Nowhere to Turn Two

Emily Schweich on Adley Rutschman, Breakdown and Crisis of Your Creating

I first connected with Emily Schweich when she interviewed me in 2023 for her show NOT A PHASE on Gutsy Radio. I’ve since enjoyed tuning in to her show and checking out her other creative outlets, and was excited to turn things around and interview her for Serve ‘em a Sentence:

I loved the first two issues of your Substack, Crisis of Your Creating. How did you decide to start this as an additional platform to complement your other creative outlets, and how often are you planning to share new writing?

Thank you! In 2023, I started working on a few essays about art and more personal topics that I didn’t feel fit into Parkway, a zine I made in 2022 with my friend Joe. I decided to package five essays into a zine about finding companionship in art. I got stuck in the graphic design process, which is not my passion, but I still wanted to share the essays, so I thought I’d try Substack. I’m hoping to publish weekly or so, but we’ll see how sustainable that is.

You had talked about you and Joe potentially taking Parkway Zine online – does your Substack replace the zine, or did starting a digital outlet provide further impetus to transition the zine to a digital platform?

The Substack is not a replacement for Parkway; it’s solely my own project. We have laid some groundwork to turn Parkway into a blog, with the hope that we could be timelier and more spontaneous than we could with a zine. Still figuring out what the future looks like there.

How did you start doing your show Not a Phase on Gutsy Radio, and do you have any advice for someone starting their own show?

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I joined a series of Zoom emo nights featuring female and nonbinary DJs, and I got to DJ the last installment. After that, my friend Alicia invited me to join an informal internet radio collective, and I started the first iteration of NOT A PHASE in February 2021. About six months later, the radio collective folded, and I took the show to another network called Gutsy Radio, where it has lived in its current form since.

When I first started the show, I told a former college radio DJ that I felt sad when nobody listened. He said, “You really have to do radio for yourself, not for anyone else.” I’ve heard a few different versions of that advice, and it’s not always what I want to hear, but it’s true. I always say I create to foster community, but I’ve realized that I rarely get the exact reaction I seek, so creating something I’m personally proud of is the best I can do.

What are some of the recent episodes that you are most proud of, and what can we expect from your upcoming broadcasts?

In January 2024, I spoke with Ned Russin of Glitterer and Title Fight about the new Glitterer album, Rationale. We had a conversation about what it means to be rational that I still think about often. I enjoyed speaking with members of Velocity Girl in November 2023. They had just reunited, and I enjoyed seeing how their group dynamic unfolded in an interview setting.

I’m also very proud of my annual Christmas shows, which are probably the most “me” thing I’ve ever put out into the world. I play all my favorite holiday music and read a bunch of bitter Wendy Cope poems. It’s a lot of fun. My old shows are archived on Mixcloud.

For future shows, I’m hoping to talk to music writer Miranda Reinert about her new zine, Portable Model, I’m hoping to interview a couple D.C. bands on the rise, and I’m planning a “30 Years since 1994” episode.

Since you have multiple outlets, how do you decide what to cover on each, and has there been a lot of overlap in topics? Has your radio experience made you more or less likely to want to do written interviews too, or keep the zine more reviews oriented?

Sometimes I struggle with this. I always prefer talk to text, so I think I gravitate toward radio as a medium for interviews and print/digital as a medium for essays. I like the ability to ask follow-up questions on the radio, interact in real time, interpret tone of voice, and go on fun tangents. For reviews, I appreciate the more deliberative writing process. There is some overlap among outlets, and I do consider the implications of having someone on a show and then reviewing their work somewhere else, but I think my work in those situations is all grounded in enthusiasm for “the scene,” so I try not to worry about it too much.

As a knowledgeable host, what is your process of researching and preparing for your show? Is the Substack more spontaneous?

When I’m talking to a musician, I usually like to listen deeply to their music and study the lyrics. With any type of artist, I like to listen to and read other interviews, but that’s a tough line sometimes because you don’t want to repeat what others have done. I also think there’s a lot to be said for admitting when you don’t know something. I think Jeremy Bolm sets a great example on The First Ever Podcast. He’s always honest when he isn’t familiar with a topic and open to learning more.

Throughout the show, I like to play not only the artist’s music but also music that played a big role in their musical journey. Some people, like you, take a really hands-on approach to helping craft the playlist; others are more hands-off. I find a lot of joy in using music to tell people’s story.

The Substack might look spontaneous, but most of what I’ve posted so far has been sitting in my Google Drive for months and going through many editing rounds. I am hoping to share timelier work later, but I also really enjoy the editing process.

When you mentioned finding some hardcore bands via Lost Indignation, I was like if one person got into Breakdown and Side by Side from my novel, my work is done! What made you want to check out certain bands from the book, and have you discovered other bands from books in a similar way?

You mentioned that Indignation sounded a lot like Breakdown, so I wanted to have a soundtrack in my head so I could imagine what an Indignation practice or show sounded like. I took really detailed notes while reading, including a page for every character and a list of every band mentioned; I think I got into Breakdown the most. I can’t say I’ve ever gotten into a band because of fiction before. We need more books like yours!

What books have you recently read and enjoyed – and what’s on your to-read list?

I loved the memoir Holler Rat by performance artist Anya Liftig, about reckoning with her family history in rural Appalachia. It’s the first memoir that felt like a page-turner to me. I recently wrote about Worry by Alexandra Tanner, a novel about two codependent sisters navigating their relationship and the Internet in 2019 Brooklyn. The author crafted a compelling relationship and really captured a specific time in the Internet’s recent past. I also recently read I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall. Emo and punk play a big part in this book, and I hope to share a review soon. I look forward to reading Hanif Abdurraqib’s latest book, There’s Always this Year, and the new Rachel Cusk book, Parade.

How many library cards do you have, and in what systems? And what is your favorite library?

I have three library cards from two Maryland counties and Washington, D.C. I love the MLK Jr. Library in downtown D.C. Designed by Mies van der Rohe, it has an awesome rooftop where they host concerts in summer and a nice cafe operated with D.C. Central Kitchen that provides job training for people facing barriers to employment.

The library also has great exhibits. In summer 2023, I saw an exhibit on doo-wop music in D.C., as well as Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. The library has a permanent exhibit about D.C. music with reproduced zine samples, as well as a robust digital zine archive. The D.C. system really feels like a library for and of the people. The Mount Pleasant Library Friends sell t-shirts that say, “What’s more punk than the public library?”

I also have to shout out the Michelle Smith Performing Arts Library at the University of Maryland. It reminds me a lot architecturally of the library I went to growing up, and I liked visiting when I was a homesick student. They have a lot of really cool punk collections that I’ve enjoyed perusing.

I don’t even want to talk about how so many of my favorite people in hardcore are fans of AL East rival teams … but what is the most significant sports moment that occurred while you were at a show?

This is kind of a stretch, but on a Wednesday night in September 2023, when the Orioles were a few games away from clinching the AL East title, I was down the road at Ottobar to see Scowl, Militarie Gun, and MSPaint while the O’s played the Nationals. I was having a weird night for other reasons and just kept thinking, “I wish I were watching baseball right now.”

For some reason, I thought the O’s would lose Thursday’s game to the Red Sox and clinch on Friday. It was right after Brooks Robinson died, and they were doing a special tribute to Jim Palmer, so I thought it would be an extra special night at the Yard. I had plans to see Slowdive that weekend with a friend who bailed, so I sold the tickets and used the money to buy tickets to Friday’s game.

But I was too late. On Thursday night, they doused each other with champagne, and Ryan Mountcastle and Kevin Brown sang “I Miss You” by blink-182 in the locker room. On Friday, all the stars were too hungover to play. That infamous picture of Adley Rutschman looking queasy in the dugout is from that night. It was raining. Someone ran onto the field. We lost. Strange vibes! We’re going to do it all this year, though, and I’m going to be there for it.

In the first issue of your newsletter, you talked about finding a friend in art and the experience of returning to visit favorite paintings after the worst of the pandemic. How was your experience returning to live shows similar or different from returning to see visual art in person?

It was similarly joyful, and I didn’t realize until I returned how much I had missed live music. My first show back was a benefit at and for a D.C. DIY venue called Rhizome. It’s in an old house that was slated for demolition to build condos, and they were operating in “wait-and-see” mode for months. I’m happy they just bought a new, permanent home. Glitterer and a local band called Prude played, and it rocked. I have seen a lot more live music in the past two years than I did before the pandemic, because I know now that all things are passing and we should appreciate them while we can.

Any shows coming up that you are particularly excited about?

This summer, I’m going to a gig at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, which will be a fun taste of the Bruce Springsteen lifestyle, and hopefully I’ll see Fiddlehead again.

Thanks again for doing this! Anything else you want to shout out or discuss?

Thank you for having me. I’d like to shout out Girls Rock DC, Positive Force DC, Shining Life Press, Joint Custody Records, Songbyrd Music House, and Chris Richards—some of the pillars of our scene.

Colton Cowser, if you ever want to come on my radio show, I’m free on Monday night and would like to talk with you. Please respond to this and then come on my radio show on Monday night when I am free. (Kevin Brown, you too. I saw your 2023 year-end list.)

Chris Skowronski on Rockin’ Rex, the Knicks’ Playoff Readiness, and the Yonkers Riverfront Library

You may know Chris Skowronski from Killing Time, Uppercut, his many other musical projects, and his enduring love of the Knicks. He also played a crucial role in shaping Lost Indignation, both through an early background interview and later as its editor. We talked about the Knicks’ playoff chances, the different types of editing, and Killing Time shows on their home turf in the 914.

So Killing Time is playing in Ardsley on April 22! What is the best Westchester show that you’ve played (so far), and your favorite Westchester show you’ve attended? (Sidenote: everyone please take my Westchester shows survey at iquestionnotmedia.com/poll)

Believe it or not, I haven’t played many shows in Westchester in the 30 or so years I’ve been playing in bands, and I think all of them may have been in Yonkers. For the best, I’m going to go with a show at Rockin’ Rex around ’91 or ’92. I was playing in a band called Mind’s Eye, which was a post-hardcore project that was basically me and the other guys from Uppercut, plus Carl. We were opening for Killing Time, so Carl was doing double-duty that day. (This was before I joined Killing Time—I think it was when they had this dude Alex playing bass). Anyway, Anthony has a notoriously bum shoulder which would dislocate really easily if someone bumped him; it had happened at shows before. And this show was on the floor of a tiny record store, so of course it was packed. As soon as KT started, everybody went nuts and piled on Anthony, immediately dislocating his shoulder. This was literally, like, 20 seconds into the set. So, he bailed to go to the hospital, and I actually sang the rest of the Killing Time set. That was fun.

Favorite show I saw in Westchester but didn’t play? I’d probably have to go with something at Streets in New Rochelle. I saw Nuclear Assault there around ’88 or so. I was really into them at the time, and I think Maximum Penalty might have opened? A lot of those shows in the late ‘80s at Streets were mixed thrash/hardcore shows. It was kind of the beginning of the whole crossover era. It always led to a slightly dangerous vibe with all the heshers and skinheads and hardcore kids all mixed together. Over time, that became much more of a normal thing, but back then, there was always a certain amount of consternation about the potential for long hair-short hair violence! Seems very quaint now.

What was it like learning all the Breakdown songs for the Rich McLoughlin memorial show and playing a hybrid Breakdown – Killing Time set without Rich?

When we first decided to do the memorial show, we had some discussions about whether we would find someone to fill in for Rich on second guitar in KT. But we pretty quickly decided that for the show—and moving forward in general—we wouldn’t replace him and would just play with one guitar, as Raw Deal/KT had originally been a one-guitar band before Rich moved from bass to second guitar anyway. On the Breakdown side, there was some talk at first about inviting different friends who play bass to come up and play on various songs. It was a cool idea, but logistically, it just seemed like a pain in terms of getting various people in to rehearse, etc. So they just asked if I would do it. We figured we would just book longer practice sessions and start rehearsing both bands’ sets during the same practices. Of course, I was happy to do it, but I did have to quickly learn the whole Breakdown set, which was a little tougher than you would think. Rich had a lot of unique bass parts on those songs, and I wanted to make sure I played them exactly as he did. I’ve played in Killing Time for the last 17 years and over that time have put my own stamp on many of the bass parts from the old KT stuff. But the bass is kind of the most prominent instrument in a lot of those Breakdown songs—lots of solo bass breaks and hooks—so I had to learn them note-for-note, not just as a tribute to Rich, but to make them actually sound like the songs.

Carl suggested the split-set idea once we decided that I would play bass for Breakdown, since that meant both bands were going to be the same three guys, with the two singers being the only difference. And since Carl, Drago, and I were going to be up there for two sets in a row anyway, so why not put a twist on it and do something special? Plus, it would give Anthony and Jeff a breather every other song, which is important at our advanced ages! God knows I could’ve used one. It was a long set—I think something like 25 songs?

As far as playing on stage without Rich, KT had actually played our first show without him at This is Hardcore in Philly about a month before the memorial show. It was definitely weird and very sad not having him up there. Rich and I shared the same side of the stage, and we’d always be bumping into each other, getting our guitar cables tangled, or just looking at each other and laughing if we messed up a part or something like that. I just missed him being up there. We all did. The memorial show had a little more of a celebratory vibe, which helped a bit. Also, I was so focused on not screwing up any of the Breakdown songs that it took my mind off of it a bit.

*From 2011? Performance-enhanced bass parts on the Breakdown demo*

Besides the upcoming Killing Time show, are any of your other bands actively playing? Is Gordita Beach going to record those great news songs I’ve only heard live?

Carl and I played a couple Kings Destroy fly-gigs recently, but there is nothing really on the horizon with that band, at least not right now. Gordita Beach is still playing. We have a gig on May 19th at Our Wicked Lady in Brooklyn.

GB will definitely make a record that includes those new songs at some point. Killing Time is going to Europe at the end of June, and I think we’re going to play a small local show somewhere in Brooklyn as a warm-up right before we go. So, between this Westchester show and those gigs, we have to kind of get all the KT stuff out of the way before we can figure out what we want to do about recording the new Gordita Beach material.

*Gordita Beach in Brooklyn in 2021. I reviewed their set for In Effect.*

We talked about the Will Library a bit while you were editing Lost Indignation. How many library cards do you own, and in what systems? And what is your favorite library?

Currently, I only own just one library card, and it is from the Brooklyn Public Library system. I had a library card from the Yonkers Public Library system when I was growing up of course, but a while back I took out some books and kept them so long after the return date that I didn’t want to bring them back because I feared some severe sanction by the library police. So, I sadly let my Yonkers card expire. That was sometime around ‘93, as they were books I’d taken out to work on my college senior English paper. Anyway, if you go to a Yonkers public library looking for books on Lord Byron and are disappointed in the lack of selection, I apologize!

My favorite library is still the branch of the Yonkers Public Library that was local to the neighborhood where I grew up—the Riverfront branch. Beautiful views of the Palisades across the river (hence, “Riverfront”), very cozy. I think we probably talked about this when we were editing your book, but the Will Library is way over on the East side of Yonkers, and I grew up on the West side, near the Hudson River. But as I also mentioned to you previously, when I was in middle school one of my sisters used to drive me over to the Will Library to play in a weekly Dungeons and Dragons game. So I do have a soft spot for the Will branch. The Yonkers Public Library also had a Bookmobile that would come to my grade school once a month when I was a kid. I don’t know if they still have the Bookmobile or if people even know what they are now. Basically, it was a bus that was filled with bookshelves, and the library would fill it with age-appropriate books and park it outside of schools. We’d have a free period where we could go in and take out some books. The driver was a librarian and would have a little check-out station up in the front. I always enjoyed the days the Bookmobile would show up. I remember that it was always on a Friday afternoon, which added to the vibes.

I know you are a dog person but were any of your classic riffs or songs written when there were cats in the room, and what classic riffs were perhaps never written due to cat interference?

At the time when I was writing a bunch of the songs for the third Killing Time record, I was living in a house with two cats, and they were definitely in the room (and walking all over whatever equipment I was using to record demos). I don’t know if you would consider any of those songs “classics,” but I think they’re all pretty killer, though I’m biased of course. For the second part of your question, I am sure that cats have prevented many classic songs from being written over the years. I am also sure that those cats do not care at all about what they have done.

What are your favorite feral stairs (step street) in Yonkers, and your favorite food in Yonkers?

Ah, deep local Yonkers knowledge questions! There was a pretty good step-street off of Lake Ave near the high school I went to in Yonkers. Also, the one behind Public School #16 near my childhood home was cool. My favorite might not technically be a step-street, as it was inside Untermyer Park. We called it the “thousand steps,” though there were probably only a hundred or so. There was a little round clearing at the bottom, and it was a popular keg party spot when I was in high school. I spent a lot of my youth hanging out in that park and being a general dirtbag. Anyone who knows anything about the Son of Sam and the alleged devil-worshipping cult he was connected to will know about Untermyer Park. One of the most metal places one could possibly hang out, drink beers, and listen to Venom on a boom-box.

My favorite food in Yonkers is the baked ziti from Gi-Gi’s pizzeria on Odell Ave. I think it’s still there, though I haven’t been there in many years.

*Feral Stairs of Yonkers, though not the Lake Street stairs in question*

How do you feel about the Knicks’ playoff chances?

I’m not sure when this interview will come out, but I am writing this on Easter morning, and the Knicks are playing the last game of the regular season in a couple hours. So if this comes out after the first round of the playoffs, I might be eating crow, but I feel really good about their chances. The East was super tough this year, with both the Bucks and the Celtics having really dominant years. But we match-up pretty well with the Cavs (whom we play in the first round) and took the season series off of them 3-1. That being said, we do have a pretty young team. It is one of our strengths, but of course it also means we don’t have many guys with playoff experience. Regardless of what happens, this year was a tremendous success considering where we came from last year, and this is without a doubt my favorite Knicks team since some of the ‘90s squads. I’m too superstitious about the Knicks to make any definitive prediction, but again, I do feel good about our chances, in the first round at least. If we get past the Cavs, I think we can make things hard for any of the better teams in the East. We are scrappy, and I can easily see us being a spoiler.

What is the most significant sports moment that occurred while you were at a hardcore show?

This is a great question. I don’t think I have any, at least none that I can remember. However, I have a very clear memory of coming back from band practice when I was in Uppercut, going into a Chinese restaurant in the Bronx to get some food, and seeing on an old television there that James “Buster” Douglas had knocked-out Mike Tyson and become the heavyweight champion. That was in 1990, and it was probably the biggest upset in boxing history, as not only was Douglas a massive underdog, but nobody had even knocked Tyson down at that point, never mind knocked him out. (To be fair, Tyson hadn’t taken him too seriously and wasn’t in shape; plus, it was a lucky punch.)

What is your favorite baseball book or movie?

The Natural (both book and movie).

What advice would you have for someone writing their first novel – and what type of editing services do you offer?

My two pieces of advice would be to write what you know (cliché, but it’s a cliché for a reason) and to get a good editor! Seriously, you need someone whose talent and opinion you trust to give you honest feedback and help with the finer points of grammar and usage, as you can be a great writer and still not have the best command of those things. This is why editors exist, of course. As far as the types of editing I do, most people don’t know that there are different types to begin with. There is a general editor, who will work with you on the overall vision and story and give larger-scope advice on things like character arcs and cutting or adding large sections. Sort of like a music producer does with a band. Big picture stuff. Then you get into what’s called line editing, which is correcting the grammar and usage while also having a fair amount of leeway to rewrite sentences completely, cut fairly large chunks, suggest additions, question if something a character says makes sense, etc. This is basically what I did with you on Lost Indignation. It’s sort of halfway between a general editor and what is called a copy editor. A copy editor is someone who just corrects the grammar and usage of the sentences while preserving the author’s original writing as much as possible. You don’t really make cuts or suggest any additions—you just make sure whatever the author wrote is correct, grammatically. So, it’s the next step down from a line editor, in terms of how much “power” you have (or in this case, don’t have) over the material. Then there is proofreading, which comes at the very end. A proofreader is just there to be the final set of eyes after the editor(s). You are just hunting for typos or the occasional grammatical mistake that the line/copy editor may have missed before the manuscript goes to press. I can do and have done all of these. Hit me up!

Thank you for doing this! Anything else you want to cover? And to close us out, what is your favorite last song on a hardcore record?

You are very welcome! This is another good question. I’ve always loved “Unexpected” on Leeway’s Born to Expire. I’m a sucker for the old false-ending trick, and when they bring it back in with that sick mosh riff, it’s just such a killer way to end a great record.

*“Brilliant and unusual” applies to both*!

Shining Life & Times

Lots of Shining Life authors* have been featured on Serve ’em a Sentence over the years: Freddy Alva in 2016, Sami Reiss in 2019, Ned Russin in 2021, and now me. Lost Indignation was published in October 2022, which is part of why I haven’t posted here since September. From Printed Matter’s New York Art Book Fair in October, to working on my Show of Force essay for the New Breed Black Book in November, to the release of the Black Book in December, it was a busy end to 2022 and start to 2023.

You can order all five of our books here, but Shining Life will also have books at the Snake Book Release this Friday, March 3 at Printed Matter. See you there:

*a fifth Shining Life author, Chris Wynne, wrote an In Effect article for I Question Not Me #4 rather than this site.

Other recent events:

Shining Life at the New York Art Book Fair in October

At the New Breed Black Book release event with Dylan Chadwick’s Pressure Release piece

Being photobombed by the Crimson Ghost at NYHC Comics
Photo by Tara Maxim

Up next: bringing you more cats in the room when the riffs were written in 2023 …

Seth Meyer on Cats in the Room when the Riffs Were Written

What’s up Seth, thank you for doing this interview! Over the past few years, you have been putting your past projects on Spotify and Youtube. What are some of the underrated gems on each platform?

On Spotify, I’m going to call a lot of my solo music underrated because I’m not sure how to find the right audience for it. The people that like it really love it but it’s not straight up hardcore and there’s also a lot of electronic music that goes in a lot of directions so the average hardcore fan is not usually feeling it. I just don’t know how to market it to get it to the right people but I’m proud of it. In 2013, I put out a solo album called “The World Does Not Exist” and then last year, I re-released it with a bunch of electronic instrumentals I did in the early 2000s in between the songs under the name Seth N’ Violence – Hardcore Fantasy. I am really proud of all of that stuff but it’s mostly unheard.

On Youtube, I put up a lot of band practices of unrecorded music and us just jamming. So many songs go to waste over the years because a band breaks up and songs don’t get recorded or line-ups change. I just wanted people to hear this stuff.

Mike Bulldoze is one of my favorite riff writers and so I put up a tape of our early Homicidal practices with riffs and beats that were never turned into songs. We still hope to use some of them one day.

I was also in another band with Dan One4One called Plan B is Dead, we released a short 5 song demo but we had a lot of practices of the band just jamming and making up stuff that I thought was incredible and needed to be heard, so I put that up.

What type of music are you creating these days? Do you have any new bands in the works, or mostly solo projects?

Right now I am still developing it so I don’t know what it’s going to turn into. I always want to do something completely different from what I have done before but at the same time, old school hardcore is part of my DNA so I also have a bunch of songs that are that and nothing more. For some songs, I have a bunch of riffs and beats and choruses put together but I want to layer them with different sounds but I want to get a new synth first. Getting a new synth with new sounds always gives me new ideas. All my old stuff was recorded with a Korg Triton that I bought in 2000. It was great for its time but it’s outdated. I’ve also been studying classic hip hop albums and learning about sampling and manipulating sounds. Check the Technique: Liner Notes for Hip-Hop Junkies by Brian Coleman has a goldmine of information.

I’ve slowly been building a home studio but I haven’t started recording anything yet and won’t until I have all the equipment. Last year, I remixed “Unbreakable” by Homicidal and added all these electronic colors so that could give you an idea of the colors I would like to mix but the new songs will be actual songs with verses and chorus unlike this remix.

I’m also trying to spend a lot more time working on writing lyrics and creating vocal flows. I think that has always been my biggest weakness. I come up with hooks for choruses but then get stuck while trying to write the verses. I’ve been reading a lot looking for inspiration and also spending time on vocabulary.com trying to improve my vocabulary. I have a whole notebook of words and phrases that I just love the sound of that I am hoping to find a way to use in songs without it sounding forced. I’m a big sci-fi and fantasy fan too so I try to make sci-fi sounding music. I am hoping to find good sci-fi books to write a song about. On my last solo album, “Maze of Death” was based on the book A Maze of Death by Philip K Dick. “The World Does Not Exist” started off being based on Old Man’s War by John Scalzi but completely morphed into something else although the original 4 lines remain. “Terror to Forever’s End” is about Zod, Ursa and Non being trapped in the Phantom Zone in Superman. I have a completed song that is based on Stannis Baratheon’s final stand. I recorded a cheap home demo version of it in 2016 but I plan on re-recording that for the new album. I also lifted lyrics straight from the Dhammapada in my song “Immortality.”

When did you get interested in classical music, and how does it inform your writing process? Does having a foundation in music theory also help?

I got heavily into it when I was 18 but I think it was always in my DNA because piano was my first instrument and I’ve been playing my whole life. I was learning how to play a lot of simple classical music before I really got into music as a fan of music. But it was really film music that drew me in. Specifically, I rediscovered Star Wars at 18 and would listen to the soundtrack all the time. And I also had the Clockwork Orange Soundtrack and I loved Rossini’s “Thieving Magpie” and the way the film contrasted it with violence. Then Ren & Stimpy used the same piece in Space Madness and it really made me think about how much I loved the music. There was so much great classical music in Ren & Stimpy that led me on a mission to find out what the music being played was. I started playing piano again right after that. I had for the most part stopped when I started playing drums at 8. Classical music is all about harmony and knowing what works with what. When I write riffs, I don’t really think at all. I just play. But when it comes to putting another riff on top of that or a solo, it’s important to know what key I am in and what will work with it. Also, if I get stuck while writing a song, I can use harmonic progression theory to give me an idea of what key to try next. Even in Homicidal with Mike’s riffs, if we get stuck, I can say to him, try something on this or that fret and that can get us out of a jam

Thank you for being the source of the “cats in the room when the riffs were written” question that I’ve been asking here and am compiling for I Question Not Me #6. What riffs or songs were written when there were cats in the room, and what classic riffs were maybe never written due to cat interference?

You’re welcome. In the room itself, I am not 100% certain. I am pretty sure my cat Wolfgang (2006-2012) was in the room for most of the Plan B is Dead riffs and then the riffs for my 2013 solo album (which were originally Plan B is Dead riffs) but I can’t say for sure. But he couldn’t have been far away so he definitely heard them from outside the room if he wasn’t in it. My cat Stimpy (1993-2006) was most likely in the room for the Fat Nuts Theme Song, and “Setting it Straight” by Fat Nuts and probably “Absence of Sincerity” by 25 ta Life. Also, “Thoughts” by One4One but I hate that song so maybe I shouldn’t mention that one. Stimpy was in the house for a lot though. All my bands practiced in the house so even though he wasn’t in the room, he definitely heard a lot of songs being put together. He would have been there when One4One put Control together, when Rey wrote the first riff for “Stand” (Stimpy would sleep on Rey’s head when he left it at my house), he was there for the first Homicidal jams, he was there when One4One was rushing to put In Search of Together. And he was there when we were putting together some of the Strength Through Unity tracks, specifically the double bass part in “Took My Kindness for Weakness” and the first part of “Make it Work.”

I have probably lost a bunch of riffs forever thanks to when Wolfgang knocked over my digital 8 track in 2007 and I lost everything in it. I had 5 years’ worth of music in there. I wouldn’t have lost any completed songs because I already burned those to CD but definitely a lot of ideas in the works. I woke up in the middle of the night to a loud boom in the living room. I ran in, saw the machine on the floor, Wolfie running away and then I heard clicking coming from the hard drive (which is never a good thing). I took it to a repair shop but everything was lost.

Out of all the bands you’ve played in, which one featured the most cat owners, the most cats, and your favorite cats?

It would be the In Search Of line up of One4One or One Family which was the exact same members minus the one person in One4One that didn’t have a cat. I’m not sure how many cats because I’m not sure how many Dan had. He always had a lot of pets at his mom’s house. Andy, Chris and I had 1 each. My favorite cats are and were Mike Bulldoze’s. I love his cat Daphne and she loves me. She is a super friendly huge gluttonous yellow cat. She is obsessed with my guitar case and every time I go over there, I usually have my guitar. She comes running to the door crying until I put it down and open it for her. It got to the point where I felt like I needed to bring the empty case if I was going over there and we weren’t jamming just because I didn’t want to let her down. I also loved their late cats Norman and Seymour. Seymour was a little slow and would just plop down on your lap and not move. He died in 2014 and that’s when they got Daphne. Norm took a lot longer to warm up to me. He was scared of everyone. But one day after Seymour died, he came and sat on my lap while we were watching Game of Thrones and I was so happy that he finally took the initiative. And then he came to sit with me every week after that. He never came out until the kids went to bed. Unfortunately, he passed right before the pandemic started. They got a new cat named Leela but I only just met her in Feb 2020, and due to the pandemic, I haven’t been over there since then.

Honorable mention also goes to Tomoki’s cat (Homicidal, Hell Brigade) from 2005. I don’t remember the name of the cat but Tomoki lived on 131^st street in Harlem on the 2^nd floor of a brownstone. The cat would climb out the balcony and be up and down all of the buildings. Sometimes I’d see her outside roaming the streets of Harlem. The cat was a trooper. Doug E Fresh actually lived a few houses away and he had these front steps with these awesome Asian lion gargoyles on the banisters so I always wondered if the cat ever chilled there with the gargoyles and Doug E Fresh.

I also love Andy from One4One’s current cat Gertie (I hope I spelled it right). I never met her but he’s always posting pics and she has a really distinctive “I’m not impressed” face.

I have really enjoyed seeing your kittens on Instagram – how did you decide it was time to get a pet again and how did they come into your life?

I just needed one. I had pets most of my life but I never went looking for one. They were all found on the street. My sister found my dog Lucy down the street from us, my ex found Stimpy in a parking lot and Wolfgang was trapped in the engine of a car in front of my building when I found him. It always felt like destiny so I was just waiting for it to happen again but all of the sudden, 10 years had gone by, and no pets. People were suggesting Petfinder and all these sites but it felt like online dating. I couldn’t tell from a pic whether or not they were right for me. I wanted to meet them and see what kind of connection there was. So, then AWESOM in Stroudsburg said they were getting some kittens in and I went to check them out. They were in a batch of 5 and I really loved how they all had a bond with each other. I wish I could have taken them all. I never had 2 cats at once before except a 2-month period where I lived with my ex but both cats were already old and her cat hated Stimpy. I had a cat and a dog at the same time but Stimpy HATED my dog. He absolutely resented her and treated her like she was a rodent from outside that didn’t belong. He used to look at me like “yo wtf? Why is this thing in the house?” My kittens (Luke and Leia) love each other. They are inseparable. Watching them interact is one of the greatest treasures I have ever had the pleasure to experience. They go on these exploratory missions around the house. They fight. They sleep all over each other and chase each other all around the house. I’m not sure where they are at this moment, but I can guarantee that wherever you find one of them, the other is there too.

When I got the In Effect book last summer I remember noticing your bands were all over the book. What are some of your favorite parts of the book, and your favorite In Effect issues?

I can tell you what my least favorite part of the book was. It was that underhanded dig at the Mets in the foreword. What was up with that? At first, I was like “oh nice. Becky wrote the foreword but then 2 seconds later I was like WTF? Why? Was this really necessary?” Haha.

My favorite parts were the ‘80s issues because I had never seen those before. I had always heard about them but it was all fresh reading. I loved reading the reviews of all these classic recordings as new music. Also loved that it all started with Outburst. My favorite issue during my era was the one that had our Japan tour. That was the best trip I ever went on and to see it documented in the zine like that was an honor. I always looked up to the zine. I was proud just to get a review in there the first time. I always felt In Effect was the official state of the union for our scene and the paragon of what a zine should be. I helped out with interviews for a NJHC zine called God Bless Hardcore. In Effect was the inspiration for it. Its founders Gerry and Tito wanted it to be the NJHC version of In Effect.

How many library cards do you have, and what is your favorite library (in each state where you have lived?)

I actually signed up online yesterday for my new local library here in PA (Western Pocono Community Library). I saw they have curbside pick-up so I can just order the book and pick it up. I haven’t physically been there yet. I guess I still have one for the library in Plainsboro NJ. I did like that one. It was 2 blocks from my house and they had a front and back door so I would walk through it on my way home from local stores. They always sold used books for like $2-$3 and I would just buy a bunch and save them for a rainy day. About 5 years ago, I picked up Magic and Mystery in Tibet by Alexandra David-Neel on one of those walk throughs and I just finally read it a couple of months ago.The timing was perfect because reading about the ascetics in the mountains was exactly what I needed at this point in time and since then, I’ve really been embracing the isolation and solitude of being up here in the mountains during a pandemic. Plainsboro was the only library I used in NJ.

In New York, I really loved the library at College of Staten Island. I still lived at home when I was in college so I used to go there all the time just for the quiet but they also had a really great selection. They had everything I needed for all my research papers. They had the scores for almost every major classical piece. They also had records you could go listen to with headphones in a silent room (this was pre-mp3). And when I was taking History of Opera, they had all the operas we had to watch for class so I could go in there and watch with headphones.

What is your favorite baseball book or movie?

Book would be Big Sexy: In His Own Words by Bartolo Colon which was co-authored by Michael Stahl. Michael Stahl is the guy that wrote the article The Last Time New York was Hardcore for Narratively. So it was awesome to see the book was by a hardcore kid. Plus it was a great book.

Movie would probably be either A League of Their Own (the original) or 42. It’s hard to compare a comedy to a serious historical film. The part in A League of Their Own where the letter comes from overseas with the death notice always stuck with me. I really want to see a period movie that centers around New York Baseball in the 1880s. You have the start of the Dodgers and the Giants and also the first World Series ever with the original New York Metropolitans at the Polo Grounds in 1884. Someone please make that!

What is the most significant baseball moment that occurred while you were at a hardcore show?

I was at CBGB’s for Bulldoze and Death Threat when the Angels beat the Giants in Game 7 of the 2002 World Series. The game was on at the TV by the door and I kept going to check on it. I was disappointed. I was going for the Giants. My family was NY Giants fans before the 1969 World Series so they are my #2 team.

How do you like living in PA, and what are some of your favorite vegan spots you have found since moving out there?

I love it for the most part but the food is definitely a problem. I’m up in a rural mountain town and there are no vegan spots. The closest thing is a vegan bakery about 35-40 min away. There are places that advertise having “vegan options” but then you look at the menu and it’s literally just a bowl of fruit and a salad. So I have to settle for supermarket food. I just love the peace and quiet up here. I love the scenery. I love seeing no people and nothing but trees when I go for a drive. There are a bunch of trails I want to check out but I’m waiting for the fall. I don’t fuck with summer. I think I will check out some winter stuff like skiing and snow tubing because it’s all right by my house. I’ve never done any of that stuff before.

Who is your favorite PAHC band, and the most underrated bands from NY, NJ and PA?

Wisdom in Chains for sure. They have a deep catalog now. I don’t think anyone can compare. I love Punishment too. I would listen to them at the gym all the time. “1000 Daggers” makes me want to kill people. I’m not really up on current bands but I still think the most underrated bands are the first wave of NYHC when all the focus was still on DC, Boston and Cali. The bands that had long careers like AF and Reagan Youth obviously get all their due recognition but I love bands like the Abused, the Mad, XKI, Ultra Violence, The Stimulators and in NJ, Even Worse and Adrenaline OD. The last show I went to was Darkside NYC at A7 (Niagara Bar) and they played “I Hate Music” by the Mad, which is one of my favorite songs of all time but I think I was the only person there that actually knew it. That’s the beginning of it all.

When Wreak Havoc passed in 2020, you posted some early Homicidal songs with him on vocals. Tell me about the early days of Homicidal and how did you end up with the permanent lineup?

I don’t think we really ever had a permanent line up. There was a steady line up between 2008-2019 but I wasn’t in that except for when I would fill in for whoever couldn’t make it. It started off with me showing Zack some riffs I wrote in the summer of 2001 and he was like “yo you gotta get together with Mike. You guys are on the same shit.” So, me and Mike started jamming with me on guitar. Then 9/11 happened and things kind of fell apart for a while. We also didn’t really want to go too far without a drummer anyway but finally in 2003, I caved in and said I would play drums. I had also been talking to Frank from NJBL for a while about doing something and both Mike and Frank already had Brian the kid on board for both projects so I just combined everything. First, we had Junior from Heidnik Stew (currently in The Way Of) on vocals but that only lasted a few weeks so then we got Wreak. We already had the music for the 2004 demo when Wreak joined and he pretty much wrote the vocals on the spot in the studio. He was great at writing lyrics quickly. No one did it better. But we only had 3 songs so we weren’t ready for a show yet. Wreak left in the fall and that’s when we got McG and recorded the 2005 demo in Jan/Feb. We played just 1 show with that lineup and Brian and Frank were replaced by Rodney and Tomoki. That’s the lineup of the 2006 Live at CBGB’s recording. And then I was out of the band and replaced by Dimi. There were a few more changes before the State of Mind lineup of Mike Bulldoze, Dimi, McG, Mike H and Zack. Then Mike H left in 2019 and I replaced him on bass. We played 2 shows in 2019 but right now we are inactive.

Along with being an official member of One4One, Fat Nuts, 25 Ta Life, Homicidal etc, you have filled in for other bands like Terror Zone. How many different instruments have you played onstage, and what’s the least amount of notice you had to get on stage and fill in for a band?

I’ve sang, played guitar, drums, bass and piano on stage although piano obviously wasn’t at a hardcore show. I had 2 minutes to prepare to play for NJ Bloodline. I can tell you the story or you can hear it for yourself here at 12:50:

Also, the first time I played for Bulldoze was at the BNB Bowl in 2008. I went there specifically to see the OG lineup of Breakdown. I hadn’t seen Breakdown at all since the ‘90s and never the OG lineup. That was really all I cared about. After Fahrenheit 451, Mike came up to me and was like “wanna play drums for Bulldoze?” and I was like “when?” and he was like “now” and I was like “I haven’t played drums in almost a year” and he was like “so what. Come on.” And so we went backstage and went over the songs for 30 minutes acoustically with me tapping on my legs. I had played “The Truth” with Homicidal before (but not in over 2 years) but I never played “Beatdown.” I was nervous the whole time because the first time I was gonna actually play the song on a set was live at the busiest time of the night in between Terror and Madball and with cameras on me. It was a surprise set. No one in the crowd knew it was going to happen. Mike didn’t even play because we didn’t have a lefty guitar to use so we did it with just 1 guitar. For the most part, I pulled it off but I did fuck up once in Beatdown. I wound up missing Breakdown because they played while I was learning the songs. I had to wait for the DVD.

Thank you for doing this – and anything else you’d like to cover?

I would just like to thank you for doing this. It is greatly appreciated.

And I’m also gonna shamelessly plug my YouTube and Spotify pages. Everything released on Spotify is also on all the major streaming sites such as iTunes and Amazon Music.

Youtube channel

Seth N’ Violence

25 ta Life

One 4 One (including 94 demo and I Won’t Lose 7 inch)

Homicidal (including both demos and Live at CBGB)

Fat Nuts

Hell Brigade (Wreak Havoc on vocals)

Chiqui Rodriguez on Ayanyss, Buckner, CBGB’s and Dmize

Hey Chiqui, thank you for doing this interview! First off, tell me about your new project Ayanyss. How did the initial lineup come together, and then when did things shift from recording songs to becoming an active band that would play live?

The initial lineup of Harry, Frank and myself started one night outside of Brooklyn Bazaar at a Madball show. Frank and Harry were actively talking about making some music and they asked if I wanted to front the project. We finally got around to getting in the studio maybe 2018 with Nick B of Cold Front. We hashed out about 12 total songs, dropped two and backburnered the other two. We were set with a date in late February 2020 to go into the studio to record but the onset of COVID quickly shut that down. We were in a flux with no real rehearsal space and we still wanted to get the songs out there, so we started looking towards a monthly rental. We were able to scrounge up a monthly room and decided to produce, record and master all on our own out of Mixerhead Studios in College Point, Queens. In a matter of a few months, simultaneously writing new songs and directly recording we had our 8 songs for the EP. Nick and Harry were never too keen on playing out, while Frank and I always wanted to share the wealth. We’ve transitioned to Beto and John on guitars and drums respectively to get started on our live show ventures.

Where did the band name Ayanyss come from? Is there an advantage to picking a unique name where you’re not going to get mixed up with another band on Spotify or Discogs?

This was an epiphany manifested from the mind of Frank. He says it could mean anything. To me it’s an acronym – Act Your Age Not Your Shoe Size. This is more of a factual view of what the band means. For Frank, he can stay on the ethereal tip. But I guess we’re covered in the hardcore band with a weird name. I’m seeing a lot of weird HC band names popping up.

How would you describe Ayanyss? The Bandcamp summary references a “heavy groove and a vintage metal influence” but as I mentioned in the In Effect review, I think this is more of a hardcore record than what is reflected in the bio.

We’re a hardcore band no matter where we get our influences from. We’re all from a metal background and that shows through, but I think it’s got a lot of progressive tendencies as well. Granted as the songs follow the standard hardcore format, we’ve also made them a little longer with, I hope, avoiding too much repetition.

I saw that your first show is scheduled for September 12 at A7/Niagara. Do you have anything else lined up yet?

As of 8/9 we’re not scheduled for anything else, but we’ve also turned down shows as we’re not sonically ready to roll as a band yet while getting John and Beto acclimated fully.

Note: this show has been moved to Bowery Electric – see flyer below:

How did you get into umpiring, and what levels of baseball do you officiate? How do you feel about the recent umpiring-related changes in MLB, like replay?

I’ve always played ball as a kid, coached my son as he grew up and I’m currently playing softball (with Dimi, drummer from Skarhead). Right now I’m umpiring modified softball Sunday morning in Queens and hardly do any more baseball games. They don’t pay as much and the parents are fucking assholes. At least the adults playing softball know that they’re playing beer league softball, yet there remain a few souls that are just as delusional as the aforementioned parents. This was a way for me to stay in the game and it’s a completely different view as an arbiter of the game and not a participant. And I get paid!

The technology was always going to catch up to the sport as replay in the MLB was the last of the four major sports to enact it. It is such a rough sport to officiate but you hope the four guys out there are able to make the right call. I do like the exercise in shortening the game. I also think it’s just a matter of time until the fully automated strike zone.

What is the most significant baseball moment that occurred while you were at a hardcore show?

My sports hardcore memories are limited to Pro Football. During the CBs matinees I’d usually hang at the entrance and watch the Jets game if I wasn’t too interested in who was playing and if I was, I’d catch up on the game while waiting on the next band to set up. I don’t necessarily have a baseball moment per se but I did get beaned with a bottle of nail polish in the nose at a Slayer concert in 85!!! How’d I know it was nail polish? I was at the front of the stage and it hit off the bridge of my nose and landed on the stage.

What is your favorite baseball book or movie?

Eight Men Out by Eliot Asinof about the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal, and the movie by the same name.

One Pitch Away by Mike Sowell – This one is crazy with some remarkable decisions in some of the most important games in history and how those decisions affected championship games. Did you know that in 1986, Boston Red Sox manager John McNamara always made a defensive switch at 1B by taking Bill Buckner out of the game and subbing him with Dave Stapleton late in the game? He decided to leave Buckner out there to celebrate the series win against the New York Mets.

The Complete Game – Ron Darling bio – Chapters are broken down by Ron’s most important inning he’s pitched in the pros or on the amateur level.

And Field of Dreams can suck it. How do you make this movie and fuck it up by making Joe Jackson a righty???

How many library cards do you own, and in what systems? And what is your favorite library?

One library card and it’s the Queens system. I’m gonna have to be partial to the library in Jackson Heights, Queens cause it’s the only library I’ve ever seen a metal band play live at.

Wait, tell me more about this metal show at the library …

The Queens library would always have special events in the back room off the entrance and they’d have a string quartet or a reading but they got talked into having a live band there and these kids were in there covering Metallica!!

This was the library’s community outreach program way back in the mid ‘80s. I was merely a visitor. I did book a few CBs shows back in the day.

I’m not sure how it went down with the last matinee nor the timeline, but late ‘89 into ‘90, I worked at Sloan’s supermarket on 1st & 5th on the Lower East Side. I was in that area so much attending HS, hanging at Alcatraz (on Ave A) or at someone’s house, it made sense to get a job down there, even though I lived in Queens. It ended up that Hilly from CBGBs shopped there and I’d see him every now and then, making sure to say hi. And after a number of rehearsed introductions and should or shouldn’t I’s, I approached him in the canned products aisle about kicking matinees back up. And with enough persistence, he let me book a few gigs at CBs. Connie, who was booking shows back then sorta apprenticed me for a little while and I ended up probably booking a year or so of matinees over there and Dmize got on a few of them shows. That Killing Time, Supertouch, Dmize, Burn show in 90 may have been the best, but not sure if it was the first I did there.

“Dying in Darkness” addresses the current political climate in that you want “to cross the aisle, but all the dopes are in denial.” How important is it for hardcore bands right now to identify what side of the aisle they’re on?

There’s so much disinformation that is intentional to keep us split. This is something that has been aggressively aimed toward the US for decades. It’s aimed to internally destroy what good aspects of this country that are left. And there aren’t many. Now political parties have pounced on these agendas for their own benefit and by keeping us at each other’s throats by politicizing what you think would be simple common sense shit they control the narrative. But also another 40% of the country is more in touch with influencers and a sordid array of nobodys that are famous for doing nothing. Like the populace, some hardcore bands may not care and then some, in this political climate, may have already been thrown to one side or another already. Just stand on what your beliefs are but first and foremost please know and understand what the fuck you’re talking about and go ahead an open your mind as well. As closed as you think one viewpoint may be, there could be something of sense in that myopic view.

What are some other major lyrical themes that appear throughout the album? Has your process of writing lyrics evolved since the Dmize era?

“Masques,” “Nothing but Lies” roll in the same theme as “Dying in Darkness” and we touch on a life’s journey through “Images.” “Hell to Pay” is a call to be an active citizen while “Decay” chronicles society today skating through life while it crumbles around us. On “The Forbidden” we dive into the macabre and Frank’s love of horror movies as an ode to Candyman. Lastly, in “Degeneration” is technology the real horror here?

Back in the Dmize era, I was writing something all the time, poetry, free writing, screenplays, haikus, limericks, lyrics. Back then pen and paper always, now I have to set aside time and force myself to write. It’s a bit tougher but again this isn’t life 24-7 as it was back then.

Do you think a Dmize reunion will ever happen? I remember you saying at one point that things almost fell into place around 2006?

I’m not sure that if it does happen that it’ll be a full reunion but it’s too early to say and who knows what can happen. I can say there are wheels in motion on the Dmize front. So stay tuned for that.

Any last thoughts you would like to share?

Political viewpoints notwithstanding, people should care about what is happening. Our institutions are failing us to hold people accountable and the media is only concerned about clicks and cash. So who can you believe? Believe historians who say hey this happened before we should watch what’s happening now. Research for yourselves and find a voice for whatever assbackward stance you want to grab onto. Just don’t find your viewpoint from a Facebook meme.

Time is Too Valuable: Alaska on Cargo Cults, Clutter, the Cape Cod League and the Circle Jerks

After hearing the new Cargo Cults album Nihilist Millennial, I had the opportunity to ask Alaska about its many baseball references – and a plethora of other topics, some featured on the album, and some not.

So your new album Nihilist Millennial is fucking great … what has the response been overall, and is the younger generation into it too despite being “get off my lawn rap”?

Overall the reception has been really positive. I was stoked to see the feedback, I felt that this was the best work of my unevenly long career. I think some youngs are enjoying it, but as someone in their late 40s pretty much anyone under 45 is a young to me. I do not think that many 18 year olds are digging it, which is probably for the best.

How did you come up with the concept for the two limited edition CD formats, which both sold out quickly? Any hope for a repress or more versions? And are people besides me actually still interested in CDs compared to other physical media like tapes or vinyl?

It was a group effort. Zilla wanted to do the black velvet case and I wanted to do the CD tin, mostly because it looked cool as shit and as someone who hates clutter I imagined that people could use the tin to store small things like airplane sewing kits and toenail clippers. Realistically they are probably just using it to store weed. We are not going to repress them. I would love to do vinyl at some point but I am not sure if there is a demand for it. I do think there is a demand for it. Everyone I know who prints them sells out. It is a small market, but I think there are people who grew up with CDs as their medium of choice and they appreciate their music in said format. As someone who hates clutter I despise all physical forms of music since I do not have any sort of system to play it on they just end up sitting on my bookshelf. Haha.

Zilla Rocca, who did the beats here, is also part of your podcast, Call Out Culture, as is Curly Castro who makes an appearance on “Pinky Toe.” Is there any intentional symmetry between the names Cargo Cults and Call Out Culture, and can you briefly describe the podcast for someone reading this who has not yet checked it out?

The main symmetry was that Cargo Cults was originally donned Call Out Culture, and we used it as the podcast name thinking we would cross promote, but as we got deeper into the album, the name no longer felt relevant to the music. However, it did feel relevant to the podcast so we decided to nix it as the group name. I learned of Cargo Cults when I was sitting in on a talk at a tech company. I thought the name fit really well for where we are as a society – a bunch of primitive people creating these tech deities that we thought would save us from ourselves.

As for the podcast, I think it is the quintessential “friends talking shit about rap music” podcast, with the added bonus of us all being practitioners in the craft so we have a layer of insider insight that fans might not have, plus we have access to other artists. This allows us to get really deep into what makes an artist special and why we love them. We also make fun of Common a lot.

Lyrics in “All Power to All People” reference both the advantages and pitfalls of social media, from allowing marginalized groups to organize, to the darker side of giving a platform to racists with “their first fucking computers”. How would you advise navigating the fine line between feeding the trolls and ridiculing them? Also FYI the “vicissitude” and “give a shit my dude” rhyme is one of my favorites since Bumpy Knuckles paired “Yeltsin” with “felt, son.”

I think if you give a troll enough rope they will just hang themselves. Their only goal is to make you irrational and emotional. If you give them the response they want they win. I think about shit heads like Richard Spencer and Milo, and all the shit they were stirring back in 2017 and 2018. They didn’t have to do shit other than show up. The reaction to them is what gave them power. The spectacle. The second they were allowed to discuss their platform, they were exposed as the sacks of shit we all knew them to be and they just as quickly disappeared. The more interaction you have with them the more powerful they become. It is like that Simpsons Halloween episode when the advertisements came to life. The second they stopped paying attention they died.

I really love that vicissitude line myself, it is one of my life’s greatest accomplishments. I am glad that you appreciate it.

Alongside the social media and political commentary, there is also an Agnostic Front reference in the track referenced above. How were you introduced to hardcore and what are some of your favorites in the genre?

I was introduced to hardcore through my friend Mike Desocio in high school. Mike was in a band called No Win Situation with John Franko who later went on to front Awkward Thought. Mike introduced me to shit like Minor Threat, Gorilla Biscuits, Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies, etc. My experience in hardcore pretty much started and ended in the late 80s early 90s. I was mostly a tourist, I really enjoyed bands like Minor Threat, Gorilla Biscuits, Murphy’s Law, early Black Flag with Keith Morris and my all-time favorite The Circle Jerks. Group Sex is probably my favorite record of all time. I was always more into hip hop than Hardcore, but Hardcore was a nice break from hip hop.

In “UX”, “Joe MacMillan” and elsewhere, there are references to your perspective changing due to being at a different place in your life. Do you think you are continuing to create better music as you get older, and how does this perspective reconcile with genres where artists could write one good album and then not be able to replicate it?

I do think that my work is getting better, but that might also just be my perspective. I think one of the benefits that I have in making music is that I made a lot of mistakes when I was younger. I realized early on that making music for the sake of being relevant is a surefire way to have a shitty and irrelevant career. I was fortunate enough to pursue music professionally for about 7 years, by the end of that time I was a vapid asshole, with nothing real to say, just a bunch of empty platitudes and pseudo-deep thoughts. As I got away from that lifestyle, and just became a regular ass working stiff, with a family and a mortgage, I think I was able to make music that was more grounded in my reality. I think the topics that I can address and speak about come from a place of lived experience. When I complain about something or celebrate something it is not an abstract idea it is my reality. I think that is where a lot of artists get hung up. So much of working towards the first record is building on your experience, which is likely an experience that a lot of people share. I cannot speak for everyone, but when I was professionally pursuing music, I was not speaking about shit from lived experience anymore, and if it was it was a real limited experience of life in the music industry. Which is heavily geared towards remaining relevant. So, the music was no longer about figuring out my life and the world around me. It was about seeing what I need to do to keep that check coming in. It was not sustainable. There is nothing sadder to me than trying to remain relevant, especially as you age, it isn’t dignified in any way. I think that is where artists lose it, and it is why their work suffers. Artists need to be true to who they are now, not who they were or who they think they should be. The music industry thrives off of that.

Did I miss any baseball references besides the Mets pitching, friendly game of baseball, Kirby Puckett, Sammy Sosa, Dwight Gooden, Mookie wearing a Jackie jersey, and Honus Wagner? What is your favorite baseball reference in a rap song? Also, how the hell did you become a Red Sox fan?

The only one I think you might have missed was David Halberstam, but that was mostly baseball adjacent since I love his baseball writing. My favorite baseball reference is Bun B saying “Like Dontrelle Willis we the trillist!”

When I was young I used to go to Cape Cod for a week every summer. The town we stayed in had a Cape Cod summer league and Carl Yastrzemski’s son played on the team. I met Yaz and he immediately became my favorite player. I have been a fan since. It is weird though. I used to live and die by the Red Sox, but now that they have won 4 titles in the past 15 years it feels a lot less urgent. I don’t really care anymore, I have become a fair weather fan, I only watch if they are good. I have turned all of my diehard rooting to the New York Jets, I need to see them win a title or two so I can stop caring.

If you read books about baseball, what is your favorite baseball book? And how many library cards do you own and in what systems?

I have read a few baseball books. My two favorites are Summer of 49 by David Halberstam and All the Stars Came Out That Night by Kevin King.

I am completely anti-government so I will take no part in their library systems :). I tend to like owning books, mostly because I forget to return them and end up owing the library more than the book costs. Plus books are one of the few things that I like to clutter my space.

The Oxford Comma makes an appearance in “Joe MacMillan” – are you pro or anti Oxford Comma?

I am not much of a fan. I think it looks clunky and clutters up the sentence structure.

What’s it like having a state named after you, and is that why you advocate for states’ rights? Also when are you getting control of Alaska’s electoral votes?

It was a big honor that they named the state after me, but I think they had to do it in order to rebrand after that Sarah Palin PR nightmare. Unfortunately it is mostly a ceremonial position, so I do not have access to the electoral votes. If I did Vermin Supreme would receive them.

As for states’ rights, I mostly think that we are too fixated on the federal government being the solution to our problems and the country is too big for this to be a satisfying solution for anyone. We end up having the broken system that we do have now. I would prefer a system where the federal government address the highway system, monetary policy, defense (though much stripped down), civil rights violations and got the fuck out of everyone’s life. New Yorkers should be able to live how New Yorkers want to live and Texans should be able to live how Texans want to live. The fact that Arkansas can dictate what we do and we can dictate what Alabama does seems silly to me.

Have you ever been to the Alaska deli in Chelsea? And what is your favorite bodega?

I have not, is it the best? My favorite bodega is the Albemarle Food Corporation, or as those in our neighborhood call it “Mo’s”. You can follow them on instagram at modega101.

Flyer for I Question Not Me #3, which was not actually released till May 2015.

Can you make one more track on Bandcamp that is just a clip of “self-proclaimed disruptors on their motherfucking scooters” that I can play when dudes on scooters ride them on the sidewalk in my neighborhood? What is it about adults on motorized scooters that so thoroughly incites our ire, either rationally or irrationally?

I think if you feed the line into a casio keyboard you should be able to loop it yourself – “teach a person to fish” – I am like the Jesus of looping.

Those muthafuckers are assholes. I watch them scoot around and I cannot help but think that they are the worst that humanity has to offer, they are the failure of liberal democracies. Back in like 1998 I was working in the Empire State Building and on my way to work some lady was zipping in and out of foot traffic on the sidewalk on a razor scooter and she fucking wiped out right in front of me on one of those sidewalk grates that they have over the subway systems, I am talking full header, the shit definitely had to hurt really bad. It was one of the most satisfying moments of my life. I still remember it fondly to this day.

The last song “Time is Too Valuable” references time being both valuable and finite. How do you balance your creative projects against other life responsibilities, and do you feel like time is going faster or slower during the pandemic?

It is weird, I get way more done now than I ever did when making music was my job. It is really a matter of time management now. I cannot put it off until later. If I want to get music/writing done I have to do during the downtime or it isn’t ever going to happen. Time management has become a necessity if I want to be able to have a creative outlet, because it really is like number 10 on my list of responsibilities. So it is up to me to make time for it when I can. I usually do a lot of writing while I am doing other tasks, walking the dogs, cleaning, cooking, laundry, taking the subway. That is when I have time to myself where I can use all of my brain power towards being creative. The rest of the day is family and work.

Time has been going both incredibly fast and incredibly slow. Like this summer we went swimming a lot at swimming holes in the Catskills and it seems like it was just the other day and 20 years ago at the same time. It really drives home the idea that all time is happening at once.

How do you manage to remain a “black ops optimist” despite all the disturbing world developments referenced through the album?

I have always secretly been an optimist. I think the human condition is to strive towards improvement. It just takes a long time to get there. I think we have a really bad tendency to focus exclusively on the moment that we are on, but if you start to zoom out and look at the entire timeline of human existence we are really in a better place. Look at something as simple as death rates for COVID vs. Spanish Flu: it is like 1.5 million vs. 50 million. Global poverty rates are going down. Medicine is better, access to information has increased. The problem I think is that we are seeing more of the things that we didn’t see in the past. Which is good, it is scary, but it is good. We need to see this shit so we can no longer deny it. Overall I think humanity is in a better place than it has ever been. It might suck to be an American right now, but that shit is all self inflicted. We have nobody to blame but us. We see how fucked up our system is, and we want to empower the system even more in hopes that the same people fucking up the system will fix the system. We are fine with a president having the level of power Trump has as long as it is someone we agree with. Watch how quickly all of the arguments about executive power will switch on January 20th. We aren’t serious about change, we are only serious about power. All of the issues in our society are state sponsored, yet we want to give them more power. We are the cause of our own pain. But that only sucks for us, I think we are on the verge of breaking out of this, stripping the government of power and ruling over ourselves. It might not be this year or next year, but I think it will happen sooner rather than later. That is why I am optimistic.

It Looked Like For Ever: the End of the Road for Henry Wiggen and Alex Rodriguez

Some of you already know how much I love the Henry Wiggen books and have experienced my constant exhortations to read them. Mark Harris has written the best series of baseball fiction that I’ve ever encountered, and since I know many people who appreciate both baseball and fiction, I find it hard to believe that these books are not more appreciated among this particular subset of humans. They are truly the Dynamo or Show of Force of the sports fiction realm, except the material is more widely available. Sixty years after their publication, the storylines hold up well and the overall themes are still relevant. And all four novels are still in print via the University of Nebraska’s Bison Books.

In order to introduce more readers to the delights of Mount Vernon’s own Mark Harris, I had been thinking of doing a Henry Wiggen-specific blog, rather than a food blog, a book blog, or a combination of the two. Rest assured there will be much more Wiggen content in this particular outlet. But what finally provide the catalyst to write about Henry Wiggen was an unrelated world event, aka the unexpected forced retirement of Alex Rodriguez.

Last Saturday night, we heard that the Yankees had scheduled a press conference for the next morning regarding the fate of A-Rod. Multiple alarms and crazy dreams catapulted me awake in time to watch it live. When it was announced that he would be retiring in less than a week, then staying on with the Yankees as a special advisor, you could tell that he was trying to be gracious and diplomatic but was not thoroughly convinced his playing days were over. In the past week, after his last few games with the Yankees and official farewell on Friday, there have been rumors of him possibly catching on with another team (the Marlins?) in an attempt to make it to 700 home runs or beyond. No matter what you think about A-Rod, it is clear that he is a dude who loves baseball. And while his career was exceptional, his struggle is a common one, regarding players feeling they still have a little bit left, even if their teams and the general public do not concur.

Henry Wiggen experiences a similar scenario in the fourth and final Wiggen novel, It Looked Like For Ever. Published in 1979 but set in 1971, it was written long after the other three Wiggen tales that appeared in the mid 50’s (in order: The Southpaw, Bang the Drum Slowly, and A Ticket for a Seamstitch.) It Looked Like For Ever opens with the death of longstanding Mammoths manager Dutch Schnell and Henry’s subsequent speculation that he will become manager. Instead, upon returning home to Perkinsville after the funeral, he finds out he has been unceremoniously released by the club. Wiggen had been a star for 19 years, but in his fictional case there was no press conference, no speculation and no ceremony.

Like in Bang the Drum Slowly, the other best Wiggen story, For Ever opens with some wintertime travel, first to St. Louis for Dutch’s funeral and then to Japan in a short-lived exploration of continuing his career with the Oyasumi Cobras. Along the way, you are introduced to Henry and his tribulations as a “younger older person.” The 39 year old Wiggen has undergone a stunning transformation since we last saw him in 1956. Not only has he become the father of four daughters, but also a millionaire who has saved scrupulously and multiplied his earnings via savvy investments. Yet he also has prostate trouble and secret contact lenses (imagine the wearing of contacts being an issue in 2016!), and his younger daughter Hilary is distraught at the idea of never having seen him play baseball in the flesh. Her three older sisters have watched him pitch in assorted ballparks, but somehow she had never prioritized seeing him play until it was too late.

Henry vows to catch on with another team in order for Hilary to see him perform. This is the motivation that he repeats throughout the book as the reason behind his comeback: that he is desperate for his daughter to see him play. Though as he continues to pursue one avenue after another to get back onto a major league roster, it becomes clear that Henry himself believes he is still capable of playing baseball.

I had always internally compared Henry Wiggen to Andy Pettitte, in that both were long-tenured left-handed aces and family men (though of course Henry was also a pacifist iconoclast and author, compared to the more conventional and religious Pettitte.) Pettitte himself returned to the Yankees in 2012 after leaving baseball in 2010. He was welcomed back with open arms and contributed significantly in his last two seasons. But Henry’s trajectory in For Ever reminded me of A-Rod’s plight in that he is not quite ready to end his career, and goes to great lengths to achieve that, from traveling to Japan to Washington to Tozerbury to California, and yet ultimately having things not quite turn out the way he expected.

Alex Rodriguez and the fictional Wiggen have a similar goal: to keep playing baseball the way they feel they are capable of, even if no one will offer them a roster spot. However, their other motivations and lives outside of baseball are vastly different. Alex lives and breathes baseball, and aside from his relationship with his daughters, it is the major component of his life. Henry has many interests outside the game, and his curiosity about the world sometimes hinders the perception of whether he is truly dedicated to his comeback. His fascination with Washington manager Ben Crowder’s food-warming dish and questions about Japanese cherry trees cause exasperation to flare at crucial moments while trying to convince those in power that he is still significantly motivated to play. Motivation is a major theme in this book: characters such as California owner Suicide Alexander openly question Henry’s motivation, as do other players and managers. No one seems to believe that someone with eclectic and refined interests like Henry can display the single-mindedness demanded by a comeback at 39.

The process of balancing Henry’s sense of self as a successful businessman and family man, author and baseball player, and his perception of himself vs. the perception that others have of him, are all essential components in the storyline. Aside from being a skillful southpaw, he’s primarily an outsider, author, skeptic, father and husband. He and Alex are each weirdos in their own way, but Henry’s attempt to juggle all of these elements while pursuing a comeback add both humor and gravity to his story.

Besides the baseball theme, my two favorite elements of Harris’s writing are his use of precise detail and sly humor. Unlike some books, where inaccuracies in plot points or timeline can send me stewing and eschewing the rest of a series, the Henry Wiggen books are painstakingly accurate in their representation of dates, places and characters. You can tell that Harris is a man of details in that he prints the entire 1955 roster in Bang the Drum Slowly (along with players’ full names, birthplaces and armed services records. The birthplaces alone were a dream to me in 1998, and immediately inspired me to take down our atlas and start crafting a fictitious roster of my own.) All of these details, regarding the 1971 circumstances of each beloved character, societal shifts and technological advances, help convincingly move the Wiggen storyline forward by a decade and a half.

A perfect example of the time shift between the last Wiggen book set in 1956, and this one in 1971, is Henry Wiggen owning a car phone. This solidifies his status as a rich man on the cutting edge of technology, and also provides assorted humorous scenarios. When he gets pulled over for driving too slowly, the cop is intrigued by his car phone and uses it to telephone his daughter in Yonkers, who reports she would be more impressed if he was speaking to young phenom Beansy Binz than Henry Wiggen. The car phone is also an essential plot device regarding his friendship with his future manager’s wife, Marva Sprat, and a source of fascination for other potential employers such as Ben Crowder. Call forwarding is also employed in a turning point in the storyline. The phone-related details are all the more enjoyable if you are familiar with the earlier books. Back in 1955 in Bang the Drum Slowly, eavesdropping by operator Tootsie provides a pipeline of essential information, for which Henry trades her two grandstand seats, “third base side, Author, lower deck, not too far back and not behind no pillars nor posts.”

Phones aside, Harris has a good eye for inserting details that reveal how American society has changed between 1956 and 1971 (especially with the additional eight years of perspective between setting the book in 1971 and publishing it in 1979.) Henry’s consternation regarding the casual dress of his young teammates, and slogan-emblazoned t-shirts in particular, culminates in him being presented a shirt bearing the slogan “Dirty Old Men Pitch Relief.” There are references to Wiggen’s hair hanging down his neck, expansion teams, night baseball, and his eldest daughter Michele being on a hijacked plane on her way to India. This potentially nightmarish scenario is mentioned in passing, but with a typically ridiculous Wiggen twist: he ended up negotiating with the hijackers by promising to teach them assorted pitching techniques. (No word on whether that would also work for a PR professional.) However, this may have resulted in his future prostate trouble, as he was unable to take a bathroom break while the ordeal unfolded. What makes all these anecdotes so enjoyable is that they are just side stories, for if they were essential components of the plot, they might be too cartoonish or unbelievable. Conversely, the plots of Harris’s stories are built on everyday human themes and events, making them just engaging enough to devour, yet realistic enough to believe.

The increased popularity of psychiatric treatment also plays a role in It Looked Like For Ever. In an effort to curb her screaming fits, Hilary Wiggen is in the care of Dr. Schiff, a Manhattan psychiatrist who “would be expensive to dress and cheap to feed,” in Henry’s observation, as she seems to subsist entirely on Coca-Cola. Dr. Schiff was recommended by Henry’s former teammate Ev McTaggart (who ended up as Mammoth manager after Dutch), whose own daughter required her services. Henry’s friend and broadcasting partner Suzanne Winograd and her daughter Bertilia are also patients. Dr. Schiff also provides the namesake for one of Hilary’s two horses, the other being Late Manager Dutch, purchased from “the horse lady of Tozerbury.”

It Looked Like For Ever is populated in part by Harris’s beloved cast of existing characters, from the Wiggen family to the Moors family establishment. However, many of the central figures in this fourth installment appear here for the first time. There are a number of new female characters, from Hilary to Dr. Schiff to Marva Sprat to Henry’s lawyer Barbara, and new baseball men, from Ben Crowder to Jack Sprat to Suicide Alexander. But they are all drawn in classic Harris style and carry the series forward authentically. In my own writing, I always worry about my characters having adequate motivation, but Harris has no similar issue, as motivation is a major topic in the book, in particular regarding Henry’s being questioned. It is perhaps a relic of the time that team executives would be so concerned regarding proper motivation of individual players, versus the present day when most organizations are desperate for capable left-handed relievers. (I am sure no one was questioning the motivation of Jesse Orosco when he was still pitching at age 46.) But due to a series of misunderstandings along with his own earnest actions, Henry’s motivation is deemed sufficient at last. “Any 39 year old millionaire that will steal 1/2 a bag of golf clubs off me at a dead man’s funeral is my kind of man.”

Most existing characters have ended up with fates appropriate or predictable in this last installment. I was only disappointed in the story of Perry Simpson, and that early characters such as Mike Mulrooney and Bradley Lord did not reappear in the 1971 World of Wiggen. The satisfying output that is It Looked Like For Ever is a marked contrast to The Lyre of Orpheus, Robertson Davies’s disappointing and almost unreadable conclusion to the Cornish trilogy, perhaps because there was never a set number of books planned in the Wiggen series. I will always be curious what compelled Harris to go back and produce one more, years after the others were completed (and conveniently, also after his own autobiography and Norman Lavers’s critical study covered them.) In Harris’s autobiography Best Father Ever Invented, he recounts an attempt in 1959 to write one more Wiggen book, set entirely during the seventh game of the World Series. But “I feel challenged to write ‘the great baseball novel.’ It died. A year later, I tried again, and again it died.” Twenty years later, what changed? Perhaps writing the script for the movie version of Bang the Drum Slowly, and envisioning Henry’s story in a modern world, compelled Harris to revisit these characters one last time.

One of the many reasons that It Looked Like For Ever may actually be the best Wiggen book is that its sense of humor is darker and more evolved than in prior stories. (Bang the Drum Slowly, in comparison, couldn’t feature too many jokes involving death due to Bruce Pearson being doomded [sic].) It Looked Like For Ever displays Harris’s ever-refined wit, and while there are many comical scenes, from Henry and Holly’s visit to the non-town of Oyasumi, to Henry’s shortlived broadcasting career, most of the best jokes involve some form of mortality. When the Wiggenses take Hilary to St. Louis for Dutch’s funeral and people ask her “and what are you going to get for Christmas, my little lady?”, she replies, “I am getting to see a dead man at last.” The scene at the Foucault Pendulum in San Francisco is another great example of Harris’s humor in that it is funny and deadly serious at the same time. From amidst the crowd waiting for the pendulum to knock down the pegs, Hilary leaps up and screams “You might be dead before you ever play baseball again,” causing a massive disturbance involving crying children and frantic museum guards, before becoming immediately ladylike, watching the pendulum knock down the peg, and sighing “at last.”

Along with liberal sprinkling of dark humor, Harris is a bit more plentiful with the Westchester references in this final Wiggen installment, probably due to the fact that Henry is spending much of his time at home while traveling back and forth to the city. He is pulled over on the Taconic, he drives on the Bronx River, and references passing through Port Chester and Mount Vernon. Port Chester is also fictionally represented as Henry’s hometown of Perkinsville, which, from its description, I would have originally surmised to be further up the line and a fictionalized version of something more like Poughkeepsie. But I guess in the fifties, Port Chester was more separated from the city, physically and culturally, than it is today. Coincidentally, I was obsessed with this series of books a full ten years before becoming a Mount Vernon resident (and discovering that Mark Harris hailed from Mount Vernon, but that is a story for another day.)

In this fourth and final installment, Wiggen is still a bit of an unreliable narrator and speaker of his own unique vernacular, despite his overall increased level of sophistication. He manages to spell the word souvenirs correctly once earlier in the book regarding Old Timers Day, but by the final page he is back to representing it more inventively. It is perfectly placed in a final sentence that appropriately ties up the mood of the series, in the last words ever written about Henry Wiggen by Mark Harris’s hand. Harris passed away in 2007, erasing the potential for additional Wiggen installments years after the fact, in the manner that got us It Looked Like For Ever. Though with Alex Rodriguez, we have no such equivalent finality, as there is still a chance that someone will sign him and further his quest for additional playing time and a shot at 700 home runs.

When my dad gave me the Henry Wiggen’s Books trilogy back in eighth grade (his edition predated It Looked Like For Ever), he said to start with Bang the Drum Slowly, then go back to The Southpaw, the first book in the series. This is still the order in which I instruct potential Wiggen acolytes to read the series: 2, 1, 3, 4. But if this too-long treatise on It Looked Like For Ever piques your interest and you must begin with the final Wiggen novel, I would still consider it a job well done, Run the Jewels style.