Category Archives: interview

Veruca Salt Reform, Enlist Brad Wood To Produce Album & Announce 1st Live Gig

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Veruca Salt, back in the day, circa 1995.

In 1994 Verruca Salt arrived in a blast of red hot punk energy. “Seether” was a hit, and their album American Thighs, produced by Brad Wood, was terrific.

“Seether”:

And then everything went wrong. They signed with the big New York management company, Q Prime (Metallica, Def Leppard) and recorded a glossy second album that had nothing to do with the indie rock of American Thighs.

“Number One Blind”:

Nina Gordon went solo, and the band wasn’t the same without her. And Verruca Salt faded away, a one-hit wonder.

“Victrola”:

This past March 15 the original lineup of Verruca Salt — Nina Gordon, Louise Post, Jim Shapiro, and Steve Lack — announced they were reforming: “or now let’s just say this: hatchets buried, axes exhumed” they posted on Facebook.

Now they’re recording a new album with Brad Wood (yes!) producing, Brooklyn Vegan reports.

And soon Nina Gordon and Louise Post with perform together for the first time in 15 years. On December 18 as part of Second City’s 2013 24-Hour Improv & Music Benefit in Los Angeles, Verruca Salt will once again rock the house. They hit the stage at 10 AM CST (11 AM EST) and, like the rest of the benefit, will be broadcast live online, Brooklyn Vegan reports.

I interviewed Veruca Salt for my online magazine, Addicted To Noise, back in 1995 following their success with “Seether.”

Overview: Veruca Salt Want To Tear Your Playhouse Down

Part 1: Veruca Salt’s Nina Gordon “Seethes” With Anger

Part 2: Veruca Salt’s Nina Gordon Tells All (Well almost)

Part 1: Veruca Salt’s Louise Post Discovers Her Calling

Part 2: Veruca Salt’s Louise Post Stands Tall And Rocks Out

— A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post —

Listen: Lou Reed Talks About Bob Dylan

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In February 2012 Lou Reed appeared at the Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania and was interviewed by Rolling Stone’s Anthony deCurtis.

It’s short but interesting, particularly the end where Reed talks about the difference between Dylan’s songwriting and his own. Use the “more” link on the player for other clips including Reed talking about Andy Warhol and Laurie Anderson.

— A Days of the Crazy-Wild blog post —

Hear How Kathleen Hanna Inspired Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

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Photo via The Julie Ruin website.

Cool excerpt from the new documentary, “The Punk Singer,” at Spin today.

The film is about former Bikini Kill leader/ current The Julie Ruin front-person, Kathleen Hanna, and in this clip Hanna and others talk about Nirvana and Hanna’s role.

Massive Q & A with Throwing Muses’ Kristin Hersh: ‘We didn’t want to work in an ugly business any longer.’

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Throwing Muses, 2013.

A 6000 word interview with Throwing Muses’ frontwoman Kristin Hersh just went online at Uncut magazine coinciding with the release of the excellent new Throwing Muses’ album, Purgatory/Paradise.

The interview is by Michael Bonner, who writes “The View From Here” blog at Uncut.

Here’s a choice section:

Is there an inspiration behind the collection of songs on Purgatory/Paradise?

Ten years off, I suppose. The songs don’t give a shit about whether or not anybody is letting us work. We didn’t want to work in an ugly business any longer. It was never really the right thing to do, except it allowed us to make records. But eventually your morals can’t bear to hear ‘Dumb it down’ one more time. So you’re morally bound to either stop working or work in private if you can’t play the game, and we were not out to play the game any longer. So we did both. There were times when we couldn’t work at all and times when we worked a little bit, and this collection is a window into that more private world.

You say you’ve been working on these songs for three or four years.

That’s recording. The songs kept coming, and we always play together whenever we can. And that’s all there were but it always was, because we were such dorks we couldn’t really learn how to, I guess care. You’re supposed to want to be a rock star, you’re not supposed to filter down into the choices you make including selling a cartoon version of yourself and your friends and your product. I don’t see how that could not be transparent to everyone right now. I wouldn’t want to be caught doing that even if I could, and I couldn’t because I’m such a dork and so are my friends but eventually we were livid that that’s what was expected of us when all we were trying to do was… well, really what we’re trying to do is manifest heaven. I don’t know how else to put it! There aren’t any better ways. In private, we called Purgatory/Paradise Precious Pretentious! We don’t care anymore about caring. We care so fucking much, we’re tired of apologising for it. This is our Precious Pretentious world and it’s been private for the last decade because we haven’t wanted to engage in the music business and now the music business is dead and we’re dancing on its grave.

Read the entire interview at The View From Here

Listen to a track off the album:

Imprisoned Pussy Riot Members Appeal Sentences

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pussy-riot

Pussy Riot members Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alekhina have filed an appeal with the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation in hopes their two-year prison sentences will be overturned.

Both women claim they were unfairly punished for performing a protest song against President Vladimir Putin in a Moscow church last year, the Australian Associated Press reports.

This latest legal move on the part of the Pussy Riot members is supported by the country’s Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin.

Both women are due to be released in March of 2014.

Meanwhile, a few days ago Tolokonnikova’s husband Pyotr Verzilov finally got to see her after being unable to see or speak to her for over three weeks. Ten hours after the couple spoke Verzilov did an interview with Aljazeera America.

Check out the TV interview:

Watch & Listen: Lou Reed, Leonard Cohen Part of 92nd Street Y Online Archive

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92nd Street Y has recordings of over 10,000 events going back to 1949. This Thursday they will start letting people watch or stream audio of over 1000 of them, and right now there’s an audio stream of Leonard Cohen performing “The Stranger Song” from 1966, and an interview with Lou Reed from 2006 that you can check out.

Lou Reed:

Leonard Cohen reads two poems – “For E.J.P” and “You Have the Lovers” – and performs “The Stranger Song.”

Q&A: Kathleen Hanna Talks About “The Punk Singer”

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Photo via the New York Times. Photo by Shervin Lainez.

In today’s New York Times Kathleen Hanna spoke about why she cooperated with having a documentary, “The Punk Singer,” made about her life, and why she is so open about herself in the film. “The Punk Singer” will be in theaters starting next week. There’s a clip from it below.

You really opened up your life, from late-stage Lyme disease to your relationship with your husband.

Mortality looming over you really changes your personality in such a huge way. I thought I was dying, so I was like, “I don’t care anymore — I am vulnerable. I’m sick of being guarded!” Adam really got me through coping with Lyme: every day, he would place every single one of the 39 pills I had to take in my pill case so I didn’t have to do it. He’s the person who changed my IV bags, kept the house clean, cooked every single meal for me and kept everything running for two years. Besides the fact that he’s hot as hell, really talented and has the best sense of humor of anyone I know, who else would change an IV bag for you while you’re laying on the couch having a seizure?

“The Punk Singer” begins with footage of you performing an early confessional spoken-word piece where you describe the importance of “screaming what’s unspoken.”

I’m standing in a coffee shop with Ian MacKaye and Guy Picciotto of Fugazi, rocking back and forth and saying all this stuff about incest! When I see it today, my stomach drops and I want to hide under a blanket. At the same time, that’s what I was like — Mr. Confrontation.

For more, head to the New York Times.

Jimmy Page Says Remastered Led Zeppelin Albums Will Contain Previously Unreleased Recordings

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Jimmy Page says there are Led Zeppelin recordings the public has never heard before, but next year we’ll get to hear them.

In an interview tonight (November 14, 2013) with TeamRock Radio’s Nicky Horne at the Classic Rock Roll Of Honour at London’s Roundhouse, Page explained that he’s remastered all of Zep’s studio recordings, and each album will be rereleased next year with a second disc of previously unheard material.

Each of the albums has been remastered but it also has a companion disc with it. Let’s take, for example, “Led Zeppelin III” — that’s remastered from analog from the original thing. I know everybody does that, but what they don’t do… I revisited all the working mixes that were done at the time. There’s different versions. Say, for example, there’s “Since I’ve Been Loving You” — there’s an incredible version of that which is totally different, it’s really raw in its approach, it’s quite dramatic, it’s cool. That’s one little item of it, but what it gives is a companion disc to “Led Zeppelin III.” It’ll come out in its own box and all the rest of it. Each disc will give a really intimate picture of the group. That’s the idea that I’ve had with it and I think it’s successful.

Listen to the Jimmy Page interview:

Inside The Stooges, Guitarist Ron Asheton’s Story: “Iggy was kind of a clown”

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There’s an amazing story about The Stooges on the vice.com website. The late Stooges’ guitarist Ron Asheton spoke to Legs McNeil at length and now we get to read Asheton’s version of The Stooges’ story.

Talking about the group getting signed and recording the now classic first album, The Stooges, Asheton said:

I think we had three songs, and one of them was, “I’m sick.”

Jac [Holzman, Elecktra Records president] asked, “Well, you guys got enough material to do an album right?” We said yes when we didn’t, so we just busted our asses and I came up with the riff to “I Wanna Be Your Dog.”

When we went to New York to record the first Stooges album, Elecktra asked us again, “You’ve got more stuff, don’t you?”

We said, “Oh sure!”

So I went back to the hotel and in one hour came up with “Little Doll,” “Not Right,” and “Real Cool Time.” Once I had the music, Iggy came down and listened to it, and then he went up and came up with the lyrics. The next night we rehearsed one time and then we went and recorded each song in one take.

We’d never been in the studio before, and we set up our Marshall Stacks and put the volume on ten. So we started out, and John Cale, our producer, said, “Oh no, this is not the way!” But we couldn’t play unless it was high volume, we didn’t have enough expertise on our instruments. It was all power chords, and the only way we could get it done was to play big and loud.

There’s plenty more good stuff here.

And you can listen to The Stooges:

Return Of The Throwing Muses: “We wanted no further part [of] the recording industry”

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Later this week the Throwing Muses return with a new album, Purgatory/Paradise, their first in ten years. The 32-track album comes with a 64-page book of essays and stories by Kirstin Hersh, plus photos and artwork by Muses’ drummer  Dave Narcizo and Hersh.

“We’ve always lived in our own private world,” Muses leader Kirstin Hersh told The Independent, “and we might  well have made this record and never released it, but we felt it was worthy of release.”

The group has spent the past decade “divorcing ourselves from the recording industry, which is collapsing. We wanted no further part in it,” Hersh said.

The new book/album is being published by HarperCollins’ The Friday Project Limited imprint.

For the entire story, head to The Independent.

Here’s are some old videos for your enjoyment.