NEWBEATS

NEWBEATS

I WANNA BE YOUR SLAVE

Sure, I’m a tad spooked about meeting Swans’ Michael Gira. I’ve heard his monstrous, tortured throat emissions on records like Filth (’83), Cop (’84), Raping A Slave (’85) and Greed (’86). I’ve trembled to his band’s austere, grinding, slow-motion rock, a hellish noise that makes Joy Division sound like A-Ha. I’ve recoiled at his lyrics of extreme self-abasement. And now Gira is seething over the poor sound during a Detroit show. Hell yes I’m frightened. I’m nobody. He’s nothing. Should be a good interview.

To my relief, the post-performance Gira speaks softly. I meekly tell him I get a sense of overwhelming angst and bleakness from Swans’ music. Gira disagrees.

“Maybe there’s some unfamiliar or exquisitely sexual states of mind. But nothing bleak or angst-ridden. That’s too selfsatisfying. I don’t like that attitude at all ”

Your lyrics present extreme or desperate situations...

“I wouldn’t say desperate. I never feel desperate. Sometimes weakness. Possibly extreme is a good word.”

Nobody—I mean nobody—writes lyrics like Michael Gira. Almost always they are blunt statements written in a brutally frank and unadorned style. They delve into yearnings and feelings we all have but which we normally hide because they make us too queasy to acknowledge. They deal with degrading aspects of power, domination and submission and the horror of simply being. Lines like “I’m stuck in myself. I hate my body. I’m nothing. Glory! Glory! Glory!” would please Samuel Beckett. The words may look banal on paper, but when Gira sings them in a voice that could scare the holy excrement out of God, they become infernally powerful.

The Swans’ new lineup—guitarist Norm Westberg, bassist Al Kyzis, drummers Ted Parsons and Renaldo Gonsalez and keyboardist Jarboe—has brought radical changes in the New York group’s recent releases They’re moving away from their earlier ultra-black power-grunge and toward hard death disco like “Time Is Money (Bastard)” and softer yet still menacing Swansongs on Greed. The claustrophobic density has been replaced with sparser instrumentation. Along with this change has come an obsession with the green stuff. What prompted this?

“Thinking about things people use to control a person’s mentality. Thinking about ways in which a person absolutely either a) gives up their humanity or b) takes it away from another person. Money is a convenient sign—not a symbol. It’s like flesh.

“Having done a lot of crummy jobs, I know what it means to give up time and essentially what amounts to your freedom. You have a short span to live and you end up wasting most of your life at a task which you despise. This is the ultimate cruelty.”

Is there any room for humor or joy in Swans music?

“Joy?! There’s an incredible amount of joy in our music. In an oblique way, maybe. When it’s successful, it’s very uplifting.”

Listening to Swans’ music usually makes me want to smash stuff (this is not a bad thing). I guarantee Swans music will affect you like no other. It may cause you to vomit. Gira says he gets letters from people saying that Swans music excites them sexually. This pleases him.

Besides being a complex, intelligent man (a rarity in rock, to be sure), Gira is perhaps the most serious human being on the planet. He rarely leaves his NYC apartment, and he says that the worst thing about NYC is that “it contains a large amount of people.” He thinks the most horrible thing in the world is time. I must conclude that Gira is a new breed of wild man in rock.

Last words, Michael? “Did we get paid?”

Dave Segal

EIGHT THINGS KNOW ABOUT PAUL KING THAT YOU MAY OR MAY NOT KNOW

1) Paul and his fellow Kings have bestowed unto us peasants a second album; and yea, verily, it is dubbed Bittersweet:

“Bittersweet...It’s like life, life is bittersweet. It’s the lows that make you appreciate the highs. I’ve always been fascinated by that gray area in the middle which is bittersweet. Everybody has a bittersweet existence, and that’s where I take a lot of my stories and themes.”

2) “Yea verily” stuff aside, Bittersweet is tres different from King’s things of yore; those semi-anemic toons like “Love And Pride” with its “Oooooh, let’e invade like Huns, chaps, but can we wait till after lunch?!” attitude have grown into...well, something better. King hails from Coventry. According to the Columbia-Viking Desk Encyclopedia, Coventry was “...founded 14th cent., has old buildings, has been important center for airplane and munitions mfg. Since 1914, legend of Lady Godiva and Peeping Tom, celebrated by Tennyson, perpetuated until recently by pagents. City suffered intensely destructive air raid Nov. 14-15,1940. Hundreds of buildings destroyed, including the 14th Cent. Cathedral and thousands made homeless...phrase ‘to send to Coventry’ means to ostracize socially.”

So where did this “Sent to Coventry” business come from?

“It’s from the last century, actually; from the original coal miners strikes during Victorian Times. Queen Victoria virtually had a military state; they sent in the army because the police force was just emerging. They had military zones...the army was sent into Coventry, and the people, to make their statement, resolved that the army were totally blanked. They were ignored. They wouldn’t be talked to. They wouldn’t be served. They just weren’t there.”

3) King have been to Japan, where they are much liked...“The Japanese don’t buy singles, they have record rent shops, so you can go rent any record you want. The kids go in there and rent the singles and make their own compilation tapes, decide who they like as an artist, and then, if they want to, they buy albums. That’s why there’s an attraction towards artists who obviously have a look or are glamorous, or whose albums and packaging is something precious which they’ll want to keep. It becomes a whole ‘produce’ thing.

“In Japan they obviously like performers. They have a strong tradition of that themselves. I went to the Kabuki Theater when I was there... Kabuki’s the one where they have the guys; there’s no women. The theory behind it is: because they study women, they believe they are more attractive to men—because they deliver something which a man wants to see of a woman.”

4) Paul King has a “born to hang” eyebrow, which he plucks.

5) Paul King also has confidence in his band’s ability to show America the kind of performances which pleased the Japanese. So what else is new?

“I think with live concerts. The appeal for me is, it’s a first-hand experience in an age where so much of what we have is secondhand experience...through TV or pictures or the press or radio.

6) Dig this, sports fans:

“My lyrics are always dealing with an image or a picture. I like to create pictures but beyond that, I think it’s like a 3-D picture. There’s that first dimension for people who just take it on the first level...the surface, and then there’s a second dimension; that I did put an awful lot of thought and content into what I deliver.

“For instance, I use the word ‘love’ quite a lot, and people can take that for just another pop band singing about love...like, boys and girls. Actually, very rarely do I deal with boys and girls. I think love covers many emotions, many different areas and different times.

“And then, thirdly, the true art of it is to write a great song. A great song is a combination of great music and great lyrics. Great songs always have enough space to let the listener take out or put in what they wish.”

7) What are you the King of?

“I’m the King of my own destiny”

Maybe you’re just the King of Coventry,

buster.

8) “I’m an ambassador for myself; a ‘man of my time’ is what I want to be. To make your space in these times and have a global perspective is a very lucky thing, and this job allows me to do that. It allowsmeto travel and constantly reassess what I think of me, or my values, or a country, or my hometown, or why I like this or why I like that. And that, for me, is a big thing that I personally get out of it.”

Annene Kaye

THE DOCTOR IS IN

Right now, a deranged mob of goatobsessed, self-confessed “scumbags” who call themselves Doctor And The Medics look set to become the U.K.’s next red-hot export to the United States.

The group have actually been going for four years, building up a berserk following at live gigs, while singles like “Miracle Of The Age,” on Miles Copeland’s IRS label, enjoyed healthy cult sales. But recently the applecart was turned upside down when their version of Norman Greenbaum’s hippie-dancefloor knees-up “Spirit In The Sky” held the U.K. #1 spot for three weeks. Even Wham! had their final pre-split glory shoved back up their noses when the Medics held their farewell single off the top.

Now the signs are that the Doctor and his merry band will repeat this sudden success in the States.

The funny thing is, ’'Spirit In The Sky” was only recorded as a joke to fill up the group’s new album, Laughing At The Pieces. It all came to Doctor Clive Jackson who started in music spinning records at Alice In Wonderland, London’s premier psychedelic nightspot in a dream. Strange but true!

Four days before John Lennon was killed, Clive dreamed he’d moved to an English village also inhabited by two black-hooded figures, who he found out were John ’n’ Yoko. He was thrilled—“I thought, ‘great!’ Beers down the pub at lunchtime with John!”

Just after Lennon was shot, Clive was scanning his obituary in the newspaper and saw a photo of the same black hoods hanging out in a village outside London called Lavenham. Out of curiousty he drove out there to have a look...and everything was exactly the same as the dream. Even the pub, in which he had a drink “for John.”

A few days before the group were due in the studio to finish their album, Clive had another dream. He was back in the Lavenham boozer and who should be sitting in the corner strumming an accoustic guitar but Marc Solan. What song should he be playing? “Spirit In The Sky!” “Why didn’t you record it?” asked the Doctor. “Never had a chance,” replied Marc Back in the studio, the group were tossing around ideas to complete the album, and guitarist Steve started hacking away at (you guessed it) “Spirit In The Sky.”

“At that point, we said, ‘Why donT we do “Spirit In The Sky”?’ The producer, Craig Leon (of Blondie, Ramones, Suicide and Jeffrey Lee Pearce pedigree) screamed ‘Godhead!’ which is a word he used all day to describe everything. I told them about the dream and that was it. Everyone went, ‘oh, heaveee,’ so we thought if someone was tryI ing to tell us something, we’d be idiots not I to go for it.”

Bolan-ish string-laden production, oblique T. Rex references in the lyrics and a ludicrous video in which the Doctor appears to be 10 feet tall with his unicorn hair-spike and a painted face...the record came in at 40 first week—and within three weeks, was #1. Quite the silliest outfit to hold the I coveted position for a long time, and much more preferable to the usual old I bangers...despite the obvious “doing a cover for an easy hit” cheapshots which came their way, Clive?

“Well, to be honest, we can’t answer that I one, because it has been a cover version I for a hit! We’ve been playing in England for I four years, and radio-wise they wouldn’t I touch us with a barge-pole. It was a bit I frustrating. So we did this cover version and * everyone who heard it said, ‘If you don’t put it out, you’re idiots!’ We thought ‘fair enough.’ There’s a taboo about doing cover versions—you always assume its bands like Bananarama going to do it, but you don’t think bands who are worried about their credibility would do it. But we’ve never worried about our credibility, because until now, in England we’ve had as much credibility as Venom!

“Fortunately we’ve had the last four years to put a lot of perspective on it all. We’re one of the few bands whose ever got away with having a hit that had ‘cult’ status—and can still maintain that following, because people can see us live and they realize we’ve still got that same attitude. We’re laughing about it and fortunately they’re laughing with us.”

Kris Needs