrible. It was amazing to be in that studio, with its history, obviously, and it was interesting to just play and not be at the helm using the studio tools creatively. cool experience and a complete honor, of course. I still feel incredibly lucky to have had that opportunity.

What do you remember about the man himself?
Linton: I only met him once and many years before. He wasn’t there for the session, which I think is typical? I met him in a bar in Leeds around ’94 and we talked about our shared experience of living in the desert. I recall him talking about having lived in Texas as an insurance salesman and travelling the southwest in the ’60s.  I wrote a few lines about that on the back of the record sleeve.

The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel

What was the studio like?
Alicia: The fact that we would be in a studio where all of these legendary, great bands had recorded was mind blowing. Arriving in London and taking the Tube to the studio that morning, we were all full of nerves and excitement. We had been rehearsing intensely and Linton had written a new song just for the session, “Mission Bells.”  We get there, coffees in hand, and enter the studio. Linton, Wyatt, and I had recording equipment at home and we couldn’t wait to see the studio and gear… the Aislers Set had never recorded in a studio, before or since…. were just in awe at the mixing console, the beautiful room. The real jaw-dropping moment was when the engineers showed us the Microphone Closet, showing us various ones that were literally invented and built by engineers at the BBC. And WE got to have them mic’d on our drums, on our equipment. It was literally one of the best days of our lives as a band. BBC engineers, a huge Hammond organ for Jen to play, the welcome from John Peel. In this magic and sacred musical space. The day spent laying down those songs was joyful, the engineers were so kind, we just felt on top of the world.

Linton: Equipped!

The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel

What are you guys up to these days, music or otherwise?
Alicia: I’m still recording bands and playing in bands. I have a record label/ recording studio called Speakeasy Studios SF. It’s still the same Otari 8 track and Soundcraft board that we used for The Red Door and a few other songs back in the day, and both Poundsign records. Now I can mix into digital though, which saves a lot of sleepless nights. I’m currently recording the new Telephone Numbers record and working with my husband Tony Molina on his next record. I still work my day job (that I’ve had since 1997) at La Med restaurant in SF, because life as a musician just doesn’t pay the bills, ha ha. But I love my work, feeding people and being around people is my jam. My daughter is graduating from high school now and life goes on!

Linton: I’m not playing music. very rarely, anyway, but i do think about it. I do make some noise now and again but I wouldn’t call it music—more collage/feedback/harmonic control and texture experiments with zero melody. Mostly I’m making visual art and furniture as well as teaching sculpture and “sonic” arts at CalArts in southern california. Pretty nourishing gig.

The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel

Will the Aislers Set play at CF35 (should it happen)?
Alicia: I would like to very much, yes!

Linton: Only if an entirely new batch of songs is written. I can’t physically sing most of the old ones anymore and I’m not writing music at the moment… so… I am hoping to write performable music sometime, eventually. dunno if it would be Aislers music or in time for CF35 but keep you posted!

Linton from the Aislers Set on CF13, Y2K (lower right). Photo: Gail O’Hara with design help from LD Beghtol
The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel

How did this come together? Any particular challenges or hurdles? 

Nick from Precious Recordings of London: The Aislers Set were one of the artists I thought of when I started Precious Recordings of London a few years ago during COVID. As I hunkered down in Putney, West London, I looked through an old box of cassettes I’d retrieved when my mum died a couple of years earlier and found all these bootlegs and sessions I had taped from BBC Radio 1‑John Peel and Janice Long, none of them ever released.

So I just asked the few friends I knew if they’d be willing to let me loose releasing their sessions on vinyl. You can get them on YouTube but, well, I wanted it to be special.

Somehow I found the right person to pay for a licence from the BBC and off we went. But as I say, these were old friends like Jim from the Jasmine Minks, Duglas from BMX Bandits and Amelia from Heavenly–from the late 1980s, the C86-era, when I was more active!

Of course, I did not know anybody from The Aislers Set, added to which they were on the other side of the Atlantic. And they did not hail from the late ’80s music scene. So why would they want me to release a prized session?

But I am a big fan, which is the ultimate criteria when I want to release a record, and this particular session has legendary status among The Aislers Set cognoscenti. Moreover, the esteemed editor of this august organ put me in touch with Alicia. (You’re welcome! –Editor)

But the thing is that was maybe three or four years ago, and The Aislers Set were originally down with a catalogue number PRE 008. Through nobody’s fault, really, it is finally seeing the light of day as PRE 038–and even that is a little misleading, as we’re up to PRE 042!

Precious started out releasing gatefold 7-inch singles of BBC sessions on vinyl with a set of postcards included in the package. Now we’re doing ten-inchers–a 60% rise in manufacturing costs during COVID forced that change, but I love the tens anyway–and even the postcards have been replaced by printed inners!

The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel

Frankly, I don’t know why it has been so long. Getting pictures and sleeve notes always takes a while–and everybody is so busy. But we kept in touch via email … things kept bobbling along quietly until I heard from Linton, and they were happy with the idea.

Sean Price of their UK LP Fortuna Pop! is a good friend of mine, and Mike at Slumberland also gave his blessing–and I had both scurrying about looking for images. Plus, Alicia had some great pics of the day of recording itself at the famed BBC Studios – Sean was there, it turned out.

So slowly, slowly, we got there, and I am so excited about this session. It’s everything I wanted when I started this project–not only do I love the band, of course, and this is a FAB session–but also the holy grail of a previously unreleased session with a totally song on there–the cover of Joy Division’s ‘Walked in Line’, and Linton actually wrote ‘Mission Bells’ specifically for the session recording.

I always hoped to release sessions that had never been out before in any form, or at least not on vinyl … as it happens, both these ideals have, er, been compromised, but at least I hope I am keeping up the standard of releasing records that I would want to buy myself as a fan, with all the extras, unseen pics etc.

The cherry on the cake with The Aislers Set came when I found out how much the session meant to them. Of course, John Peel is a legendary figure over here and I’ve lost count of the number of people who tell me they prefer the session version of various songs, often because they feel ‘fresher’ than overproduced later versions. Not that that was a problem with The Aislers Set, of course, but Alicia told me the session was “literally the highlight of our career as a band”.

Linton has also supplied some wonderful sleeve notes–the band heard the first broadcast in a Glasgow pub on a tinny transistor radio alongside their friends from Belle and Sebastian and Camera Obscura! What a great story.

I’m so happy–can I say ‘privileged’ without sounding too ‘gushy’?–to be able to release this session. It means a lot. I also think it means a lot to The Aislers Set, so I’m so grateful they’ve trusted me not to mess things up. Let’s hope I haven’t!

The Aislers Set Peel Session / Photos by Alicia Vanden Heuvel