Alexander Laurence's Blog, page 2458

Mac DeMarco shares new video + announces tour dates

MAC DEMARCO SHARES VIDEO FOR "PASSING OUT PIECES"
ANNOUNCES NEW TOUR DATES
SALAD DAYS OUT NOW VIA CAPTURED TRACKS After recently wrapping a full run of European tour dates, Mac DeMarco is back to share the video forSalad Days single "Passing Out Pieces" in conjunction with the announcement of more upcoming tour dates. The video, directed by Mac's bassist Pierce McGarry, sees Mac both giving and taking life, and features appearances from his drummer Joe McMurrary as well as Alex Calder. It's the first clip from Mac's lauded new album Salad Days, but anyone that's been keeping tabs on Mac for some time now knows to expect even more great and bizarre videos to come. Check out all of Mac's upcoming tour dates, the "Passing Out Pieces" video and what the press has been saying about Salad Days below. WATCH: "Passing Out Pieces" - http://youtu.be/vF7P3oq8Enc
What the press is saying about Salad Days: "a great album in a tradition of no-big-deal great albums" - Pitchfork (Best New Music) "a dreamy piece of self-reflection" - The New York Times "a thematically tight, formally slender album full of sun-dappled songs" - NPR "like a meeting of Stephen Malkmus and Marc Bolan" - Rolling Stone (3.5 stars) Tour Dates06-04 Dawson City, Yukon- SOVA06-12 Brooklyn, NY- House of Vans ~06-18 Sainte-Therese-De-Blainville, QC- Bar Le Cha Cha #06-20 Toronto, ON- Opera House [NXNE] &06-21 Toronto, ON- Dundas Square [NXNE] !06-23 Minneapolis, MN- First Avenue and 7th Street Entry  #06-24 Winnipeg, MB- The Park Theatre  #06-25 Saskatoon, SK - Amigos Cantina [Saskatachewan Jazz Festival] #06-27 Edmonton, AB- Starlite Room  #06-28 Calgary, AB- Republik  #07-01 Vancouver, BC- Vogue Theatre  #07-02 Victoria, BC- Sugar  #07-04 Trois-Riviere,Quebec- Trois-Rivières FestiVoix Festival 07-06 Ottawa, Ontario- Ottawa Bluesfest07-08 San Francisco, CA- Great American Music Hall  $07-09 San Francisco, CA- Great American Music Hall  #07-10 Big Sur, CA- Loma Vista 07-11 Los Angeles, CA- The Fonda %07-14 Denver CO- Bluebird Theater 07-15 Lincoln, NE- Vega 07-16 St. Louis, MO- Old Rock House 07-17 Columbus, OH- Skully's *07-18 Buffalo, NY- Tralf Music Hall *07-19 Washington DC- 9:30 Club @08-01 Montreal, QC- Osheaga Festival08-02 Happy Valley, OR- Pickathon08-03 Happy Valley, OR- Pickathon08-08 Gothenburg, Sweden- Tradgam, Stay Out West Festival08-09 Oslo, Norway- Oya Festival08-10 Helsinki, Finland- Flow Festival08-13 Tel Aviv, Israel- Barby08-14 Hasselt, Belgium- Pukklepop08-15 Glanusk, UK- Green Man Festival08-16 Saint Malo, France- La Route du Rock08-17 Hamburg, Germany- Dockville08-18 Copenhagen, Denmark- Pumpehuset08-21 Parades De Coura, Portugal- Parades de Coura Festival08-22 Paris, France- Rock En Seine 08-24 Los Angeles, CA - FYF Fest08-30 Seattle, WA - Bumbershoot10-04 Austin TX - Austin City Limits10-11 Austin, TX -Austin City Limits10-12 Miami, FL- MANA Wynwood (Mac solo show)11-11 San Francisco, CA- The Fillmore11-21 Berlin, Germany- Heimathafen Neukölln
11-23 Brighton, UK- Concorde 2
11-24 Leeds, UK- The Irish Centre
11-25 London, UK- The Forum
11-27 Lyon, France- Epicerie Moderne
11-28 Barcelona, Spain- Sala Apolo
11-29 Nimes, France- Paloma
11-30 Milan, Italy- Magnolia
12-01 Zurich, Switzerland- Clubraum Rote Fabrik
~ with Charles Bradley# w/ Calvin Love, Meatbodies with Calvin Love^ with Meatbodies& w/ Panache NXNE Showcase w/ Calvin Love, Saint Rich, Meatbodies! with Spoon$  w/ Calvin Love, Holy Shit% w/ Calvin Love, Meatbodies, Holy Shit@ w/ Delicate Steve, Calvin Love* w/ Delicate Steve

King Buzzo's "This Machine Kills Artists"

THE MELVINS' BUZZ OSBORNE'S THIS MACHINE KILLS ARTISTSSTREAMING VIA DANGEROUS MINDS 
SOLO DEBUT SET FOR JUNE 3 RELEASE; U.S. TOUR KICKS OFF JUNE 10 
   
Los Angeles, May 27, 2014 - The Melvins' Buzz Osborne, aka King Buzzo, is streaming his solo debut, This Machine Kills Artists, via Dangerous Minds ( http://dangerousminds.net/comments/stream_the_new_king_buzzo_acoustic_lp_only_at_dangerous_minds).   

The 17-track album is available for pre-order via iTunes (georiot.co/KingBuzzo) or physically via Amazon (http://amzn.com/B00JGWKU7Q).
The legendary front man kicks off a full U.S. tour on June 10 in San Diego, and will chronicle his adventure via Noisey.com. 
Tour dates:
June 10     San Diego, CA     The CasbahJune 11     Echo Park, CA     The EchoJune 12     Santa Ana, CA     The ObservatoryJune 13     Fresno, CA     Strummer'sJune 14     Sacramento, CA     AssemblyJune 15     San Francisco, CA     Great American Music HallJune 17     Eugene, OR     Wow HallJune 18     Portland, OR     Hawthorne TheatreJune 20     Seattle, WA     Neumo'sJune 21     Bellingham, WA     The ShakedownJune 22     Spokane, WA     The HopJune 23     Missoula, MT     The PalaceJune 24     Billings, MT     The RailyardJune 26     Fargo, ND     The AquariumJune 27     Minneapolis, MN     Grumpy'sJune 28     Milwaukee, WI     Shank HallJune 30   Grand Rapids, MI     The Pyramid Scheme
July 1     Columbus, OH     A&R Music BarJuly 2     Detroit, MI     Small'sJuly 3     Cleveland, OH     The Grog ShopJuly 6     South Burlington, VT     Higher GroundJuly 7     Portland, ME     Portland City Music HallJuly 10     Allston, MA     Brighton Music HallJuly 12     Hamden, CT     The Ballroom at The OuterspaceJuly 13     New York, NY     Santos Party HouseJuly 14     Brooklyn, NY     The WickJuly 15     Philadelphia, PA     Underground ArtsJuly 17     Baltimore, MD     OttobarJuly 18     Charlottesville, VA     The SouthernJuly 20     Carrboro, NC     Cat's CradleJuly 22     Atlanta, GA     The BasementJuly 23     Birmingham, AL     The Bottle TreeJuly 25     New Orleans, LA     One Eyed Jack'sJuly 26     Houston, TX     Warehouse LiveJuly 27     Austin, TX     Red 7July 28     Sam Antonio, TX     Limelight July 30     Tucson, AZ     Club CongressJuly 31     Pioneertown, CA     Pappy and Harriet's

Daniel Ash Enlists Fans to Fund New Album

DANIEL ASH ENLISTS FANS TO FUND NEW ALBUM, STRIPPEDLOS ANGELES, CA - Tuesday, May 27, 2014 - Daniel Ash, legendary vocalist/guitarist who founded the influential and iconic Bauhaus, Tones On Tail and Love and Rockets, has taken to PledgeMusic to have fans participate in the funding of his next album, Stripped.  The album will feature modern takes on 11 songs from his Bauhaus/Love and Rockets/Tones On Tail catalogues, as well as one brand-new track.  Fans are asked to vote for their favorite Ash songs and those with the most votes are being "stripped down" with reinterpreted versions recorded for the new album.  Stripped is expected out in the Fall on INgrooves/GO! Studio.  Go to http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/stripped for more information on pledging.  
"The original concept," Ash explained, "was to record acoustic versions of some of my favorite songs from the catalogue, but to be honest, I found that a boring proposition.  Also, more than recording my favorites, I wanted to record the fans' favorites.  I'm a perfectionist and I can't stand anything that is second-rate, so we're doing truly alternative versions of the songs, I really want to go out on a limb with this project."
Already confirmed for the track listing, Stripped will feature a dub step version of the Love and Rockets #1 Billboard hit "So Alive," produced by John Fryer (Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, Cocteau Twins) who produced the original track.  You can check it out here   DJ Adam 12 (She Wants Revenge, Love, Ecstasy and Terror), has come on board for Tones on Tail's "OK This is the Pops," and the reimagined Bauhaus track "Slice of Life" is being recorded with the help of Jordan Jeffares (Snowden) who recorded the 2009 version of  "No Words No More" for New Tales To Tell - A Tribute to Love and Rockets.  Also on board for the project are long-time collaborators Christopher The Minister and Dustin Byerley.
In exchange for a pledge, funders have exclusive access to the site's updates, keeping up on the album's progress, viewing the package's artwork, hearing completed tracks before anyone else, and other content.  In addition, Ash has made available an array of items-for-bid that includes signed CD copies of Stripped, exclusive t-shirts, limited-edition, colored 180-gram vinyl copies of Stripped, a variety of Ash's original "Bubble Men" artwork, handwritten lyrics sheets, and Ash's own 1992 Heritage Softail Harley Davidson motorcycle.  
"This 'crowd funding' is virgin territory to me," adds Ash, "but we're having a great time breathing brand-new life into these songs, and I hope my investors will like the finished product."

Unstoppable Death Machines Documentary and Dates

UNSTOPPABLE DEATH MACHINES REVEAL
"MAKER PUNKS" MINI-DOCUMENTARY ANNOUNCE UPCOMING DATES Watch and Share Their Mini Documentary Here
Upcoming Live Dates Kicking off May 29th in Austin, TX   "Unstoppable Death Machines lace their heavy beat with sticky hooks
and undeniable danceability." - SPIN Magazine 
    
Brooklyn's performance-based punk-rock explosion, UNSTOPPABLE DEATH MACHINES, is pleased to announce Maker Punks, a biographical mini documentary. Collaborating with Karmaloop, the documentary explores the band's "loud as fuck" sound and "anti DIY" aesthetic. As brothers Mike and Billy Tucci explain, "You can Do-It-Yourself or you can Do-Yourself-In. DIY is a little isolating. Everything we do is a collaboration with friends. It may seem like a lot of work to have to print every shirt one by one and every sticker one by one...but we have a connection to every shirt we make and every sticker we put out there."
Catch the band live on their upcoming live dates in Texas and beyond kicking off this week on May 29, 2014 at Austin TX's Holy Mountain. A full list of dates is below.
Watch Unstoppable Death Machines' Mini-Documentary Here. 
UNSTOPPABLE DEATH MACHINES is a performance-based punk-rock explosion from Brooklyn via Queens. Formed by brothers Mike and Billy Tucci in 2009, the duo has criss-crossed the USA performing in DIY spaces, venues, rooftops, warehouse parties, art galleries and museums- including a hometown performance at the Queens Museum of Art Biennial and Miami Beach Art Basel. The duo has made a name for themselves with their raucous live performances where they stack walls of speakers and use homemade face microphones to sculpt a sound described by fans as "loud-as-fuck." At one point experimenting with relational performances where they would coerce the audience to participate in a cathartic drum circle at the end of their sets.
Live Dates:05/29 Austin, TX @ Holy Mountain05/30 Houston, TX @ Mango's05/31 Dallas, TX @ Club Dada06/01 San Antonio, TX @ Hi-Tones 
06/06 Brooklyn, NY @ Juicy Art Fest @ The Wick06/21 Brooklyn, NY @ Showpaper Benefit @ The Quagmire07/04 Miami, FL @ Gramps07/19 Brooklyn, NY @ Palisades*
* Single Clarity Release Show
http://www.unstoppabledeathmachines.com@deathmachinesny

Melt-Banana Play London's Heaven Tomorrow + More UK Dates

MELT-BANANA NEW VIDEO + UK TOUR Watch Here http://bit.ly/1kofxV2Ticket Link http://www.endofhome.co.uk/
***Email me for guestlist asap***Legendary Japanese noise-rock band Melt-Banana have embarked on a 13 date UK tour, their first as a two-piece and their first UK tour since 2010. Previously the band have attributed the break in their touring/release cycle to the impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011. Now firmly back on their feet the duo (made up of Yako on vocals and Agata on guitar and effects) have liberated themselves of a human rhythm section and are making a noise as powerful and frantic as ever. Guitarist Agata is known for his mastery of guitar effects and extended technique and for consistently wearing a surgical mask on stage. The band were much championed by BBC DJ John Peel during his lifetime.Of their new video, Yako says:"The song title is "Lefty Dog (Run Caper Run)". It is the second music video from our album Fetch. It was directed by Iroha who does VJ for our shows in Japan sometimes. Like the first video "The Hive" it is very colourful and we like how it looks very much". and on touring: "It is very exciting for us every day because we are trying new things right now. It has been two years since we started playing as a two piece and still there are many things we like to try. Anyway we hope people come to the show and enjoy our music!" Their recent album Fetch came out on their own A-Zap Records label in October 2013 and is distributed by Forte. Melt-Banana are touring NOW and appearing live at:20/5/2014ColchesterArts Centre21/5/2014LeedsBrudenell Social Club22/5/2014GlasgowMono23/5/2014NewcastleCluny 224/5/2014ManchesterFat Out Festival25/5/2014SheffieldQueens Social Club27/5/2014BirminghamRainbow Warehouse28/5/2014LondonHeaven29/5/2014NorwichArts Centre30/5/2014BristolFleece31/5/2014CambridgePortland Arms1/6/2014SouthamptonJoiners2/6/2014BrightonGreen Door Store www.melt-banana.netwww.twitter.com/melt_bananawww.facebook.com/pages/Melt-Banana/192954987398661

White Lung's Mish Way shares VANIISH's new track 'Search and Replace"

VANIISH SHARE "SEARCH AND REPLACE"
DEBUT ALBUM, MEMORY WORK, OUT JUNE 10th
 Photo Credit: Damon Way
"I miss songs like this. Songs that make me feel like I'm in a cave full of noise and every echo is catered to fill the holes in my brain. A music box made just for me." -Mish Way via Noisey
LISTEN TO "SEARCH AND REPLACE" HERE   This weekend White Lung's Mish Way shared VANIISH's new track "Search and Replace" via Noisey.  San Francisco's VANIISH (featuring past and present members of Wax Idols and The Soft Moon) are releasing their debut album, Memory Work on 6/10 via Metropolis Records.  Mish Way is hailing "Search and Replace" as "a powerful, dark brand of post-punk worthy of broken speakers."  Memory Work is an impressive debut that is both dense and spacious, combining the atmosphere of early 4AD with the psychedelic shoegaze of Creation Records. It envelopes the listener into its world of eerie soundscapes and surreal lyrics.  The record is available for pre-order now on digital, CD and limited edition vinyl with an alternate cover HERE.
LISTEN TO "KALEIDOSCOPED" HERE

ABOUT VANIISH:The San Francisco 4-piece VANIISH began when singer/guitarist Keven Tecon (Wax Idols, ex- The Soft Moon) left his previous bands after his mother's death in early 2013.  "I was on tour in Eastern Europe in the middle of winter when it happened and it was too much to handle.  I couldn't keep it up."  After returning home Tecon decided to focus entirely on a new project along with fellow Wax Idols member Amy Rosenoff (bass) and SF music-scene luminaries Adam Beck (guitar/keyboards) and Nick Ott (drums).  The album "Memory Work" is both dense and spacious, combining the atmosphere of early 4AD with the psychedelic shoegaze of Creation Records. It envelopes the listener into its world of eerie soundscapes and surreal lyrics.  "There is an interesting mix of synths, guitars, samples, drum machines, and live drums.  We like the idea that you can't tell what's real and what isn't."  The album was produced by Monte Vallier (Weekend, The Soft Moon, Wax Idols)
The title track is the sound of machines breathing and fluids pumping, with a pulse beat overladen with brush strokes of synth.  "Kaleidoscoped" ditches the monochrome for crystallized shards of guitar and a sparkling chorus that's hard to see coming.  "Search and Replace" is vicious and would be more at home in 2080 than 1980 while the addictive melody of "Merge" is the closest the album comes to an actual pop song.  "Succession" gives the second side of the album some breathing room with it's sparse production and icy spikes of guitar.  Lush album closer "La foi au fil de l'eau", sung entirely in French, could easily find its way onto a film score.  
VANIISH MEMORY WORK JUNE 10, 2014 PRE-ORDER
1. In Images2. Memory Work3. Kaleidoscoped4. Fragment Fatigue5. Search and Replace6. Merge7. Succession8. Observatory Time9. Loss of Sensation10. Cold Fascination11. La foi au fil de l'eau
 VANIISHVANIISH ON FACEBOOK 

Pink Mountaintops @ Fox Vancouver

All photos taken in Vancouver BC by Bev Davies.

FOXYGEN west coast tour

Photo: Angel Ceballos

FOXYGEN just returned to the stage this past month, with two appearances at Coachella and two shows in San Francisco. They premiered some new songs and a new expanded lineup. These shows were very energetic and well received. Some new shows have been announced. Shows at Pickathon, Woodsist Fest, and also Pappy & Harriets have been scheduled, as well as headlining shows in Seattle, San Diego, LA and places in between. Look forward to this.

31 Jul 2014Neumos Crystal Ball Reading RoomSeattle, WAbuy tickets02 Aug 2014PickathonHappy Valley, ORbuy tickets03 Aug 2014PickathonHappy Valley, ORbuy tickets04 Aug 2014Lagunitas Brewing CompanyPetaluma, CA07 Aug 2014Gundlach Bundschu Winery: Old Redwood BarnSonoma, CAbuy tickets08 Aug 2014Cellar DoorVisalia, CAbuy tickets13 Aug 2014Belly Up TavernSolana Beach, CAbuy tickets14 Aug 2014The Fonda TheatreLos Angeles, CAbuy tickets15 Aug 2014The ObservatorySanta Ana, CAbuy tickets16 Aug 2014Pappy & Harriet's Pioneertown PalacePioneertown, CA07 Nov 2014Fun Fun Fun FestAustin, TX

Dennis Cooper Interview

INTERVIEW WITH DENNIS COOPER
by Alexander Laurence
Serial murders have become more prevalent in American Society. Are you very interested in them?
Dennis Cooper: To a degree. I don’t think that they’re interesting people, but I’m interested in the books about serial murderers, and the material you can get from their exploits. They’re not real smart people.
William Levy wrote about your novel Frisk: “I was involved with a theurgical killing of a boy; it wasn’t all that great: nothing worth doing again--no matter how pop it has since become.” I think that Levy missed the point of the book entirely. What do you think about this misreading?
DC: Sure. It’s not a book about a murdered. It’s about a guy who fantasizes about killing people. It’s a totally different thing. This character has absolutely no clue about how to kill people. He’s never done it. He just spends his life dreaming about it. Presumably, it has no relationship to what it’s like to kill a boy. He’s not John Wayne Gacy; he’s just a daydreamer. The point is: he’s no different than the kid who daydreams about Tolkien. The book is not about a serial murder.
How was it living in Amsterdam?
DC: On one hand, it's a great country. They're very humane. You get free health care. On the other hand, there's nothing to do there. It's very cold. They don't support art there. They're very conservative. They support artists born in Holland, but they make bad art. Socialism is great for human stuff, but Socialism sucks for art.
I always have this feeling that I’m reading that happened about ten years ago when I read your work. When did you write your novels and roughly what time frame are they set in?
DC: Frisk was written around the time I lived in Amsterdam. It was my revenge on Holland for the unpleasant time I had there. Closer was set in high school. Closer had a couple of adults in it, but it was more about being a teenager. Frisk was also about being a teenager, and some experiences people have in their early twenties, and some of those expatriate things. Frisk was definitely about the distortions that arise in becoming an adult. I think of Closer being set in the late 1980s, and Try, set in now, 1994. In the book, Hüsker Dü has already broken up, and it’s before Sugar. Slayer is still around.
What are some of your favorite bands now?
DC: My favorite band is Sebadoh. They’re from Massachusetts. The bass player is from Dinosaur jr. That is the first great band for me since My Bloody Valentine. I like Pavement. I like that emotionally fucked up, slacker stuff.
You’re into the body. Your books present the body as a bunch of tubes. The characters act out their will on the body, trying to uncover the truth of the other. Another person. Can you talk about that?
DC: For all practical purposes, the body is a machine with all this stuff inside. I guess the characters in all my books are like this, though not so much in the new one, Try. Since they don’t believe in religious stuff. You just see what’s in front of you. And what’s in front of you is this body, right? It has all this appeal to you, and you desire it, or you are fascinated by the body. In many ways, you are just like a kid, and kids try to take things like toys apart to see how they work. These are people who figure “Well, if I open up this body and look what’s inside it, I’ll know what makes me feel so overwhelmed, or so out of control when I’m with this person.” It just that: trying to deal with people in a practical way. Even if you think that there’s spirituality, or something; you can’t take apart the mind and figure what it’s like. These are people who objectify other people into being like that, as a way to try to figure things out, and they willfully ignore emotion and spirituality and all that stuff. The body interests me in that way, and it interests me that the text is like a body. I like the writing to be eviscerated too, opened up in different ways.
How much thought do you give towards spirituality? And what do you think of the idea of sympathy in your new work?
DC: Spirituality? Not much. But I have a lot of sympathy towards everybody in the books. One of the things people don’t like about it is that I don’t have a moral stance in the books. The books are all really sympathetic. People can have their own moral outlook. The books don’t have to reinforce it. That’s what I think. Make up your own mind. Try has a little more sympathy obviously for the kids, but I think all those characters are  sympathetic. It’s just that I’m not sentimental about them. The books give them all a chance to speak, pick their minds, do what they want to do. The world sucks. People are fine. It’s the world that sucks.
Television shows images of evil, to cause a robotic reaction in people, to make them say: “Let’s do something” or “Let’s crack down on crime.” There are evil images without any reflection or thought. Your books show an erotic side of evil.
DC: They acknowledge it. I try to show stuff. Allow it to be erotic, real scary. Allow it to be moving, all these different things, so it’s not just presented as titillating or disgusting because that’s the way it’s usually presented. It’s usually presented in a Friday The 13th kind of way, and that’s fine, but that’s a very superficial way to present violence. It just makes it sexy. And the other way is to make it disgusting, so you can’t even look at it. So the idea of me, the way that I’m different, is that I actually present it so that it’s visible. Make the actual act of evil visible, and give it a bunch of facets so that you can actually look at it and experience it. You’re seduced with dealing with it. You have to decide what you actually think. So with Frisk, at the end of the book, when you find out that it’s not real, it’s like you  decide. Whatever pleasure you got out of making a picture in your mind based on that letter of those people being murdered. You take responsibility for it. The writer is not letting you off the hook. It’s fiction. The whole thing is a fiction. I’m interested in writing about that stuff, and in that way maybe I’ll understand it.
The story gives you, the reader, a sense that it’s still a book and words.
DC: That’s the best a book can do. It’s a collaboration. That’s why horror movies are so limited in what they can do. That’s why Salo is, for me, not a very good film. You look at that, and think “This is silly!” These people don’t look real. You can see that stupid makeup. When you read a book, and when you read that letter in Frisk, the idea is that you’re creating the picture. You’re the one that has to create the picture of what the kid looks like. What it would be like to look inside his body or whatever. So the idea is why do you think that way?
So the letter in Frisk is a metaphor for the writer’s function: he provides the materials (or the fantasies) so the reader can imagine and collaborate?
DC: Just like “Dennis” in the book is looking for someone to help him kill someone, the writer is looking for readers who feel the same way he does about violence. It’s the same thing. In some ways, that book was like dangling bait to find out like if I wasn’t insane. I really like this stuff.
You were talking about horror films earlier. How much has film influenced your writing style?
DC: The editing stuff? It seems to me that filmic editing is way more interesting than the editing in traditional novels, which is so slow. The way film edit: chop, chop, chop. Cutback and so forth. I mean it’s a lot easier. I’m more interested in that. And As far as horror films: I enjoy them, but in liking them I realize how limited they are. They’re not giving you anything. It’s like giving you candy. If you’re interested in horror, horror films give you a little treat, but they don’t tell you anything about horror or violence. To me, they don’t. If your imagination is in the middle, at one extreme is an autopsy video, which shows you real violence, at the other end is Nightmare on Elm Street.
There was this group of writers during the 70s and 80s called “New Narrative.” Steve Abbott and Kevin Killian among them. How do you fit in with them? How are you different? What is the New Narrative all about?
DC: No one ever figured it out. There was a group of people, but there was never anything to be involved with. People started to characterize that group of people that way. I mean, I like all those people, including Bob Gluck and Dodie Bellamy. I like all their work. I think that it never went anywhere because no one could figure out what it was. Steve Abbott invented the term. All the work was independent and experimental I guess, and it’s somehow involved with autobiography in a funny way. We all like each other’s work. Sometimes, Kathy Acker is in the group, and sometimes she’s not. And sometimes Lynne Tillman. It’s a real blurry category. There is this new book coming out about New Narrative, this year. It’s an academic book, so maybe they’ll tell us what it is.
Is it like the Nouveau Roman?
DC: Except that the Nouveau Roman is a little bit more specific. They at least had a credo. I don’t think we have any credo. Nouveau Roman writers were all interested in the objective voice. Wasn’t that their thing? I always thought that they were like that at the beginning. They all gave up on it. All of them sold out, or became better. I think that you’re right: they’re a little more alike then we are. I may be wrong. Maybe it’s not for me to say.
I read recently a letter you wrote to Kevin Killian. I guess you were writing Closer at the time. Less than Zero  by Bret Easton Ellis had come out and you panicked. Could you talk about that?
DC: Where did you read that? At Kevin’s house? It was published? Oh yeah! It freaked me out. It was weird. It came out and all of my friends said “Don’t read this book, because it will really freak you out, because he writes so much like you” So I didn’t read it. Then I finished Closer. Then I read it, because I was finished with my book, so I figured whatever. And I was really freaked out about it. Now I see the difference, but at the time I thought “Oh, this kid has done all this stuff that I’m doing, and this book is a big success, and my work is so artsy compared to this.” I started to get weird. It really did freak me out. It seemed serious. When I read it, I thought that this was a serious book. There had never been a book like Less Than Zero. He did capture a certain thing. I was certainly impressed with it. Consequently, I have no interest in him at all.
Could you talk about your project with director David Lynch?
DC: That didn’t work out. Well, this guy who is David Lynch’s assistant, his right hand man, he does a lot of work for David Lynch. His name is John Wentworth. He  was making a movie. He wanted me to write this movie with him. It was going to be called Lethal Injection.. We started to work on it and we had totally different ideas how it should be like. It fell apart. We may or may not do another project. I wasn’t interested in what he wanted to do. The non-collaboration lasted six months. Now, David Lynch is willing to give us the money. He’s willing to put up three million dollars for a project, if we can come up with a project. Our ideas are so different about what we want to do. I’m not a filmmaker. So I said to John “Maybe you should just do it yourself.” The screenplay was going to be based on a novel called Lethal Injection, which is a Black Lizard book. It’s a dumb book, but we were going to fix it. It’s about a guy who gives lethal injections to prisoners on death row. Then, he kills this guy. He becomes really interested in this guy he’s killed, and then he becomes involved with the dead guy’s girlfriend. He becomes a junkie. All this stuff. It’s that kind of story.
Your book Frisk is also being made into a movie. How is that going?
DC: They’re shooting it right now. How it started was three years ago, at the party for Frisk, this guy, Marcus, came up to me and said “I want to do a movie of this.” I said OK. He optioned it for three years now. They had a few directors lined up to do it. including James Hebert, who’s done a lot of REM videos. Now this guy, Todd Vereau is going to direct it. He’s only done a couple of short films. He wrote the script for Frisk. The music is being done by Bob Mould. That’s the part that I like the best. And Lee Renaldo of Sonic Youth is doing some music for it. They’re shooting it right now. Steve Buscemi and Craig Chester are in it. Maybe I’ll make a cameo. It’s not much like the book. I have mixed feelings about it.
Let’s talk about the new book TRY. Do you feel with this that you’re doing something different stylistically from the other novels or is it all the same?
DC: No. The only thing that’s the same about my books is that I’m interested in the same kinds of people, but the books are really different I think. This book is more about emotion and less about the body. Originally, I wanted to write a book about Ziggy because I had known this kid. He was this really fucked up kid. Really great, brilliant, weird kid. He was adopted by two gay men. While I was working on it, my best friend got addicted to heroin, and it was a big mess. So I spent a year of my life trying to help him get off heroin. That got involved in it. I wanted to write about that. He and I became really close friends. It became a really deep and strong relationship. I wanted to write about that relationship, because it was the first time in my life that I really felt that I loved somebody a lot. It wasn’t sexual or romantic. It was really not. I wanted to bring that into the work, because I was really feeling that and worried about it. So it came out of this weird emotional turmoil. The other characters are there to present threat. It’s different to me because it’s really about emotion. In the same way I used to talk about the body, this time it’s about how all these people with emotions exploding out all the time. It’s about how the emotions interlock with each other, and the way the writings, the different sections interlock, and the characters interlock with each other.
Since you've turned 40, you must have stopped doing drugs and drinking alcohol?
DC: I'm not even drinking now. I'm eating better. I'm healthy. I was a mess for a while. I like drugs a lot. I like crystal meth and acid. I like mushrooms. I like all drugs except heroin. I'm trying to be productive. I just went through a binge, a year ago. I'm 41 and it takes its toll. You just can't do it anymore.
Your work seems to be the most complex explanation of how pornography influences the mind of a male and his sexuality. How did you become so interested in porno?
DC: That’s just the way it is. I started reading porno when I was really young. And like a lot of people, I read a lot of porno before I had sex. By the time I was having sex, I expected it to be like porno. When it wasn’t, I invented porno to go with my sex, because while you’re doing your limited little things with your body, there’s all this stuff going on in your head about what you could be happening. I think porno is interesting. I like the way it’s structured. I’ve studied it through my writing. I like how fake it is. You can study it for how they really think about each other. It’s like a science book. Sex is the best moment in life, right? If it’s really good. I like porno. I buy porno all the time. It doesn’t matter to me what is actually happening in sex. I like the types. I look for types of people that interest me.
Who’s your favorite porn star?
DC: Who’s my favorite porn star of all time? Pierre Buisson is my favorite. He’s in Cutting Nose films.
Does anyone come up to you with some strange porno or stuff films, and forces you to watch?
DC: Usually it's the other way around. But I don't have it nor know where to get it. People want me to tell them. That's it. Everybody wants it, but no one has it. So everyone comes to me figuring I know where it is.
How do you feel about the idea of porno being cerebral?
DC: I think that using porno is cerebral. Yeah. Sure. Apart from the components of the parts of the people that are involved in it, you can do whatever you want with it. It's all about filling in a blank. Animating these bodies that are frozen or if it's video, I don't know what you do. You're always filling in these people with whatever content you want to make them more desirable. I don't know about it being cerebral. But the use of it is. It's like a study. It's like a text.
During this tour  you read from a section from the middle of Try about Ziggy interviewing the heavy metal kid. You said that this is the only section that I can read from. I wanted to ask you what was the reason for that?
DC: Because I found that it's really impossible for me to read it. Most of Try is fast changes from person to person, and I can't do it. I've tried it. It doesn't work. I can't do the voices. The section that I've been reading is the only long section written in one voice and one scene. That's why. This book has more dialogue in it. I wanted to see what it was like to work with dialogue. Now, not at all. It's more difficult for me to read aloud than the other novels. I have a hard time reading dialogue. It doesn't sound like it because I worked so hard on reading that section. It's not something that I feel comfortable doing. I think it's sort of silly. These are just configurations in the prose, they're not people. When you read it aloud, you have to make them people and put emotion in their voices. I always feel that's kind of false. It's fake. You have to do that to make it work, to get people involved in it. I feel like a showman, and I don't like that so much.
What kind of books do you like generally?
DC: I don't like literature that's like mine. I hate Paul Russell. John Rechy compared me to Russell. Rechy lives down the street from me. Yeah. He's a prick. He's an idiot.
I think that S&M is more visible in the culture. Do you have any interest in that practice?

DC: No. No interest at all. It's not my thing at all. I have total respect for it, but I'm interested in insanity. I think violence is an act of insanity and chaos. When it's ritualized, it's fun but it doesn't particularly interest me.
Many of your books have the situation of older men and younger kids. That whole concept is still rejected by society. What do you think about it?
DC: That's a real complicated one. I have real mixed feelings about it. I don't know what I think about it. I think that people should do whatever they want to do, and it's totally plausible to me that a 10 year old could have a fulfilling relationship with a 40 year old, but I'm also really suspicious of adults exploiting young people. So I'm really torn about it. I don't think that they should stop MANBLA or anything. There are plenty of examples of relationships that have been fine. All my friends had sex when they were young with older men, and it's fine. I'm suspicious of the power imbalance. It's really scary to me. It makes me nervous, but I don't think that they should regulate it or anything. In my books, it's not presented as the most positive thing in the world. I have friends who are pedophiles, and it's fine.
It seems like many serious writers are now writing for magazines like Esquire, Harper's, and Spin. How have your experiences been with doing journalism and working for magazines?

DC: You don't make much money from writing. I don't like doing journalism at all. I did an interview with Keanu Reeves. That was fun. Interview magazine is the best, but I haven't done anything with them since. They give you all this money. You get to interview a star. They transcribe the tapes. It's amazing. I need to do something to make money, and I don't mind doing it. It's not something that I really wanted to do. It was fun hanging out with Courtney Love. I liked it. Spin magazine flew me out to Seattle, and I interviewed the band. I hung out with her, then Î went over to Courtney's house. I played with Francis Bean. I talked with them till 5:30 in the morning. All this shit, while they did a photo shoot. It took a couple of days. I wish that I could make more money with my books. I wouldn't do journalism. I don't think that I'm very good at it, but I think I'm getting a little better. There are people who are real good journalists. As a journalist, I wish that I could write like the early Hunter Thompson or the early Tom Wolfe. Their journalism is real good. The Gonzo journalism is real great. Maybe the best thing about being a journalist is that you get free stuff.

Douglas Coupland Interview

INTERVIEW WITH DOUGLAS COUPLAND
by Alexander Laurence
          Douglas Coupland is a lucid Canadian writer who loves nature. He reminded me of that fact. “Whenever I smoked pot in high school it was always around nature.” He is the author of three books: Generation X, Shampoo Planet, and most recently, Life After God. His new book of short stories and drawings describes the mental framework of someone who grew up in a secular environment. Coupland is a frequent contributor for The New Republic, The New York Times, and Wired. For Wired he recently wrote “Microserfs” which was about Bill Gates and the Microsoft company.           Coupland was born on December 30, 1961 in a NATO base in West Germany. He now lives in Vancouver, where he grew up. He claims that the most important images in his life were Marcia Brady, The Poseidon Adventure, and Patty Hearst. His story, “Patty Hearst,” recalls the days of her captivity in a Western Addition room in San Francisco.           One of the Baudrillard-like comments by Coupland in his new book explores his new view of memory: “I believe that you’ve had most of your important memories by the time you’re thirty.  After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup.”  Coupland, as a writer, has always been short on character and psychology, and big on ideas and conceptual things. Many excerpts from his new book, can be seen on MTV. He may be one of the few contemporary writers who is guilty of too much thinking. His new book, MICROSERFS, will be out in June 1995.
I’d like to start off things by saying how sorry I am to have missed the reading last night at Cody’s Bookstore in Berkeley. How did it go?
Douglas Coupland: It was a mob scene. It was cool. I read one short story, then I read excerpts of the captivity tape recordings of Patty Hearst. Let me wake up here...
How has the tour been so far?
DC: Oh great. It’s been really enjoyable and the readings have been enjoyable. It’s been about a 12-city tour. I don’t know if Americans consider Canada to have real cities? New York was the second city that I went to. I read at Barnes & Noble, at 82nd and Broadway, upper west side. There was a snow storm and the troops came out. It was great. There’s that scene from Spinal Tap where they’re at the record signing. The band is asking “You did advertise this event, didn’t you?” It didn’t happen this time, but it happened once in Edmonton where they really did forget to advertise. They said that they would atone this time. This will probably be my last tour. I think the airlines are mechanically and institutionally unraveling. If I stop touring, it’s because of the airlines, not the bookstores.
I noticed that you refer to yourself in the second person. You say “you,” and not “I.”
DC: I always talk about myself in the second tense. I mean the second person. What’s “the second tense?” That’s something that will merit exploration. That’s a Canadian thing: speaking about yourself in the second person. I’d rather be Canadian than American. But then, Canadian publishing is a joke. I don’t know if Americans really care about Canada.
What do you think about the Information Superhighway, or more specifically, the SF Net, E-mail, the InterNet, and stuff like that?
DC: Is the SF Net a Pynchonian secret mail service? Have you ever seen how boring a chatroom is? “Hey, how ya doing?”  “Great!”  “Bye!” I have American Online which is a piece of shit. But I’m stuck with it. I use it to write letters to Wired basically. Even then, you’re not sure if they get through. One thing that I like about E-mail, as opposed to paper mail, is the people who at the moment have E-mail tend to be smarter and funnier and they’re written for you. Paper mail is usually someone who wants some money. Paper mail is like Mary Tyler Moore looking at a steak, and the price, and tossing it into a grocery cart. Whereas E-mail, when it’s to you, it’s to you, and it’s funny and it’s real. I don’t think it’s radically transformed the personal web of my own life. At 2400 watt, how can anything transform the world? And American Online keep lying and saying that they’re going to 9600 watt, like that’s some big improvement. I’m just so mad at those people. They provide terrible service and I don’t know why they get all the press that they do.
You did some “spoken word” spots for MTV that are now being shown. What do you think about “spoken word” and MTV?
DC: I don’t write poetry. I respect it, but I don’t write it. I don’t know anything about it. We don’t get MTV in Canada. It’s literally illegal. The RCP can throw you in jail for down-linking MTV in your house. We have this thing called “Lunch Music” which is like MTV on 1/1000th of the budget. I think that MTV is certainly moving towards the written word. They’re experimenting in all sorts of ways. I hope it works. They always try new things. Most networks don’t. You don’t see NBC or Fox experimenting with new ways in presenting the written word. In some ways, they’re reviving it. People are talking about poetry more often now.
In Generation X and Life After God, you explored the themes of nuclear threat and cold war fears. Why do you think that these themes of panic and paranoia still seem relevant to our everyday lives?
DC: The nuclear threat has never been more real or more serious than it is right now. You have all these nut cases (and I won’t even call them countries because they’re just nothings) with ICBM’s. Everyone thinks that the problem has gone away. It’s not gone away. It’s gotten worse. I’m always astounded when people say “How can you worry about nuclear issues when they’re so passé,” like they were go-go boots or something. There’s all these nut cases in charge of ICBM’s now. They all hate each other, and they’ve hated each other for thousands of years. They’re just itching to drop them on each other, and they will, next week probably. And that thought of “Everything is fashion” is going to sound ridiculous. It’s a reality that we all have to live with. I don’t think I’m going to write about it anymore. I think that I’ve dealt with it in my own head. But I wish people would stop treating the nuclear threat like it was the waif look. People of a certain age: they grew up with nuclear preparatory drills in school. Duck and cover. That kind of stuff. After a while, they gave up on that. Afterwards, there came this whole group of people for whom the bomb was still this enormous, looming, menacing, sexy, deadly presence, and yet there’s no mention of it anywhere in the culture. It’s not something parents could talk about because they grew up in an era of little bombs. They didn’t have the language to discuss these things. Next week, Tamponastan is going to drop a bomb on Armpitastan. And it’s going to turn into one big cauldron of venom. It’s just a fact of life.
What sort of religious upbringing did you have? Don’t you think that any culture is still reacting towards some religious orthodoxy, and cannot fully escape some form of religious ideology?
DC: I was raised in a totally secular environment. That germ of Judeo-Christian thinking wasn’t there to begin with. You can’t imagine it there. It simply wasn’t there. You are presuming that I’m some lapsed Christian. I’m not. I’m working from zero.
Are you talking about Atheism? How is a secular upbringing different from either an atheist denial or a Christian positing of God?
DC: Atheism is nothing new. That’s been going on for thousands of years. What is new, is that for the first time you had parents in the 50s, 60s, and 70s who found that it was liberating to raise kids without any religion. There’s a small group, like myself, who were entirely secular. There’s a larger group of Christmas Christians and Easter Christians who got those basic instructions about coping with the bigger issues in life, which in other cultures are simply handed to you on a platter when you’re born. Then you have people like myself who reach a certain age when adolescence ends. We protract it out to 30 years. But when it ends, you want to look for some sort of brainwork, or foundation, or underpinning to make sense out of your life, which is usually not too positive. If you didn’t have those Easter egg hunts or pictures of Jesus when you grew up, or something else to act as a pointer towards something else. So you have nothing. Ex nihilo. You have to construct some sort of empirically based, rational system of making sense of everything. And that is something I started doing two years ago. I haven’t had any major, mega-epiphany, or something.
Since you have turned thirty, what has happened?
DC: After you turn thirty, people begin to talk behind your back.
Isn’t any involvement with culture a replacement or a resemblance of a ritual like an Easter egg hunt?
DC: No, I don’t think so. It’s just a mini-version in a greater ritual in an orthodox system.
Has the use of “politically correct” language influenced you in any way?
DC: I remember in the late 1980s when Time and Newsweek both had within two weeks their PC mania issues. “PC: What is it?” What is this thing that has taken over our culture. I read a description of it. I said “Oh, that’s what Canada’s been like since 1968, at least.” Canada has been a working laboratory of PC a lot longer than America. Down here, it’s like some newly found thing. Up there, in Canada, it’s been fully functioning. Canada has been diverse for 25 years. People have stopped sentimentalizing the mono-culture a long, long time ago.
Is your writing a tool to make a greater sense out of the world?
DC: Yes. That’s the only reason. This accountant, Wayne, up in Vancouver, asks me “Doug, why can’t you write books that people can buy in airports, with car chases and stuff?” I said “Well Wayne, that’s not the way I write.” It would be lovely if it was magic and I could crank out something in 18 months, and make zillions of dollars. That’s not the way it works. That’s not the way I work.
How was your experience working for Wired?
DC: Wired was good. A lot of other magazines wanted me to write about Microsoft, but what they actually really wanted was a piece about Bill Gates, like it hasn’t already been done. The magazines would say “We’re looking forward to your Microsoft article.” They really just wanted me to spy on Bill Gates and write about that. I told them “I’m not spying on anyone. You don’t want a Microsoft piece, you want a Bill Gates piece, right?” And I said that I wouldn’t do it. For a couple of magazines, I had the same experience. Names I won’t mention here. They strung me along. I got Wired And John Battelle to write it into the contract that I was to write a piece about Microsoft and not Bill Gates.
What kind of drugs have you used?
DC: I quit drinking and smoking five years ago. I’ve never done coke, acid, or ecstasy. I smoked some pot in high school. Vancouver is one big drug cesspool. Ecstasy must have some evil side effects? Like you lose 3 million brain cells. That’s how a Canadian thinks. There can’t be any pleasure without some penalty. Even the writers who are romanticized as bad alcoholics, from what I’ve read about them, the only thing they ever wrote that stood the test of time, was written in that one hour period in the morning before they got tanked. I think lucidity is valuable. It’s obviously very easy to get distracted in our culture. remaining reflective and keeping lucid is and evasive state of mind. It’s something that I try to locate.
You’ve mentioned your dislike of cities, and like of nature. What is that all about?
DC: In cities, there’s no nature anywhere. I live next to a park. I go hiking once or twice a week in Vancouver. That’s the one granola aspect of my life. I have to be near trees all the time. In cities, I start losing it. That’s how I ground myself. In the 1970s, in high school, when I did smoke pot, it always had to be around nature. But that was 70s pot. It was useless. Now, it’s half-a-toke-and-you’re-dead pot. I get paranoid when I smoke pot. It was all peer pressure.
Why do you think that you never got involved with the drug culture? Terence McKenna said recently “Going through life without taking LSD, is like going through life without having sex.”
DC: When I was in high school, drugs were common. Only losers did that. I was opposed to all that. Pot was the only OK forbidden substance. Watch those drugs! People do notice.
I thought that you said “Thought is the only forbidden substance.” Maybe you did. So I was interested in your adolescent experiences. How were they different than for most Americans?
DC: My experience was more unusual than most people in North America. I began kindergarten and finished high school with the exact same group of people. My parents aren’t divorced. It was very stable: the community was incredibly intact. Once the kids left, the parents tended to move away, At the time, it was an amazing uniformity of view. It was literally the last suburb. There was a cyclone vent between us and the wilderness, which is the rest of British Columbia. Being from where I am makes you hyper-aware of yourself as an organism and your connection to nature: A. that you’re a part of nature  B. that you’re a human being and there’s a part of you that transcends nature. What is that transcendent thing? Is it that people need our lives to be stories? My favorite quote is by Tennessee Williams. He says “Nature is not created in the image of man’s compassion.” What is human compassion? It’s something that I’ve been really thinking about. It’s all that I think about. Trying to locate the better side of ourselves, because we’re in this odd period right now where it’s like Science Fiction. Machines are making machines, especially in the Silicon Valley, that are making people if not unnecessary, then besides the point.
There’s also some form of information Darwinism taking over.
DC: As the tree is being shaken, it’s causing a lot of cultural fallout. The most important of which, at the moment, is Fifty-Somethings dropping out of the economy at a frightening rate, which I mentioned in the Wired story. Now the Forty-Somethings are starting to fall out of the economy. The 90s are becoming this enormous battle. If there’s anything that defines this decade, it is the battle for staying and keeping yourself relevant. Are you relevant? Are you an information have or are you an information have-not? Are you a geek? Like a geek is suddenly the coolest thing you could be, because at least it means you’re not losing the race.
You have machines on the one hand and nature on the other. Do human beings fit into the picture anymore?
DC: It’s not like without human beings, the earth would somehow fall apart. It’s quite the opposite. Structurally there’s nothing cool about us. There’s something different about human beings that allows us to perceive time differently. Futures, pasts, stories, histories: we’re so lucky to have it. It’s the mystery of life. In the frazzle of modern life, which is getting faster and faster, there’s no denying it, the ability to reflect on it is getting lost. The characters in Life After God are middle class people who were leading perfectly normal lives until some form of loss enters the picture. They were literally forced, bumped on the head, to reflect on it, about real fundamental issues.

April 1994