"Issue No.5
on stands now"

coalesce with layers of John’s downright amazing voice. Raised with love and respect in the massive wilderness not far from Anchorage, AK, John has a solid outlook on life and creativity as life.

Wide-Eyed: So you grew up in Alaska?

JG: It’s funny. When you grow up any place you really don’t notice the difference in anything. I really didn’t know the difference until I left and moved to Portland and with touring and everything. But it’s an amazing place. I was lucky to grow up the way I did. My dad raced the Iditarod (side note — the Iditarod Trail Dog Sled Race is the world’s foremost dog sled race over 1150 miles), just crazy things throughout my childhood… so I got to go and see crazy empty tundra in the middle on the winter, stay out in cabins in the middle of nowhere… I did a bunch of really cool things. Alaska is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been.

JG: Yeah, where I grew up and went to high school is a town called Wasilla and it’s about 40 miles north of Anchorage.

JG: Yeah — it still does. The further north you go, the sun goes into a straight rotation — just crazy circles in the sky. Where we were, it’s pretty much light all day and then it gets dark for about 3 hours roughly at midnight or so and then it gets light again. It never gets fully dark. And then in the winters, you only get like four hours of daylight. Five hours maybe.

JG: Yeah. On the heavier side of things, the suicide rate there is insane.

JG: Yeah, there is. There’s a lot of metal and there’s a lot of bluegrass, {laughter} and a lot of nothing else in between. There’s been some pretty good bands up there lately. We played with a band called The Riot last time we went up to Alaska. They were really good and I heard they actually moved to Portland. As well as The Builders And The Butchers are from Alaska.

JG: That’s the thing. The whole Alaskan music scene moves out to Seattle or Portland the second they’re able to. {laughter} Whatever’s up there is just maintained by the people that live there. It’s just a lot of metal and a lot of bluegrass. There’s really not clubs up there.

JG: Um… I wasn’t really. In high school when I first started playing with Zach (Carothers — bassist/vocals), I was terribly, terribly shy growing up. I would never even think about playing music. I was just so far away from wanting to do anything in front of anybody. I guess growing up I always listened to oldies radio, just things like that — Motown, whatever my parents listened to basically is what I listened to. I went into high school and Zach had a band that would do Rage Against The Machine covers and Cannibal Corpse covers. It was always really fun to see. He and I started playing together, just him showing me Rage Against The Machine riffs on bass. That’s what we did every day. I’d go over to his house and he’d show me how to play a new Rage bass line. That was how I basically got into it. You know, I think it was getting away from all that I had been brought up on — I mean I had been listening to the same music over and over again for 14 years or whatever. So just hearing all that stuff that was on the radio like Marilyn Manson and Rage Against The Machine {laughter} was just so crazy to me. You know, Nirvana, all these bands that had just — at the time they were making music that sounded like stuff we could actually do. So, yeah, we just started playing.

JG: You know I’m not sure. I have no idea when the record comes out. We’re kind of talking to some people right now, now that the record’s ready to come out, doing a partnership type deal to help push the record along. We did this whole record without a label at all. We planned on just releasing it ourselves and I guess technically we still are. But once we got the record done, we decided we’d just throw it out there for fun and just send it to the labels we’d like to go to. And we got a really good response and I think it ended up working out in everyone’s favor. The labels we talk to we can trust to make an album we want to make and hopefully get away with that.

JG: Yeah, we’re always prepared when we go to the studio (sarcasm). What happened was we had pretty much toured all of last year from the release of Church Mouth up until December. When we got back to Portland we decided we would just go up to Seattle and work on some new music, make some EPs or whatever. And when we were up there, our friends Phil Peterson and Kirk Huffman wanted us to come and record some songs for an EP or a split. And we went in, and I had kinda been working on a few ideas for Censored Colors and we just had demos for 2 songs, with no intent of doing the record. So we left the studio, went back to Alaska — I think Zach and I were up there for 10 days — and during that 10 days we just called everybody — our manager, the rest of the guys, and were just like “Shit, let’s go into the studio. We have two and a half weeks before tour. Let’s just record the album.”

JG: And I think it worked out for the best. Being able to just run in like that. That’s the way we’ve done everything up until now. I think it makes an album a little more fluent — if it’s all just kind of written in the same space. It’s just two and a half weeks is a crazy crunch time to do it. We were having to write a song a night. It was all pretty spontaneous. There was a lot of jamming on it.

JG: Thank you.

JG: {laughter} I was listening to it after and thought “Damn, I sound like a chick.”

JG: {Laughter} Yeah, I don’t know how that happened. Where did that come from? I think the idea with that song — we had had a lot of fingerpicking parts on the previous album — It’s something I’ve always been into doing, and we didn’t have a song like that. I think that song was written in maybe 30 minutes. {laughter} Maybe.

Tim Biskup’s work is a manifestation of the So Cal environment which raised him. As a draftsman and technical painter for studios including Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network, Tim has developed environments and characters that only a gifted imaginarian like himself could conjure. He is a master at balancing chaos and psychedelia with warm, child-like connections to flora, fauna, damsels, and deep spacial retreats. Eye candy with a razor. For almost two decades Tim has been utilizing any method possible to birth his creations, from Serigraphy (screen print), to vinyl toys, wood standee, composite sculpture, traditional canvas wall hangers and a clothing line (Gama Go). All of it done with the same meticulously detailed execution as his studio work. Pinning down this prolific jetsetter is not easy (his last stop was Taipei). Wide-Eyed’s David Dodde caught up with this jet-lagged Southern California native at his La Canada home. Here are a few written rants about his recent New York opening and his ever bustling touring schedule.

Tim Biskup: A DJ gig.

TB: Yeah, I’ve been DJing for a while as a hobby and it’s still a hobby, but more and more people are approaching me and bringing me out to events to DJ.

TB: I do have a really nice picture of a bowl full of chicken feet that look a lot like little, tiny, baby Godzilla hands {laughs}.

TB: Yeah. I’ll try.

TB: Well, it was a really different kind of show for me because it was the first time I really put as much written information into a show and so it was more literal than anything I’ve ever done. It felt like I was going out on a limb by expressing a lot of the things that I expressed; very personal and very scholarly in a way that I’m not necessarily comfortable with all the time. I had to do a lot of research for it and a lot of preparation. I did just as much painting as I usually do for a show but actually spent almost as much time researching it, doing writing and things like that.

TB: I did a book. I wasn’t sure if you had read that.

TB: If you go to the Jonathan Levine website and look at the show there’s a link to a PDF there. You can download the whole thing.

TB: Well, after going through this whole philosophical change that the show represented for me, the New York show, my next show is called Operating System and it’s really an attempt to approach my art work from a new point of view; encompassing the conceptual ideas that I talked about in the last show in to the work in a way and also do a show about the process of coming up with a system. It’s kind of hard to explain it without looking at it from the conceptual and the visual side. So, on the visual side it’s three-dimesional sculptures. The sculptures actually incorporate the packaging into the piece. I’m working with computers to cut pieces of flat wood and they all fit together in to these sculptures that basically have these birds on top of them that are holding the paintings; kind of like an easel. Each piece is actually a crate that has a pedestal inside of it and an easel that holds the actual painting. It’s looking at the process of shipping and displaying and the way that the artist presents it and incorporating that all into the experience.

TB: Yeah. There was this furniture dealer in Hollywood that called me one day out of the blue and was talking to me about my work. I was talking to him and that was the term he used for my work. It was at a time when I was really using a lot of flourishes and using the kind of shapes and things that were used by a lot of modernists, a lot of post-modernists, a lot of expressionists, cubists and things like that and yet I was adding a lot of detail, so much detail and so many little flourishes that it became more baroque than minimalist. So that’s the term he put on my work.

TB: Yeah. There was a piece in my last show that had the HELPER in it, but it was a sort of cubist version of him. But the title really says a lot about what the HELPER means to me these days. He’s not as cute as he was before and I started to really think about that character as a representation of the ultimate corrupt person. The idea of a Cyclops being a person who has lost their sense of depth and their sense of their ability to really see the world as it is. The piece that I painted for my last show was called ‘No God But God’. It was a reference to man creating, turning himself into God and essentially the HELPER is the monster that people turn into when they believe that they know the will of God. I’m not a religious person, but if there is a God, it’s not something that anyone can truly know. I think that’s where we run into problems is when we try to say that we know what God wants. It’s a very universal thing, it’s not a new idea, but for me, using that character to express that has really become the way that I almost always think about him. That started when I was working on a show called American Cyclops. That happened in Barcelona when I studied a lot of American history, Spanish history, and looked at Freemasonry and the origins of the American political system. I also looked at Native American history and the way that it was incorporated into that system. I used the Cyclops as a representation of the human form of things like the pyramid that appears on the dollar bill and the eye in the sky that appears in a lot of paintings about Manifest Destiny. He really became a representation of man turning himself into God and attempting to be God.

TB: No actually Barcelona wasn’t with Baseman. The last show I did with Baseman was Modular Populous. We just happened to be in the city at the same time when our shows both happened. It was in a different gallery. Collaborations. I do them a lot in the toy world with vinyl figures and things like that. I am working on a couple of collaborations in Japan and I’m actually doing a show at the end of next year that is going to be mostly collaboration but I can’t really say to much about it.

TB: {laughs} Absolutely! It’s a matter of the forces of all of our lives coinciding. In the last year or two I really haven’t used that much text in my work. I haven’t really progressed as far as the type and things like that. The paintings that I am working on for my Paris show in October all have text in them. I’m thinking a lot more about text now and so I think it’s kind of inevitable that that will be pushed forward and hopefully we’ll make that happen soon. I know it’s been a long time coming.

WE: It’s a House project. They are all a long time coming but they’re worth it every time.

TB: Yeah, Yeah. That’s good. I agree.

WE: So, is there any artist that’s really impacting you right now?

TB: I have a couple of friends that I really relate to. James Jean, his work is really mind-blowing. I always look to Murakami.His strategy is really appealing to me and I’m always trying to comprehend how he organizes his world. Those guys are very influential now.

WE: I can see the Murakami connection in your large sculpture pieces. How you’re using all mediums which I think is something that is really unique to your work as well.

TB: The thing that really blows me away about Murakami is his ability to build infrastructure. Same with Jeff Koons and several other artists who are able to make such large scale things happen and to manage the PR end and build something that seems like it has such a specific intention to it. That really appeals to me because I’ve never been able to have such specific intentions about my work. I’ve always felt like I was following this trail through the forest and hoping that it made some sense. It always seems to at the end. But I always feel like I’m kind of running blind hoping that I don’t run into a branch.

WE: Who or what do you think has had the most significant impact on your craft and career? What has been the impetus for you moving forward?

TB: God, there’s a lot. I would say Ren & Stimpy, John K. that’s a big one, The Residents. Christopher Williams was a big inspiration to me when I had him as a teacher at Otis/Parsons. The impression that he made on me is only now coming to fruition. Being such a completely conceptual artist, I really liked what he had to say but it wasn’t relevant to my work. Now, when I’m so fiercely going after that part of my work, a lot of things he said to me when I was in his class are starting to make sense. Not just make sense but start to become really important to the work that I’m doing.

WE: It’s nice to have someone that influenced you that way. I think it is key that people come out of school saying, “Oh yeah. That person really changed me.”

TB: Yeah. To be able to look back and say, “Oh yeah this thing that this guy said to me really changed the way that I think about this.” That’s a big deal. He’s one of the only teachers that I walked away feeling like that about. Carole Caroompas was another one. She was actually never one of my teachers but we ended up spending a lot of time together working on an album and just the things that she said about art, the things that she said about life really had a big effect on me and the way that I think about my work.

WE: If we could all have one of those.

TB: I’ve had a lot of them. I mean, you know John K. and The Residents, both people that I got to spend time with and talk to and work with. I mean, very influential people, very inspired people and those have always been the people that I related to the most. Seeing them do what they do. It can be, it’s challenging on a level that I don’t think you experience with people you meet in life.

WE: That’s a great answer. I’m always fascinated by the guys who originally contributed to Juxtapoz and what their feelings are ten years later on its impact on the artists’ community and the culture around us. Do you have an opinion on that?

TB: It has changed so much that it’s kind of hard to see it as the same thing now. It was kind of like the only source of information that I had for a long time about the art world that I wanted to be a part of. I mean, I could have gone out and bought a copy of Art Forum but I had no connection to that world. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want to be part of it. So when I got Juxtapoz it was a meeting of the minds. Even though I didn’t know any of those people for years and years of buying the magazine, it was the only place to get that information. It is still underground relatively. Lots of people know who Mark Ryden is. Lots of people know who Robert Williams is. For me now, I get more from Art Forum but I don’t get a sense of community from Art Forum I get a sense of frustration and it’s a new kind of challenge for me. I feel challenged by the things that I read in there. There really isn’t anything like what Juztapoz meant to me when it was first coming out because it was really kind of a guidepost saying, “Yeah, you can actually do what you want to do and somebody will listen, somebody will look at it and maybe you will even find someone who enjoys it.”

WE: And now they outsell Art Forum.

TB: {laughs} Yeah! Amazing! It’s amazing that it has become a real movement and I think that’s important. I think it’s an important movement sometimes I get really disheartened by the fact that we’re not being shown in the Whitney Biennial or things like that, and I always kind of think, well, I know young people are working in museums and eventually those people will be in charge. Those people see what I do and my friends do and they think that it should be there so it’s just a matter of time really.

WE: Finally, what continent haven’t you shown on and when will you?

TB: Africa? I don’t believe I’ve ever shown in Africa. But I think that’s the only one.

WE: It’s a big life Tim Biskup.

TB: Yeah it is. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll show in Egypt or something like that someday.

WE: That would be great.

TB: We’ll see.

To see more of Tim’s work go to:

www.timbiskup.com

www.jonathanlevinegallery.com

He’s that Invisible DJ in the shadows, jockin’ the freshest product in the grocery store of new talent. He marries them to fashion retailers, and the end result, is a handwoven niche market, that’s proving to be quite fruitful for this young entrepreneur.

Wide-Eyed: Growing up what type of music were you listening to say in your adolescence? Those years of great change that many kids go through. I was interested in what type of music you were listening to then.

Jeremy Wineberg: I think for me, you know, high school was a roller coaster of different music, it was a little bit different then how I view music now. I grew up loving Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, No Doubt, Green Day, that whole rock/ska movement, I think of the 90’s. I think me being born in ‘85, obviously you’re asking me about my adolescence, 90’s into 2000 would have been Eminem, Doctor Dre. I think I was very influenced by what was played on the radio, what my peers were listening to, which I think is so different than now. Now it’s like this open market, like this individuality, where you can go online, read blogs and find out about new music by yourself as opposed to what it used to be; ‘well what are your friends listening to, what is top 20 at Tower Records?’ which no longer exists. So that’s pretty much what I was listening to growing up.

WE: So back then the model for consuming music was the DJs and the radio stations and then you had a few different niche markets. But, for mainstream culture we didn’t have the technology that we have today where you can create your own individualized playlist.

JW: Which is good and bad. I spoke at South by Southwest, it’s actually kind of cool, they closed their panels in December and they gave me a call about three weeks before and said, “We’d love for you to come and speak.” They actually flew me out there, which was kind of cool, to talk about the digital music age. I always throw myself against the wall and bounce back and forth going, well, individual downloads, is it the right thing, is it the wrong thing, are people not appreciating music as much, is that the right thing, is that the wrong thing? I think it is the thing and I think it has a lot to do with iTunes and selling them. I mean look at Steve Jobs. He came in 2003 and went, ‘You know what, I have the perfect solution to save all of this from people downloading music from Napster and Bearshare, or whatever share it’s called, MP3.com,’ all of these sites that pretty much no longer exist, because there were no laws or restrictions. No one really knew what file sharing was, it wasn’t really illegal, it was kind of this idea that people could share between each other and it was virtually created overnight. Jobs came in and said, “I have this solution and this device where I am going to get people to now instead of downloading something for free, they’re going to pay a dollar for it.” Unfortunately, as he continued to become innovative, all of these major labels are now going. Capital has closed its doors. EMI laid off 400-500 people, Universal is trying to figure out if it’s going to be in business in the next 8 months. They’re still trying to sell CDs when no one is really interested in that model anymore. So it’s kind of fascinating for me to watch all of this.

WE: So what was the impetus for starting Invisible DJ? What brought you to this beginning?

JW: I was always interested in music. I kind of came from a musical background. My father was one of the founders of Goldenvoice. So for me it was growing up and going to shows and being the 15-year-old running the box office at the Palladium. I went to go and work for Madonna when I was sixteen. I worked at Maverick Records and in my early college years, I went to the firm and worked for Jeff Blue for about 2 years, working with Korn and Limp Bizkit and artists that used to be there. I was a customer in Ron Herman. It was Christmas, it was December, buying presents and I heard music in the store and I said, “Who arranged your playlist?” I met this guy named Brett Brooks who is the men’s buyer for the store and curated the playlist for the store, we talked and I said, “I want to start a record label” and he had the same vision that I did. He was a lot older than I was which allowed me to look up to him as an older figure to learn from. What’s exciting is the label started everything. It was casual, it was like, ‘Do you want to work with me on this?’ and I didn’t really realize what I had when I went into it. I would tell people I started a record label with Ron Herman and they were like; ‘That’s the biggest store in the world, in Los Angeles.’ Through that I have been able to build relationships with so many people, including people in the music industry that I never would have been able to meet. As we talk further I’ll tell you about some other projects I am working on which are kind of cool and creative. So yeah, that’s pretty much how I got started with Invisible DJ or how I started Invisible DJ.

WE: So, political science. I would think a guy like you, into fashion and music, perhaps might have studied marketing or music business. You studied political science. Give me some background from your studies in political science over at Northridge.

JW: I went to Cal State Northridge which is the only school I applied to in LA because I was planning on going to my first pick, NYU, which is back East. Every time I thought about transferring I ended up continuing to stay because I was working on a new project which then was Invisible DJ and so forth and used that money that I made from promoting to travel the world. I lived in Vietnam. I lived in Thailand, Hong Kong, China, everywhere. I became a more cultured individual. I kind of went, ‘Well what do I want to study at Northridge?’ I inquired into the music program and they told me that I needed to be able to play an instrument to get into the music program which I thought was really interesting because, to me, music industry is behind the scenes: it’s promotion, it’s the agent, it’s the manager, it’s the publication, it’s everything but being a musician. They were very strict with their policy. I tried to fight the system and I couldn’t. So I actually went into liberal studies; liberal arts. I kind of created my own major. I focused on music, art, science, history. I was kind of like, I can do music myself; I don’t really need to learn. I was taking these music classes and by senior year, I was in music 5 advanced something… like music promotion. They asked us to go and put on a concert. I’d be basically like, teaching that class. I was like, ‘I don’t need to major in this. I’m going to major in something else. I’ve taught myself how to make it in the music industry so I am going to now go to college and learn how to do something or learn about something that I have no idea what to do.’ So that was my major.

WE: At SWS last year, you had stated that bands these days need more “corporate touchpoints” in the context of how the new model of the music industry is working. For the people with more of a punk rock sensibility, they might consider that selling out. What are your thoughts about art and commerce and how they are dependent or not dependent on one another?

JW: I think times are changing. I’m trying to think… uh… punk rock. When did punk rock start? I think punk rock sold out when it became more of this cultural movement where everyone was dressing like punk rockers. Right? People were buying into this look, into this lifestyle and into this music.

WE: Rather than creating it for themselves; like the old DIY movement. It’s not creative, it’s not DIY, it’s the commodification of punk, fuckin’ Hot Topicicized.

JW: Right. I mean, I think that punk rock sold out when Green Day considered themselves punk rock. Or when Sum 41 considered themselves punk rock. So, I think that with, not to dodge the question, I think that in retrospect every certain genre has sold out, I mean, you look at rap and you go, “We’re hood.” You’re not really hood, I mean you know you’re making 15 million dollars a year, you’re not hood. I mean, let’s get real. You know, like, stop singing about smoking crack when, you live in a house in Beverly Hills. What’s interesting to me, in terms of artists attaching themselves to brands, is that it is the last avenue where there is still money to be made. Aside from touring. You look at bands like Vampire Weekend and MGMT and they are constantly being offered corporate sponsorships and they’re taking them because as great as they are, they’re not selling a million units. So there needs to be some sort of other income to support their own tour that their label is not funding because all of these bands now are trying to go in with different deals. So, if an artist can team up with some sort of corporate sponsorship and go out there and exploit themselves in any way possible and then walk away making some money from that; I think that artists are satisfied. I don’t think people look at the word sellout anymore. Now music, it’s just about trying to make some money any way we can.

WE: Sustain the tours. There aren’t massive records sales anymore. I totally agree with you.

JW: It’s a bummer. Are you going to go to an art gallery and look at a painting and go, it’s a beautiful painting from a new up-and-coming artist and it’s… are you familiar with the artist Skullphone? It’s like you look at a Skullphone who’s a propaganda artist, but you know what, I’m just gonna buy like half of that. I just want the phone part. I don’t even want the skull in it. It’s like a record. You’re suppose to buy it and listen to it through its entirety and it’s completely lost now with these 99 cent downloads…its gonna be interesting. Oasis is gonna put out their next record, I was just reading about it and it’s going to be a continuous mix. So you either want to buy it or you don’t. You’re either gonna listen to it or not.

WE: It’s not tracked out?

JW: Yes, yes exactly.

WE: You’ve made your claim to fame making mixed albums for fashion outlets and for different retail entities. Do you think record stores are dead or could there still be, in this strange, new, innovative world, room for record stores?

JW: For me it’s more lucrative to make compilations than to go out and promote artists. That’s just what I’ve seen; what I’m doing at this moment in my life. In terms of promoting music, I think you look at the retailers like Hot Topic, you look at the retailers like Hollister, you look at Urban Outfitters, you look at American Apparel and you go, these are stores that niche to a very specific demographic and if hearing music in these stores, like, you go into Hot Topic and you’ll see The Academy Is… you’ll see Hawthorne Heights, and Avenged Sevenfold is selling hundreds of thousands of CDs out of Hot Topic. You put Avenged Sevenfold in Urban Outfitters, it’s not going to sell. But if you put Death Cab for Cutie in Urban Outfitters it’s going to sell. So I think that promoting music, for me, a successful model is placing a very small selection of music at each moment in time in the store and only carrying and selling about thirty to forty titles. It’s how much is it going to cost me to go and buy the CD before I get to even purchase the CD. You see that with Virgin Megastore now closing its stores. I mean we just lost our Virgin on Sunset. I mean that’s a bummer. I used to like to go to Virgin Megastore. That was the first real record store where they tried to bring in fashion. Hot Topic was a fashion store where they tried to bring music in; Virgin Megastore was a music store that tried to bring fashion in. And we’ve now lost that. The only one we have now is on Hollywood and Highland.

WE: You do have Amoeba though, man. What’s Amoeba doing different?

JW: You know we do have Amoeba which is great. And everyone goes to Amoeba. They have the largest selection of music.

WE: Insanely creative about the way they market things too.

JW: That’s what I think. More music is selling in the new traditional ways which is fashion. I mean, that’s how we all got started.

It’s not an aggro America, it is a young country sick of the rule of meatheads. There is nothing shitty about love. We all need it. Nihilism is fucking boring, scenesters are played, and that gangster hater shit is dead. Rock the Bells champions the message that we can all come together for the love of music and each other. The following interviews took place with support from Rock the Vote. In a country that is saying goodbye to the douchebaggery of the Bush Administration, we thought it was imperative to speak with the pop cultural rhetoricians of our time. Hip hop is speech, in its most clever form. Spoken word is the aesthetic. It is a delivery system of the feelings of everyday people. Free speech is the pillar of our democracy, so I asked the hip hop community about their relationship with democracy how they actively engage with it. Rock the Bells comes to San Bernardino August 9th.

Kid Capri: What the hell does that word mean? (Referring to Democracy, he breaks into laughter)

KC: I guess it plays a big part. Hip Hop plays a part in everything. Even in the elections, ‘cause hip hop has generated so much money, and has gotten so much attention over the years, whether some call it bad or good, we can’t help but have an influence to what’s going on. There is so much money involved in it, the millions and millions of dollars that are being made. That right there can start a whole revolution in and of itself. Especially when we’re selling more than country music. That’s unheard of.

KC: That’s what I’m sayin’. It definitely has reach in all avenues and astronomical amounts of money are being made.

KC: OBAMA BABY! Why not, he’s going all the way. Why not?

RAKIM

Wide-Eyed: What are your thoughts on hip hop and its influence on democracy in our country?

Rakim: I think now more than ever it has an influence on us because the voice of hip hop is so big now. At the end of the day, I think the government probably never thought it would come to this, but at the end of the day the young vote counts. We are looking at that right now with Barack. Hip hop is basically a way of life now. The things that people do are epistemic to hip hop, the things we go through like dealing with the system. It can even come down to legal things, like how much a crack dealer gets charged (punishment in the court system) to how much a coke dealer with the same amount gets charged. Or making sure that there are jobs for people and programs for people when they get out of incarceration. These things are affecting hip hop in every way. From hip hop, people are starting to wake up, like Puff wearing the Vote or Die shirts. People are realizing how important our vote is. I think that people in hip hop are feeling good, knowing that we are important for something, that we can make a difference. I don’t know if it’s going to make a change but…

WE: It creates a dialog.

R: Exactly. It’s touching everybody, and every body has to deal with it. It’s an exciting time, there is a lot going on, and a lot of rappers are speaking about political things. It’s a good time bro, cause this is the time of the seventh seal. It is what it is.

B REAL

B Real: I think that it is definitely interesting. There is definitely history making involved here. We’ll see what happens. You have two candidates, and there is a lot of controversy behind both of them. You know McCain and people feeling like he is basically going to carry on what Bush is doing. People question Obama’s experience and authenticity as far as where he stands on issues. So people have their concerns. I really don’t know which way to go, I mean I’d like to see Barack win because he definitely has some interesting plans on how to change things, it’s whether or not he can actually implement them.

WE: What are your thoughts on hip hop’s role in democracy in the United States?

BR: Well you know hip hop is a voice so as long as rappers keep writing songs that provoke thoughts that are on a spiritual level or political level or just life in general; people will listen. People will either be inspired by it or turned off by it depending on what their point of view is. So it’s pivotal man, it’s a tool. It’s a communication tool of an amazing kind man. There ain’t been nothing like this. Hip hop is essentially kind of rebellious and controversial like rock, and it gives the “I don’t give a fuck!” attitude, like punk rock. So you know, it’s a combination as well as r&b or soul. Hip hop is a combination of so many different things, there are so many different emotions and vibes. So you know, it is an important tool for communication, for sure.

WE: As far as the pendulum goes, no pun intended, do you think we (hip hop culture) are swinging away from the bling and materialism and coming back to the real?

BR: Hip hop goes in cycles. It always has and always will. So for as long as there is commercial-type rap music that’s dominating the airways and the publications and all that sort of stuff, and the underground remains the underground, it will go in a cycle. For a minute it will have a few years to shine and then it will switch over to some other aspect of hip hop, so it goes in circles. Then there are so many hip hop fans out there, that there is something for everyone. You know the kids that listen to Lil’ Wayne and the G.I.’s and Lil’ John? They wouldn’t necessarily be down with this kind of hip hop and the fans here (Rock the Bells) wouldn’t necessarily be down with that kind of hip hop. That goes to show you that there are so many faces and elements of hip hop and there are so many fans out there that follow every aspect of it, that there is room for everybody. Everybody can coexist and that is the good thing. Whether you like what’s popular right now or not, it’s irrelevant. It’s the fact that there is so much shit out there, that no matter what’s popular or not, you can always get to the stuff you want, via the Internet. There is more accessibility as opposed to ten years ago where you didn’t know about all these crazy dope groups that are out there, now you can find them with a click of a button. You don’t necessarily have to follow MTV, or BET, or the radio stations. You can get on hip hop websites all over and find these new, up-and-coming people.

WE: Will you be putting out another record with Cypress Hill?

BR: Yeah, definitely. Right now I am mixing my solo record. We are scheduled to have it come out in October. It is called Smoke and Mirrors tentatively. Then in March of next year, we are going to be coming out with the new Cypress stuff. It’s in production right now. It’s been in production for the last six to eight months. There’s a lot of songs. It’s going to be a high powered album. We are going back to really gritty grimy roots of hip hop, for us. There are a couple different things, here and there, but primarily it is all the rawness of what hip hop is, in my opinion anyway.

BOOTIE BROWN of THE PHARCYDE

Bootie Brown: I have to give you my honest train of thought. We are in America, and in America most things that a black man does, it’s a set up. I think we are going to find out something about Obama that nobody knows. I think some shit is going to come out, I really think so. It’s just one of those things. It’s much bigger than a racial thing. I think that having a black person in a position of that kind of power in America— I think fools would burn this shit down before they gave us that kind of respect. This is just not our place. In my heart I feel like that. In a certain way, America lets a black man get to a certain level. Once you get to that level, so many things can just break you down. To the point where, people will turn your own people against you. Put it this way, Obama is not going into office right now with the economy being low, he’s got the roughest challenge ahead of him that any president could ever suffer and he’s black. If he does it, it’s going to be like the greatest pull, it would be like Michael Jordan doin’ some shit. Bush has so fucked the shit up, everybody knows, everything is fucked up at this time. If he is going to step into office, there is just going to be so much pressure man. I hope that he does it, but living in the States, money is king and as long as money is the root of all evil, it’s never going to be right. I guess you could go live off the land somewhere in Africa, I can’t even say you could get it right there because people have been killing each other for thousands and thousands of years. This country was not built for us. We were transplanted over here and it was built around us and built by us, but it’s not here for us. That’s honestly how I feel.

WE: Okay. Well, on another note, what about today? Look at this huge mass multicultural crowd that surrounds itself around hip hop. Today has nothing to do with bling and money, there is love. Can’t you admit there is genuine love in this country?

BB: Let’s break it down, let’s break it down. SanDisk is putting it on, now you have a computer company, that has nothing to do with black people at all. Just as much as the emcees are benefiting, they are benefiting four or five times as much from the urban culture going out and buying thirty dollars worth of shit for your phone, memory — all that type of shit. I just have a different way of looking at things.

DE LA SOUL

Jude Jolicoeur (AKA Dave): Hip hop is a culture that can sway individuals, for the people my age, 30s, 40s, what have you. It can definitely be a voice for those people and an influence for those people as well. Kids and adults alike, when rappers say ‘Throw your hands up in the air,’ it’s just as easy as saying go out there and vote. I believe that we have that force and that drive, to get people out there and be productive and be a part of our lives. I think the artists who are out there who are concerned, who are conscious of what’s going on, in their lives, in politics, so on and so forth. If we speak up, those that listen, will follow.

WE: What are your thoughts about the pendulum swing that is going on in hip hop? As a culture hip hop is moving away from bling and getting back to “the real.” That has been a thematic at this show.

JJ: It’s a cool thing. It’s always good to see hip hop take its sides. We don’t want it to lean in one place only or one corner only. It needs a balance and whether it’s bling or whether it’s consciousness, we need a balance. It’s been there since day one. There were rappers back in the day talking about doing drugs and ladies, just as much as there were rappers talking about the cultural lifestyle on a positive note. So it has always been there, we need that balance.

WE: Kelvin, what are your thoughts on the connection between hip hop and this year’s election?

Kelvin Mercer (AKA Mercenary): It’s just good to see people within hip hop or outside of hip hop just trying to pay attention. Being actually forced to pay attention due to how incredibly bad things are with certain aspects of our lives; economically, gas, health issues — I mean, the average person wouldn’t normally want to pay attention to issues like these. They need to be part of the process. Hip hoppers are normal everyday people at the end of the day, so they are paying attention to these issues and they want to try to use who they are to help people think about these things.

Vincent Mason (AKA Maseo AKA Smiley) comes to greet his partners from across the room and immediately gets in the mix. According to Pharcyde’s manager and longtime friend Greg Campbell, Maseo is the “sweetest dude”on the tour. Up to this point Maseo was telling stories and cracking jokes on the other side of the room and had the whole green room laughing.

Vincent Mason: I definitely think that hip hop has grown up for the most part. At one point when it was very young it wasn’t a part of or at least thinking about being a part of mainstream culture, such as politics and things like that. Now that we are grown-up, a lot of us are 30 plus and we influence the youth as well. We have no choice but to be a part of politics to a larger degree because it is what life consists of. Being hip hop culture and being grown men, we just have the extra influence for the youth to be participating in it. The artist they respect are involved, like a Puff Daddy or even a De La Soul, you know what I mean?

WE: So do you fellas have a new record that you are working on?

VM: YEAH! Coming at you in 2011! {breaks into hysterical laughter}

JJ: You know we never have a set date or an idea or a time, so on and so forth. We just work, and when it’s ready, it’s ready. So we are working at the moment.

In cabaret costume, eyebrows etched on in meticulous calligraphy, she mercilessly pounds her piano into melodious submission. Sharp, clever lyrics delivered by a voice both sensual and strong are meant to be given strict attention. In rural Michigan during the Rothbury Music Festival, Palmer sat across from Wide-Eyed’s Juliet Bennett-Rylah in a stuffy media tent surrounded by acres of field and forest. Palmer discusses her forthcoming solo album and tour, just in time for us to tell you, Los Angeles, about her intimate solo show at the Troubadour on August 4. It’s your chance to spend an evening with the political, the punk and the consummate performer, Amanda Palmer.

Wide-Eyed: Let’s talk about your solo album.

Amanda Palmer: Alright, it’s called Who Killed Amanda Palmer.

WE: Twin Peaks reference?

AP: Well, I’m a huge David Lynch fan so when I first got the idea of doing a solo record I thought that that would be a really funny title, but then the title sort of evolved into having its own little meaning and environment. I started doing off-shoot projects involved with the record… like some videos and there’s a book coming out along with the record that’s going to be written by Neil Gaiman. We’re doing this whole ‘various dead Amandas’ theme. So, it actually inspired a lot of other stuff which is the way it should always happen. You go in one random direction and eventually things blossom out of that — which is how life should be.

The record itself is just gorgeous and I’ve never been so proud of anything in my life. I’m so, so happy with the way it came out. It was supposed to be just a little solo piano record with no production and it was supposed to come out last spring, like not this past spring but the one over a year ago. Then, Ben Folds wrote an email to the band’s website just saying, “Hi, I’m a fan,” and we got to talking and he offered me his studio to record it and then he offered to produce and then one thing led to another and what was supposed to take a couple of weeks ended up taking the better part of a year. But, it was so worth it. I mean, the record is just beautiful. It’s got tons of really creative production on it, lots of strings, synthesizers, percussion, lots of background singing — not at all what I imagined it would be.

AP: Ben plays all over the record. He plays keyboards, percussion; he sings on it, he helped arrange a lot of the strings. He fully produced.

AP: Yes, Zoe Keating, who used to play with Rasputina. She’s this fantastic cellist, plays on a couple tracks. Annie Clark from St. Vincent. She’s the singer from St. Vincent. She does a duet with me. And, East Bay Ray from The Dead Kennedys plays guitar on this great song called “Guitar Hero.” So, yes, laden with special guests.

AP: That’s gonna be totally solo. I’m doing some shows in August that are just Amanda Palmer, solo piano, and then when I start the actual, real tour in October in Europe, I’m going to have a whole crew of backup people with me.

WE: Is that Estradasphere?

AP: No, I’m not actually taking a band. I’m taking a lot of backup actors, which is a lot less standard. It’s going to be really fun. When I come back around spring or fall, I may bring the band — Estradasphere — with me. They’re going through some changes right now: they just had a baby, and they share members with The Secret Chiefs (Secret Chiefs 3) and they’re going on tour. I’m hoping that our schedules line up for the rest of the tour.

AP: No, not fans, but like actual, professional performance artists from Australia who are amazing. They’re physical theatre people that I’ve been collaborating with for a couple of years and they’re ready to just hit the road and do strange shit. So, it should be really good.

AP: Yes, they’re just going to collaborate with us. They’re like these incredibly sexy pole-dancing acrobats. They’re incredible, not suggestive at all. That’s what I like about it — it’s very innocent.

AP: Yeah, that’s how we found each other. They named themselves after the lyric in “Gravity” and I wrote them a letter saying, “Oh, that’s so great,” and then they started opening up for us.

AP: It’s a lot of both. The oldest song on the record is over ten years old. I wrote it when I was maybe 22, 23 years old. It was hard for me to put that one on the record. Ben (Folds) was like, “Oh, it’s so great, you gotta put it on the record,” and I was like, “Ehhhhh, it’s a little too retro, I don’t know if I can handle that,” and he talked me into it.

AP: Yeah, I’m so happy with it now. He twisted my arm on a couple of issues and every single one of them I’m glad I caved.

AP: Maybe, I just played with him in Glastonbury and that was fun. We’d love to do a sort of Elton John/Billy Joel experiment where we reserve a room in Vegas and he has a pink, sparkly piano and I have a purple, sparkly piano and sunglasses.

AP: Yeah, I think the plan is do the Amanda Palmer solo record and see how it goes. I’d like to take a break after that because I’ll probably be exhausted. And then we’ll probably gear up to tour.

AP: The videos. I wrote and shot six videos with my good friend Michael Pope, who is an old collaborator who’s done a bunch of The Dresden Dolls videos. We shot six videos in six days for the record and we’re releasing one every two weeks and we just put the first one up and people are loving it.

AP: Yes. They’re really good, really performance-driven and very creative. I shot a handful of them at my old high school with a bunch of the students. I’m also putting the corresponding songs up with the videos on my MySpace.

AP: Yeah, most of them. A few of them are going to be unfamiliar, like “Runs in the Family,” “What’s the Use of Wondering?,” “Another Year,” — there’s a handful on the record that haven’t been played live and haven’t been shared. But then a lot of songs people will recognize from having heard them solo, but they’ve never heard them like this.

AP: I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet. As much as I like the whole production, lots of stuff happening, lots of actors, lots of costumes, I also really like the shows where I’m not really sure what I’m going to play tonight. I just sit down at the piano and it’s like a coffee club: you just sort of sit there and banter with the crowd and take requests. Those things are always really fun because they’re just so loose and relaxed and there’s no pressure.

AP: An evening with… {laughs}

AP: I forgot about Evelyn. Somewhere in there we’ve got to put out the Evelyn Evelyn. The record is going to be called Evelyn Evelyn. Evelyn Evelyn presenting Evelyn Evelyn featuring and written by Evelyn Evelyn and starring Evelyn and Evelyn Evel the Evelyn Sisters. {laughs} Limited Edition eleven dollars and eleven cents.

AP: Yes, we put out a thousand and eleven copies on vinyl. I think we’ll have to put out more of the CD. Maybe we’ll put out one hundred and eleven thousand — it’ll take a while for them to sell. {laughs} We’re hoping to do a tour — put the girls on tour — for a limited tour. I don’t know if I’ve told anyone about this yet publicly. We’re going to do a tour — Jason and I are going to come and help tour manage them because they’re really shy and they need the support…

AP: We’ll set up a tour of cities that only have double names like Walla Walla, New York, New York. We want to play Sing Sing Prison, Baden Baden in Germany — pretty much, we’ve already made a list of the cities. Most of them were in Australia, but we’re hoping to make that happen. It might be really expensive, but worth it. And the tour T-shirts are going to be amazing when you look at the back.

AP: Not anymore, because I just told you about it. And you can write about it. Tell people in Baden Baden to watch out.

The Gap was selling pre-torn cut off flannel shirts, just in time for all the douche bag jocks to put them on their Christmas lists. It was a corporate hijacking of mass proportions. The cat was out of the bag and the wheels of market-driven product pushing were in full effect. Mass media had transformed Seattle’s culture into a profitable commodity, so you can guess what the major labels did. They went to town signing replica bands and offering advances that Poneman and Pavitt, couldn’t have dreamed of doing.

While the country was going bananas over the grunge explosion taking place courtesy of Sub Pop, financially the label was being eaten alive by the growing pains. The downsizing began in the spring of 1991. That year the company dropped from 25 employees to 5. One had to take into consideration the massive amounts of physical material that had to be produced to keep Sub Pop visible in the market. Inflating the rock megaliths of the Sub Pop was not cheap. For this DIY company, managing the growing pains proved to be difficult. It was a mess: the legal fees, thoughtless expenditures on meals and travel, something had to give. It was the perfect storm for a disaster. Eventually the internal quandary became the beat on the streets. Both The Rocket and The Seattle Weekly ran stories prophesying the end of the label.

The sky was falling at Sub Pop and Nevermind was blowing the fuck up. Nevermind was picked up by major label Geffen/DGC. Nine months after Nevermind’s release it had sold 4 million copies. This was a blessing in disguise for Sub Pop. They received a buyout on Nirvana’s contract, plus royalties on future albums. This helped turn the label’s finances around.

When the storm had settled from the grunge explosion, Sub Pop found themselves in the arena with major labels that had bottomless wells of capital. The artists began to demand bigger advances, so for Sub Pop to remain competitive, a deal needed to be made. In January of 1995, Sub Pop inked a deal with Warner Bros. Sub Pop was given the capital it needed to rock steady in a post-Nirvana world. In return, Warner received 49 percent of Sub Pop.

Later that year, co-founder Bruce Pavitt left the label to raise his family. In the middle years, Sub Pop had some excellent finds. They released ex-Dinosaur Jr. member, Lou Barlow’s Sebadoh records. Sebadoh are considered to be among the pioneers of Lo-Fi, along with other bands of the era, like Pavement, which embraced that style of production. In those days, Jack Black from the White Stripes put a record out on Sub Pop with his earlier project, The Go.

Although the label has had its ups-and-downs; from opening shop in other markets (Toronto and Boston), to spending to much on band advances - by the turn of the century, the label had fortified its brand with a broad breadth of talent.

“You can buy your way out of certain problems,” Poneman says. “You need to go back to your mission.” That mission has always been world domination. Really what they mean by world domination is that of discovering art and giving it to the world.

This decade has been very successful for Sub Pop. The diversity of their artistry is truly amazing. In 2001 they released the Shin’s Oh, Inverted World. Later, in 2004, two of their songs would appear on the Garden State soundtrack. In 2003 The Postal Service sold nearly 1 million records with the release of Give Up.

Keeping in line with their independent cultural sensibilities, Sub Pop embraced the realm of comedy; they gave the world David Cross with the 2003 release of Shut Up You Fuckin’ Baby. The album is by far the best roasting of American culture in a diluted idiot-centric post 9-11 world. While John Ashcroft was calling art “pornography” David was kickin’ the whole administrations ass with one hand behind his back. It’s interesting that Sub Pop picked the younger guy that could hang with the likes of the late, great George Carlin. Sub Pop just gets it. They also signed Flight of the Concords, and this year in February, they won the Grammy for Best Comedy Album for The Distant Future.

More recently Sub Pop has varied their buffet of sonic options with releases from an eclectic bunch. Iron & Wine is a surprise sleeper hit folkster film professor from Florida. CSS Brazilian is an experimental Internet sensation dance group that just released a new record entitled Donkey.Check the review at the back of this issue. Grand Archives are bringing back the awesome folk harmony glory of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Sub Pop continues to bring the world a bridge between their roots and the new innovators in music — after all that is one in the same; they are the tastemakers of the American underground. From the indie rock heroes Wolf Parade, to the legendary dual of Mark Lanegan and Greg Dulli’s Gutter Twins, Sub Pop brings it. If you’re already a fan…I’m preaching to the choir, but the story must be told: Sub Pop fuckin’ rules.

The Academy Is…: It’s rather frightening to think that the scenesters’ lemming mentality towards music has actually gravitated to a band that doesn’t conform to the normal suckiness of most contemporary pop-punk, but maybe for once the kids are onto something here. The Academy Is…, despite its questionable scenester following and affiliation to the poster-boys for selling out, Fall Out Boy, shows an amazing talent for writing songs with a wide range of stylistic variation as well as demonstrates a musical ability to give entertaining and interactive performances. Their fun, jump-around music is not only mind-bogglingly catchy, but also completely musically involved—each of the band members is talented enough to pull his own weight, which is such a novelty in contemporary Rock/Indie bands. Their efforts to connect with their audiences are admirable, and if you can stand the crowd you’ll definitely be in for an unforgettable concert experience. Reel Big Fish: Pioneers of Third Wave Ska and one of the biggest names in the genre, this is a band that has been around long enough to know what the hell they’re doing. Founded in 1992 by frontman Aaron Barrett,

Reel Big Fish has been going strong ever since, combating the modern stigma surrounding contemporary mainstream music with a conglomeration of fantastic musicianship, a brass section powerful enough to destroy entire cities, tongue-in-cheek lyrics that are witty, simple and honest, and all-around face-melting awesomeness. The stage banter between Barrett and second-in-command, Scott Klopfenstein, is hilariously entertaining, showing the surreal unification between band members, their mind-blowing ability to improvise, and making every show just plain fun—anyone who’s ever seen a live performance of the song “SR” can atone to the unique chemistry that the band seems to possess in front of an audience. Seeing them live is like watching a musical comedy that you can dance to. If Warped Tour is your summer festival of choice, make sure that whatever you do you do not miss the chance to see this band perform.

Angels & Airwaves: Angels & Airwaves (AVA) is a side-project comprised of a strange assembly of accomplished musicians. Tom DeLonge of the famed Blink 182 acts as frontman and creative mastermind behind the alternative rock band, shedding the catchy, lyrical toilet-humor and pop-punk persona in favor of a sound that is noticeably more mature (all the while keeping an air of simplicity that brings back fond nostalgia of Blink 182). Where Blink was DeLonge’s exploration of teenage complications and high school drama, Angels & Airwaves is most certainly his foray into the world of adulthood. While they may not be the all-out rabble raisers they were in former bands, Angels & Airwaves delivers intensely memorable performances with just as much energy and vigor and without the monkey-antics and the poop jokes.

Ludo: Frivolous, manic, and an all-around good time, the five piece Missouri-based band, Ludo, delivers some of the most interesting and interactive performances available to the concert junkie. The pop-punk indie band rocks out with powerful five-part harmonies and lyrical odes to serial killers, haunted lakes, and The Man Show—vivid with fantastical imagery about girls on trampolines and singing crawfish, combined with moog and guitar lines reminiscent of some of our favorite 80’s synth bands and delicious ska undertones Ludo has come a log way in a few short years and is certainly a band to look for in the future. Their rock-out, energy-pumping, quality opening performances have the tendency to steal the limelight from the headliners, and seeing live solos from lead guitarist, Tim Ferrel, is like being kicked in the head with colors and sounds from another planet. So if you’re looking for a crazy concert experience complete with perfect harmonics and musical dedications to Kevin Arnold from Wonder Years, this is it.

Motion City Soundtrack: Motion City Soundtrack is a pop-punk/indie sensation; notorious for their playful lyrics and multi-layered melodies, MCS pulls together symphonies and stories that keep upbeat without ever becoming maudlin. With powerful moog lines by Jesse Johnson and a refusal to take themselves seriously, the band perfectly meets the fine line between emotional adolescence and responsible adulthood with fast-paced, sugar rush performances and new-wave riffs. Frontman Justin Pierre (who is just as eccentric and goofy as his name would suggest) offers a refr