Episode 6: Hisham Mayet (Sublime Frequencies, Bulbous Monocle)

The Who Cares Anyway Podcast · May 05, 2023

Transcript

SPEAKER_03

00:00:00

You know, I was into cool, weird, obscure stuff. But when I showed up there and got to hang out with some really exceptionally smart people, you know, they blew me away. It was like, oh my God, this is insane.

SPEAKER_03

00:00:09

It just goes and goes and goes and goes.

SPEAKER_00

00:00:11

["Wound Up Tired Again"] ["Wound Up Tired Again"]

SPEAKER_02

00:00:27

Hello, and welcome to episode six of the Who Cares Anyway podcast. My guest on this episode is Isham Mayat. For the last 20 years, Isham has been one of the principal figures behind sublime frequencies. The international slash world music label that he co-founded with Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls in 2003. And that label is still going strong. More recently though, Isham started a new reissue label, Bulbous Monocle, which is focused on, and I quote here, "'Reissues dealing with the San Francisco Bay Area musical scene that was extant from the mid-80s to the late 90s. Reissues of the legendary Thinking Fellers Union, Bulbous Monocle 282 will launch the label with two releases in 2022." And those two releases were Admonishing the Bishops, an EP from 1993, and Strangers from the Universe, an LP from 1994. Something I had not realized before doing this interview was that Isham actually lived in San Francisco throughout the 90s and before that in Santa Cruz, meaning he was a firsthand observer of this era. And had I known that, I probably would have interviewed him for the book, but I really only knew him through his role with Sublime Frequencies. And when I briefly met him in 2005, he was living in Seattle, so I didn't know about his history in San Francisco. That said, we do get into that both in terms of the connection between Thinking Fellers and some of the other acts that might be coming out on Bulbous Monocle, how that music represented a sort of regionalism, both a Bay Area kind of regionalism, but also a West Coast scene that viewed from the East Coast. It had a certain mythological status in the 1990s. Now one thing I should add here is that I had gotten a new microphone just before doing this interview, but somehow had not properly selected that in my recording app, and so the recording of my voice in this interview is not so great, but on the bright side, I don't talk a whole lot, so it doesn't affect things too, too much.

SPEAKER_02

00:02:37

So with all that said, let's get out of the way and get on with the interview with Isham Mayat. So the first releases on your label are issues of Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, so maybe the place to start would be if you could tell us how and when you first came across their music.

SPEAKER_03

00:03:18

Well, it would have been the early 90s when I first heard the Thinking Fellers, and it would have been from releases, well, the first thing I ever listened or heard and knew about would have been Lovelyville, which was, I think, released in 91 on Matador Records, and subsequently bought every other release thereafter and went backwards and bought the record that was before that, which would have been Tangle, I believe, which at the time, all this stuff was readily available in record shops, so it wasn't necessarily difficult to track down at that early date, and at that point, being Mother of All Saints and moving forward, I was an active record collector, buyer of music, of anything that I loved or care about pretty soon after any release that I was interested in, I would be buying it. I finally had some disposable income and was in a place where I was building my record collection and seeing live shows, etc. I felt very much part of, you

SPEAKER_02

00:04:31

know,

SPEAKER_03

00:04:32

the scene in that sense of whatever fanzines were coming out, whatever magazines were coming out, reading up on this stuff, seeing live shows when I could, doing my detective work from credits and seeing what other bands were being thanked and what other bands were on similar labels and whatever tangential information could lead me from one band to another.

SPEAKER_02

00:04:57

And what did you associate them with at the time, you know, whether it was stuff that was happening in the Bay Area or stuff that was happening elsewhere, did you sort of mentally group them in with other things?

SPEAKER_03

00:05:12

Yeah, I suppose my first exposure to them and hearing the music, it drew me in geographically in the sense that I felt a kinship, obviously, to the Bay Area or the West Coast, at least around between, I mean, you know, I went to college in Santa Cruz, Brio College, which wasn't the UC Santa Cruz, but a smaller college, and we would, you know, go up to San Francisco a lot and see shows there at that time. This would have been late 80s. And so for me, when I had left that area and moved back to Florida and Texas for a couple of years and then moved back, but when I heard this stuff, Lovelyville, etc., Thinking Fellers, it was when I was back on the Gulf Coast. And so there was a real moment there that after hearing this music or hearing the Thinking Fellers and realizing they were from the Bay Area, San Francisco or Oakland, I think they were still living in Oakland at this point. I wasn't sure or not sure how many of them had moved from San Francisco or moved from the East Bay. I know their roots were all in the East Bay, Oakland specifically, Expofacto, of course. But yeah, it just had this sort of impact to me, which made me really miss my time in the Bay Area.

SPEAKER_03

00:06:32

And it was always a place I knew I would head back to. But it gave me an extra kind of relationship with the music in regards to having been there recently and having left and realizing that there was this regional element to their sound that reminded me of bands for me, just off the cuff at a young age. This would have been in my very early 20s. You know, my reference points weren't as refined as they would be 38 years later. So, you know, for me, it was Pampers van Beethoven would have been a band that I didn't think they sounded like, but sort of had the same kind of approach to music in the sense of multi-instrumentalists within the band, really clever arrangements, a sense of humor that seemed to be really part of the Bay Area at the time that I was certainly cognizant of and felt a kinship to. And so it gave me kind of a sense of a real regionalism that made me dig in even deeper in the sense of what to explore beyond the Thinking Fellows. You know, I was quite intrigued just by, well, the sounds being the things that drew me in. There was a lot of reference points for that, be it, you know, noise, humor, really dynamic arrangements, time signatures, again, multi-instrumentalists with all the band, the fact that there were three guitars, there were tuba, banjo, viola. It really made it an exciting, thrilling listen. And this was, you have to remember, the era of really sub-pop and grunge and guys with long hair wearing flannel that were really just, in a sense, the majority of them, not every one of them, the majority of them kind of aping this 70s hard rock zone that I was not really into at all, even at that point. You know, I was looking for something different. And the music of the Thinking Fellows and subsequent research into their scene really opened up a whole new sonic vista in the best way.

SPEAKER_02

00:08:40

Yeah, you know, it's true. It's true that they came up, you know, say in Iowa, in what would have been kind of by default, sort of post-hardcore, I mean, whatever it was, kind of the underground scene at the time, but their music really connects to a lot of pre-punk, not even necessarily Bay Area, but some idea of West Coast weirdness. Ralph Reckers being a sort of reference point, but it wasn't that they moved out to the Bay Area because of Ralph Reckers or something, but like what they were drawing on was in the same kind of spirit as some of this other West Coast music.

SPEAKER_03

00:09:21

Yeah, it seemed, I mean, for me, and again, at that age, you know, my musical knowledge was obviously still pretty nascent. You know, I was discovering stuff every day. And so my reference points would have been not so broad in trying to figure out, you know, why and how I would have connected to that music. But, you know, in high school I was a huge fan of 60's psychedelic music, as much as I was of the contemporary, you know, independent or indie or college rock or whatever you want to call it, scene. And so, you know, be it Kaleidoscope or be it even early Pink Floyd or these sorts of acid psychedelic bands. I mean, you could even really, whatever knowledge of the Grateful Dead that one has, and I'm not saying the Thinking Fellers were influenced by the Grateful Dead. I'm sure they'd heard them, but early on in the late 60's to, you know, the Grateful Dead really had pretty dynamic musical approach that kind of incorporated a whole bunch of stuff. And those were names that I was familiar with. Also, you know, the scene was dominated at that point by kind of an, I mean, on the West Coast or Northwest, I should say, you had the grunge thing going on, but New York was in full flight with the noise rock, scum rock, you know, you have amphetamine reptile in Minnesota, I think. And, you know, all these scenes were happening really all at the same time. This is, I'm thinking, you know, from, you know, 88 to 92 for a frame of reference. And for me, the Fellers represented a real departure from what I thought were a bunch of cul-de-sacs in all those scenes. Not that I wasn't into Pussy Galore or, you know, Sonic who certainly loomed large for a younger person like myself, or Minnesota Junior, etc. But still, the Thinking Fellers added so much more to the compositional elements that I thought were just utterly thrilling, you know.

SPEAKER_03

00:11:43

And I'm not trying to compare any of this stuff. I was just kind of giving a survey of what I was aware of at that time. And music scenes at that time were still very regional, be it even Southern California or the Red Cross, who I adored as well, just for their own kind of pop art, comedic, LA representation of glam and pop. Or, you know, I mean Flipper was huge to anybody who had gone through hardcore in the mid-80s like I did. So, you know, that was another kind of conceptual sort of barometer to also define the Bay Area for me. I hadn't gotten into the residence very much. It may have been too weird for someone like me at that point. I'd certainly heard of them. So, yeah, I don't know. Hearing that music and hearing the Fellers was a real fresh slap in the face, you know, which also gave me a real shot of nostalgia, even though I just left. It was something, it was a place I didn't really want to leave, but kind of had to. And luckily I returned, you know, just a short time later. But yeah, that makes any apparent

SPEAKER_02

00:12:56

sense. Once you got back out there, I think you stayed until about 2000, is that right?

SPEAKER_03

00:13:03

Yep. I left in the fall of 2000. So really the tail end of 2000, you could say I was there all of 2000 and left. I think it was November that I ended up leaving San Francisco to go to the Northwest, Seattle.

SPEAKER_02

00:13:23

Music Music Music Certain things seem to come back in a certain nostalgia cycle over a certain amount of time, but a lot of times that is because they can be kind of packaged together, you know, like, let's say the early 2000s there was a lot of talk about post-punk, this and that. But you know, the thinking fellers and some of the contemporary stuff, whether it's, you know, Nuff said or Carolina or it's kind of its own deal, but none of that stuff ever really well, if it ever did fit under a category, it doesn't seem to now. And I don't know if that has hindered the ability to kind of bring it back. I don't really know how people hear it or what people make of it when they're coming to it nowadays and maybe that's too much of a general kind of question. But apart from say, an animal collective kind of promoting them or whatever, I would kind of have trouble seeing where they would fit into at least other people's conceptions. I have my own weird conception of San Francisco underground music, but like where people see it and what people make of it. Well,

SPEAKER_03

00:14:49

you know, this is an, I mean, you bring up an animal collective and I know those guys, I know them well, and speaking to them, you know, they were utterly enamored of this West Coast scene. You know, for them it was a much larger geographic area. It went from Seattle all the way down to San Francisco, you know. And we've had these discussions where, you know, they, I think these guys are probably, I don't know how old they are, but they're probably 10 plus years younger than me. So you put them in the 90s, that was their teen years.

SPEAKER_03

00:15:21

It would have been my mid-20s and on. And I think for them, you know, it was Banana Fish Magazine loomed incredibly large at that time for a lot of scenes being on the East Coast or whatever. And I've got lots of friends who are the same age as Animal Collective and maybe friends of theirs who discuss the importance of a magazine like Banana Fish which chronicled the scene in obviously, you know, the most profound way, if I could use that word. And so for them, you know, and this is me speaking to them or them letting me know about it in a way that, you know, for them it was regional as well. You know, it was, you know, the West Coast at that time was still this sort of exotic place if you'd never traveled there. I mean, if you're from Maryland or DC or Jersey or wherever, you know, North Carolina,

SPEAKER_02

00:16:20

North Carolina, et

SPEAKER_03

00:16:21

cetera, you know, especially back then

SPEAKER_02

00:16:24

pre-internet or

SPEAKER_03

00:16:27

at the dawn of the internet, regionalism still had a mythic element to it wherein you didn't know about these places. You just read about them in these underground magazines that somehow made it to Tower Records or your local indie shop or what have you. And then, you know, the mythology sort of creates itself. And for them it was like, you know, Sun City Girls were these Tibetan demon gods or the Thinking Fellas were like, you know, Beefheart and West Coast and Pop Experiment, you know, all these bands put in a blender and Carolina, for God's sake, you know, probably being the most alien thing that they'd ever encountered, you know. And not to say that I didn't feel that way too or anybody for that matter that wasn't in this very insulated, very incestuous localized scene in the Bay Area, Oakland or otherwise, San Francisco, Oakland, et cetera. So,

SPEAKER_02

00:17:27

yeah, I mean, I just, I guess I didn't really give you a, again, there wasn't really a question earlier, but it's kind of like the early 2000s there was, I don't know that it really stuck, but there was the plock of new weird America. But, you know, if there was any context for, well, Sun City Girls, Thinking Fellas of Carolina, it would have been as kind of like, well, they're not old weird America, but I mean, they're pretty new weird America. I mean, there would be some of the things that you could point to and say some of these things happening in 2003, 2004, you could say, well, these were some groups doing this kind of whatever this kind of thing is.

SPEAKER_03

00:18:14

Oh, for sure. I mean, and yeah, just expand on that, you know, and that was a scene for lack of a better word. You know, I knew a lot of these guys that could be labeled new weird America, if you will. I mean, if anywhere from the No Nick Blues band, the Sunburn to, you know, Matt Valentine and his Orbit Tower recordings, et cetera. I mean, I think in equal measure, you know, some of these guys were around too in the mid 90s. That's kind of when they started. But I think that the influence of Sun City Girls or Thinking Fellas or Banana Fish was immense for a lot of the scene, even new weird America were as much as new weird America for this whatever term it is, and we use it because we're lazy and we don't want to come up with our own term. You know, they drew back a lot from from the late 60s, free jazz, you know, international music, maybe not so much, but definitely had a kind of all the elements that we've all discussed that we're all sort of into. You know, this was a large American scene that was supported as a byproduct of probably what the 80s independent scene was. But specifically with around the turn of 2000s, you didn't have name dropping in the sense that you know, mentioning Sun City Girls or Thinking Fellas or Carolina or what have you, but I think they did have a profound influence in the way that this later, latest or contemporary generation dealt with it, be it Animal Collective or a bunch of other you know, purposefully mysterious and or obscure and or how to label all that is difficult, but you know what I'm trying to say. Kind of a vibe, you know, this kind of mysterious weird vibe to present the music and the image or lack thereof. Yeah, was a big deal. I think drew a lot on the persona of this Bay Area scene that we are discussing.

SPEAKER_02

00:20:48

So the Thinking Fella certainly had a part, and if you hear panting noise, that's not me, that's my dog. I mean, I might pant too later on, but they had a hand in a lot of different quote unquote side projects, but interesting groups that didn't produce a lot of music, but produced some memorable records, Job's Daughters, Heavenly Ten Stems and things like that. Do you remember coming across the Job's Daughters records at the time or when did you remember when you came across those and what you made? Yeah,

SPEAKER_03

00:21:26

you know, as they were being released and slowly sunk to the cutout bins, you

SPEAKER_02

00:21:33

know,

SPEAKER_03

00:21:36

Job's Daughters, Archipelago Brewing Company, I mean, obviously just by sheer geographic logistics, all those records were in every record shop in San Francisco and they were cheap because, you know, they either weren't selling or at the time records were cheap anyway. I mean, you could get a 7 inch for $1.99 or $2.99 new and usually they were 99 cents if they'd sat around for longer than a year. So, I mean, at that point I was well into my record collecting fiendish zone and I was devouring everything. I mean, for me it was almost even a sense of pride, like, oh, I live in the same city as these weirdos. Man, they got a killer sense of humor. This is great. Oh, wow, sounds of the American fast food restaurants, whatever, you know. I mean, Amarillo was fantastic. Nuff said was great. You had, you know, Carolina clogging the bins all this stuff that and I devoured it in a sense in that, you know, if the thinking fellers were the, you know, the oak tree, all these little acorns were being scooped up by me because of the relationship to the mothership, you know, as I saw it. You know, another amazing cool little artifact was when Bren had released the Sun City Girls Thinking Fellers split seven inch covering Carolina. You know, things like that would just tie a bow around what you were trying to do in your head with the family tree of all this weird stuff, you know, and me not knowing all those guys, but doing the detective work in my mind and through these records made it a thrilling endeavor in regards to playing detective in your mind and trying to see how all this connected because they were very mysterious, you know, aliases. They certainly had a they were very adept at covering their trail in a lot of ways, you know, and I love that. I love that about music, you know, I love the sense of mystery in the sense of making the fan or listener work for information, you know, I mean that we tried that with sublime frequencies, but when you're dealing with, you know, other people in a pre-cancel culture, which is now you know, fully ablaze, you know, you can do that when you're localized, but you can't do that and present something in a kind of mysterious fashion that maybe will allow people to dig even deeper rather than get a very summarized blurb of information that they feel like they can walk away and know everything about a culture. So, you know, there is that connection you know, in the sense of when we started sublime, you know, we were coming from this from this scene I felt like, you know, I mean I certainly did, I mean of course working with Alan and Rick and Charlie and all these guys, I mean they were of that scene and so you know, we were coming from an underground DIY culture that relished in obfuscation and that was for me a real way to proceed and it's all I ever knew, you know, be it going back to the Bay Area scene or like, you know, I mean I was obsessed at this point too, you know, talking mid to late 90s with, you know, anything out on Majora, anything out on the Expressway label, you know, I was very much into the New Zealand underground scene, like huge all the while, you know, buying anything that you could buy that was, you know, field recordings from Morocco or Tibet or Indonesia, etc., you know, I had a background where I came from, you know, overseas and grew up in a you know, Arabic background, so you know, my parents were listening to weird, cool, old 60s, 70s Arabic music, I grew up with that and I never once thought that was uncool, never, you know, I always embraced it, I always collected those records, I still do, I was you know, one day in San Francisco, there was a great shop, a Middle Eastern shop run by a Syrian guy on,

SPEAKER_02

00:26:13

oh,

SPEAKER_03

00:26:14

it was like 16th near Cesar Chavez or Army Street, it was called back then and it

SPEAKER_02

00:26:21

was like a Middle Eastern grocery.

SPEAKER_03

00:26:24

Yeah, and you know, he had dead stock of all these albums, you know, and early on I was just going in there buying everything I could buy, you know, and he would have 10 copies of each album, some of them were covered in black suit because they'd probably been there for 20 years at this point. And you know, that stuff, go to Green Apple Books, Amoeba of course, you know, there was Open Mind Music, there was you know, Jack's Cellar, I don't know if you remember any of these record shops, there was

SPEAKER_02

00:26:55

Grooves. I remember everything

SPEAKER_03

00:26:58

except for Jack's, yeah. Yeah, Jack's was in the hate, it was an old, old folky, he had a ton of 78's, but I would go in there, you know, and pull a Robbie Basho LP for 50 cents, you know, an original Robbie Basho which happened a lot back then, you know, John Fahey LPs were two bucks each, you know, I'm talking early 90's here, so it was, you know, and living in San Francisco at that time was also an incredible time to be a record collector because it was that era that a lot of people were dumping albums to buy CDs. And you know, a place like the Bay Area which has had its obvious share of hippies and record collectors and freaks music or otherwise,

SPEAKER_02

00:27:43

you

SPEAKER_03

00:27:43

know, there was a lot of records, it would be like Los Angeles or New York, I mean those are Chicago, you know, so I've felt privileged because I knew what was going on, you know, I bought CDs if there were nothing else existed as far as the way that albums would come out, I mean a lot of bands at that point weren't even releasing vinyl, but if you're a musical excavator like I was, you know, it was just a paradise Shangalaw for building a record collection, so I, you know, I went nuts and that allowed you to, you know, one day pick up a Robbie Basho LP, the next day pick up a, you know, field recording from New Guinea, you know, pick up a weirdo record from Majora to Amoeba and the discount bin in the experimental section where if it didn't sell after a month they'd drop the price in half, you know, so

SPEAKER_02

00:28:36

yeah, so there's- Yeah, I mean, because I was just thinking, you know, as far as, I mean obviously Sun City Girls would do at least versions of songs that you know, they might have heard on a shortwave radio somewhere or recorded or come across in some way, shape or form, but that Job's Daughters, the second Job's Daughters, Seven Inch, where they're doing specifically the song on the B-side where it's a Chinese title, I think, you know, I don't know where they first heard that song, but I guess I'm thinking like if you look at that and then maybe connect that to Heavenly Ten Stems and then you can look at Neumfock and then Mark Jurgis and Sublime Frequencies, like I guess that particular thread of, I don't want to say world music, but like international music, you know, Asian, Southeast Asian music was something that I didn't see people being aware of before that, like, you know, you weren't going to find a band in 1983 doing a cover of a Southeast Asian pop song, whereas, you know, it comes in there in the early 90s and then, you know, 10, 12 years later, Sublime Frequencies is putting out compilations of stuff that would be very relevant to that and I don't know, not to make too big of a deal out of like a particular.

SPEAKER_03

00:29:57

No, no, but it's an important, it's an important link and again, you know, if Alan says, you know, they were in the midst of tape trading, I mean, all this stuff was being tossed back and forth, you know, these seven inches were coming out, I mean, a lot of this stuff and if you're living in a place like San Francisco in the 90s, you know, you, San Francisco, believe it or not, at one point was a very multicultural working class city and you know, every neighborhood had a very distinct ethnic flavor to it and a lot of stuff was available, which brings me back to that point of Sameer's place in the Mission or, you know, you had, what was the Indian place down there too on Valencia that sold all the albums to and it was an Indian grocery.

SPEAKER_02

00:30:47

Yeah, yeah, I can't quite remember the name, but it does ring a bell.

SPEAKER_03

00:30:50

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, so you had all that stuff, you know, I mean, you go to Chinatown, you go to Japantown, Rushatown, I mean, you know, San Francisco was a kind of cornucopia of all these ethnicities that were existing, you know, pre-assimilation even, I mean, you know, yeah, some were assimilated, meaning like they spoke English and like, you know, got out of their neighborhoods, but a lot didn't. But I always felt that the West Coast and San Francisco in particular, you know, always had this eye or ear across the ponds or the oceans, you know, there was always that element to it. I mean, it goes back to what I mentioned kind of about like even camper van in the mid-80s or early 80s, you know, you were asking about an example of, you know, who was doing that in the early 80s. Well, camper van, Beethoven, you know, started to bring in world music elements in a way that incorporated a lot of ethnic stuff, if you will. But they were probably coming at it because they were listening to like Kaleidoscope or you know, pop art band or, you know, that kind of thing, you know, which was already a sort of cornerstone in the late 60s where a lot of these psychedelic bands were reaching out for other influences beyond blues or jazz or whatever. They were looking, you know, abroad to India, the Middle East, Africa, et cetera. So I think in a sense, you know, Job's daughters, Brandon, Mark, who were very intense record collectors, were into this stuff as much as, you know, what I was describing earlier. They just had a really broad palette when it came to music. I mean, at that time, too, you had the kind of what was the Exotica revitalization thing happening, you know, that brought in a lot of weirdo shit, too, that ended up making people dig a little bit deeper and a little bit further, you know, if it was Esquivel, which then went into other weird stuff. And, you know, each was just kind of a seed to kind of keep chasing, you know. So I think, yeah, you had a city that allowed record collectors to roam and graze and allowed you to buy a ton of different things at very reasonable prices. And from that, I think, you know, whatever turns you on, and I'm not going to speak for Brandon Kearney or Mark Davies, but I assume, you know, they would come across one of these records and it would just, you know, turn them on to a point that they would go crazy, you know.

SPEAKER_02

00:33:39

That'll make sense. I mean, I also wonder, and this is, you know, at the same time that after however long it took for alternative underground music to become mainstream, as that's happening, it seemed like that almost made stuff beyond guitar rock, you know, three to four piece band guitar rock seem more like a frontier or not a way out, but like a refuge. I don't know, it's kind of like as you're seeing this kind of idea of, you know, underground rock become kind of MTV-ified, I could imagine there being kind of distaste for, I don't know, seeing the way that was happening. But anyway. Yeah, yeah,

SPEAKER_03

00:34:27

that's a good point. That's a good point. I mean, certainly I felt that way in a lot of ways. I mean, a lot of bands that I had a lot of affinity for even in the early 90s, you know, they matured and some became, you know, very popular and quite recognized, more mainstream, if you will. And certainly for me at that age, you know, that was kind of you know, that wasn't cool. Like, you know, if a band made it, you dropped them, you know, from your orbit. But that's a, you know, naive young outlook on things. You know, now when I go back actually sometimes I prefer later records by most of the bands that I enjoy because they had matured and when you're older you realize like, oh yeah, well, yeah, they know a whole lot more than they did when they were younger. It may have been more exciting when they were first starting out. But actually as songwriters, composers, artists, you know, when you're older, you are generally better. Generally speaking of artists that we respect. I wouldn't say that across the board, obviously.

SPEAKER_03

00:35:35

No generalizations. But a scene like this one coming from the Bay Area, I mean, they always tended to, for me, you know, really dwell in the sub-underground and relish in it. But somehow the message still got out there, you know, across the country, if you will. And that really to me points to one of the more fundamental aspects of this whole thing is distribution. Because before the internet, you know, you had systematic and then you had revolver and then you had subterranean. You know, all of these outfits from the Bay Area were so integral to get the stuff all over the place, you know, from New York to Chicago to the Eastern Seaboard to what have you. And, you know, without those logistics, it would have been an intensely regional scene, I think, you know, where you wouldn't have had the influence of bands like Animal Collective or what have you, who are on a sort of level now where they can mention the Thinking Fellers, what have you, and all of a sudden you've got a hundred thousand new fans, you know.

SPEAKER_00

00:36:45

What can you tell us as far as subsequent plans for the label?

SPEAKER_02

00:36:49

As far as other bands or releases that are planned or releases that you would like to do? Yeah, I mean, I'm going to continue mining the Thinking Fellers catalog. There are several releases. The one we're working on now that's hopefully coming together is the one that's coming out in the fall.

SPEAKER_03

00:37:11

And then the one that's coming out in the fall is the one that's coming out in the fall. The one that's coming out in the fall that's hopefully coming together quickly is a double LP of the singles, rare tracks, you know, Odds and Sogs is the working title. Double LP really with, I want to kind of go all out with libretto, with flyers, and artwork, photographs, liner notes to kind of put this in perspective. The formal with the first two releases, Strangers from the Universe and Admonishing the Bishops, on purpose I didn't really want to fluff anything up. I thought both those releases were perfect as they were released and I didn't want to add bonus tracks or I didn't want to add liner notes to it knowing that this was going to be a long term survey of the band and potentially the scene. And so this one, which is a compilation, I felt it would make sense to put it in a, you know, with liner notes and put it in a context of sorts. I didn't think an EP, a four song EP, warranted a whole lot of liner notes or bonus tracks or anything like that, or Strangers for that matter too. And I chose those two because they were the most, for me, the user-friendliest, feller's material that would draw in a new audience. And then we would get into the deeper layers of their catalog. What else? I'm working with Brandon closely, you know, he's given me a lot of the Nuff said archive, World of Pooh recordings. You know, these are things that need to kind of be really listened to and decided on. I'm not trying to be a scraping the barrel label where I'm wanting to release every last thing.

SPEAKER_03

00:39:01

You know, for me, it's really an approach about nuggets in a way. Like, you know, there's going to be some hard decisions on my end to choose what tracks I feel will work or won't. What tracks make sense from a way to kind of lay the scene out that makes sense, both from aesthetic and financial, you know, position. Yeah. I'm doing a 17 LP box set of Carolina outtakes. Okay, that'll be good. Yeah, I figure, you know, I'll just keep that print forever.

SPEAKER_02

00:39:37

Yeah, a lot of grooves on that. Well, can you tell us anything about because, you know, with Carolina in a sense, the mythology of these are only on vinyl with handmade covers, but, you know, some of it has sort of made its way to Bandcamp and

SPEAKER_03

00:40:01

Yeah, I mean, that's Grux. I talked to Grux a couple of weeks ago. We were supposed to meet up in the Bay Area a couple of weeks ago when I was there a couple of weeks ago. And you know, that's still in negotiations. I mean, I don't know or can't really talk too much about the Carolina thing because I don't really have permission or I don't have an agreement or the dialogue is still so early in regards to what I'd like to do to what, you know, Grux would allow to happen. I talked to Brentley, you know, potentially I were going to do a comp of three day stubble stuff. There's the Nuff Said catalog, like I said, to mine through maybe just a comp of the singles from Nuff Said. I'm working with Seymour Glass of Banana Fish to kind of have him consult about some really sub underground even in regards to this scene. Some bands that no one has ever heard of and weird side projects that have never really seen the light of day that if the music is there aesthetically, then we'll certainly want to deal with it.

SPEAKER_03

00:41:20

And what else?

SPEAKER_02

00:41:23

Would that include the white fronts?

SPEAKER_03

00:41:25

The white fronts, yeah, is a band that I'm enthralled with. I mean, there are a couple of these, a couple of the members, I don't know who the white fronts even, I mean, I know who they are and then some of them are old friends of, good friends of mine now. And so, you know, they certainly haven't been approached or maybe not even aware that Bulbous Monocle is even an existing label. And I don't even know what their relationship to the Thinking Fellers is, but I know that Seymour Glass knows who they are and has a wealth of unreleased material. Brandon Kearney has a wealth of unreleased material from them. Their album that was self-released from 86 is, to me, phenomenal LP that I would tell anyone to go find while they're still available to be found as a private press. Mid-80s, San Francisco Weirdo Project, it's probably, I'd say, the vanguard of this whole scene that we're talking about. I mean, not that was the intent, but I'd say it's one of the seminal releases of the time. I mean, from a mid-80s standpoint, it's as weird as anything and really presages a lot of the stuff that we've been discussing. And they weirdly had tangential connections to Camper Van Beethoven. You know, they backed up Camper Van Beethoven on some tours. They were kind of the weirdo horn section when they would play live. I've heard stories of them on stage draped in Middle Eastern raps and things playing on acid. So in a sense, they were really there with early Sun City Girls or Butthole Surfers. They were kind of the San Francisco version of those two maniacal acts. And nobody knows anything about them. They're just buried in the lore of this geographic scene, the white fronts, all one word. Roast Belief is the name of the album, and it's on their own label, which I'm forgetting the name of right now, but it's a really fantastic release. So all that being said, I've got a wealth of material that's unreleased by this band, and so that's definitely one band that I really want to get into and see what else is out there that's available. Yeah, all the enough said tendrils, thinking fellers, offshoots.

SPEAKER_03

00:43:47

I'm interested in dealing with the White Shark material in some capacity. Three Day Stubble, World of Pooh, some other things that are too much to name. I mean, it really was such an incestuous scene that released a million little artifacts across multiple mediums. You've got the stomach ache label, Dolor el Estomago, the Mexican offshoot.

SPEAKER_02

00:44:17

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because in the early punk era, bands weren't making LPs because they would tell me they didn't have money, or they would come up with a seven inch if they were, like a seven inch in 1978 was the equivalent of an LP in 1985 or something as far as what tier of band that represented. And then the early 80s bands, some bands could graduate to the LP format. But then here we get into the early 90s and on the one hand you have major label artists releasing these 55 to 60 minute albums on CD. But then here in the Bay Area with this kind of, again, if we want to call it a scene, there was a lot of really small batch kind of stuff, bands that would put out a couple of seven inches and disappear or a lot of stray compilation tracks or I don't really know what to make of that even, but it was maybe it wasn't music that lent itself to LPs, let alone CDs, and I don't know what that means.

SPEAKER_03

00:45:21

Yeah, I mean, I think honestly it was a highly conceptual endeavor for everyone involved, at least I would say for Brandon and Greg. And so within that concept or the conceptual zone, the idea was to whittle it down to maybe its core message, which would make sense with a seven inch record or a cassette or doing a hundred copies of this or that or the other. I mean, a lot of this stuff wasn't necessarily also just limited to be limited for limited sake. I think they were making this in hopes of it getting out to as many people as possible, but also being practical and realizing that it wasn't going to go very far just based on the material itself. Their appeal was selective.

SPEAKER_02

00:46:09

Yeah, true.

SPEAKER_03

00:46:14

But yeah, I mean, there was just so much going on between Amarillo and Nuff Said and all these other labels. I mean, just between those two, the breadth of weirdness that was coming out is wonderful for someone like me who's into collecting this stuff. I mean, the sense of humor to me was such an integral part of it that made it palpable too. If it didn't have that, I think it would have most definitely probably been buried in its own self-importance or being pretentious or something. But it wasn't any of those things.

SPEAKER_03

00:46:59

For me, I don't know about sincere, but that's the right word to use.

SPEAKER_02

00:47:08

We get into that. I mean, not the royal we, but there's some later chapters, I don't think I sent you, but that idea of authenticity versus quote unquote concept. I think that was one of the more interesting themes around that time as far as what is it that makes a band a band and a concept band, a concept band as opposed to just a band.

SPEAKER_03

00:47:37

Yeah, I mean, you get, I think at a certain point, you just get the scene can get boring really quickly and especially if you've got these almost saccharine artist types who really tend to over believe in their own art and turn it into this really cheesy thing. I mean, this is turning on its head basically saying like, hey man, relax. A lot of this can just be fun too. It can be funny. It can make fun of itself. It can be a conceptual fuck you. Don't take it so seriously as to lose any kind of focus about what makes this palpable. And if it means challenging the status quo, whatever that is of whatever era, be it late 80s, early 90s, in the 2000s or what have you, I mean, you're hard pressed to get away with it today, but we live in a completely fascist modern state. I mean, good luck trying to subvert anything in this day and age. But back then it was much more freewheeling. I mean, you were encouraged in a way to sort of poke the stick or make fun of whatever it was in a way, subvert it in a way that made it palpable or made it look at itself.

SPEAKER_02

00:48:53

There was a sense of irreverence that came out of the Bay Area that contrasted with a certain kind of seriousness that came out of New England. And maybe, who knows, I mean, maybe that's maybe that goes back to colonial days.

SPEAKER_03

00:49:08

I would say so. And that's a concept I've thought about a lot. Whether, you know, for my age group, after college, if you will, or after high school, you know, there were two paths. You went to the northeast or to the west coast. I guess some people went to Chicago. I didn't, obviously. But, you know, one for me always represented kind of a past system of tradition, i.e. the northeast. And the other was just, you know, an open-ended experiment which was represented by San Francisco for me. And having visited San Francisco at the age of 16 alone made it a much easier decision than to try to go to New York in the late 80s and experience that. And I'm glad I did. Or, you know, I would have been fine probably at either place. I think I would have probably been chewed up pretty intensely in New York. But, yeah, this sort of New England regionalism of that era seemed much more codified than kind of an open-endedness that would have been more prevalent on the west coast. But you had people like, you know, Byron Coley spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, in San Francisco, working, writing, working at McDonald's, drinking, getting into this, that, and the other via live shows or whatever. So he certainly had a, you know, and I mentioned Byron Coley and Jimmy Johnson who were the heads of forced exposure to people who were very influential for me. I mean, forced exposure was the Bible for me at that time. Not as it was happening, but a little later on, you know, and I got caught up with all the back issues, etc. But that was also the tenor of the times on the east coast. You know, you just kind of had this very confrontational, very judgmental, really brash, insulting take on everything.

SPEAKER_03

00:51:07

No one was spared. I mean, if they liked you, you were well liked. But there was a kind of vibe that that was. And I think it kind of existed on the west coast, too, to be honest with you. I mean, it was the times. You know, the 80s weren't necessarily peace and love. It was a lot of it was the anti-peace and love. But yeah, I mean, that's a good point to bring up in regards to how the regionalism of the northeast and then the west coast differed immensely, you know. And in regards to bands, etc. Yeah, I mean, a whole book could just be written about the regionalism of the United States in the 80s and what kind of music was made due to the environment that it was created in, you know, culturally and geographically. It's a fascinating topic for me and one I'm always happy to talk about.

SPEAKER_02

00:51:59

Yeah, I think I could imagine myself 20 years ago or something, wanting to take sides with one, you know, feeling like I identify with this region or this other in terms of some gestalt that I've sensed. But now my feeling is I appreciate the fact that there were these regions in contrast where as opposed to a a monoculture, a Netflix monoculture, or I don't know, you know, you kind of wonder where is the where is there room for regionalism to show itself at this point?

SPEAKER_03

00:52:35

Well, I mean, post-internet, it is complete homogenization of all culture. I mean, that's what it's done in that sense, you know. I mean, the modern era has just ushered in a complete extinction of biodiversity, really. I mean, whatever is left of it is just much harder to find.

SPEAKER_03

00:52:56

And so you really have to dig if it even exists anymore. I mean, you know, it is a post-post-post-post- postmodern world in the sense that, you know, the the the cross-pump from Gilman Street and the truck driving Redneck from, you know, Western North Carolina are probably looking at the same Instagram feed. So, yeah, there is the homogenization of, you know, at least the United States and Europe in general. Yeah, it doesn't lead much to this, you know, what I believed was a fantastic biodiversity of regionalism, you know, from 30 years ago, 40 years ago. And you could argue, you know, that regionalism was even more entrenched back in the 50s and 60s, but I wasn't alive back then. So I can just speak to the era that I grew up in, you know. And so you're always going to have the one generation say, oh, it was way better back then, etc., etc. And it wasn't way better. It was just different, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

00:54:05

Maybe it was way better. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02

00:54:07

You can have regionalism different parts of the Internet, different.

SPEAKER_00

00:54:11

And

SPEAKER_02

00:54:11

then as everybody gets brought into

SPEAKER_00

00:54:14

the large conglomerates,

SPEAKER_02

00:54:19

then you have regions within Twitter. Such and such. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I brought this up last

SPEAKER_03

00:54:24

time, but, you know, I mean, I grew up in the deep South. So for us, it was like, man, REM ruled the truth back in the early 80s. You know, they were the band that everyone fell in with in the sense that they felt it was like our band because they're from the South, you know, and Pylon or like I remember all these regional bands, you know, trying to look like REM. And I'm talking like murmur reckoning era. You know, this is eighty four, eighty three, eighty four, eighty five. You know, I'm sure in Southern California would have probably been Black Flag Minutemen, et cetera, you know, San Francisco, who knows what probably would have been, you know, what your book is about.

SPEAKER_03

00:55:05

So, you know, I'm thinking of like, you know, the replacements or Husker do or soul asylum, et cetera. You know, that's the upper Midwest. You know, Chicago had its its own zone. And so, yeah, I mean, even the loop it right back to where we started this conversation, you know, the thinking fellers, this scene really represented a regional idea for me that that because I experienced it young enough and I'd left and when it reared its its head when I just left, even though I would be back there, I really connected with it on that visceral level due to the regionalism of what it was. Be it when I was living in Santa Cruz, it was a glorious time, but I was 18, I was broke, but it was the best time for that time. And the people that I'd met there really opened my mind in a lot of ways. Like, it wasn't hippies. It was just really intelligent people into really cool, weird, obscure stuff that taught me a lot when I was at that age that I, you know, I was into cool, weird, obscure stuff. But when I showed up there and got to hang out with some really exceptionally smart people, you know, they blew me away. It was like, oh my God, this is insane. It just goes and goes and goes and goes.

SPEAKER_02

00:56:27

Thank you again to Ishan Mayette for doing this interview. For more on Bulbous Monocle, go to bulbousmonocle.com

SPEAKER_02

00:56:34

or bulbousmonocle.bandcamp.com and for more on the book, go to whocaresanyway.online.

SPEAKER_01

00:56:51

I won't die. Pagan cannibal, I won't die. I'm as happy and wild and free as a man was once meant to be. So I won't die. I won't die. Kill me if you can. I won't happily fly away. I'll just fly away. On my sky blue horse, I'll just fly away.

SPEAKER_01

00:57:28

Happy that my mind is free.

SPEAKER_00

00:57:34

I won't die. I won't die. I won't die. I won't die. Call me cannibal, I won't die. Savage cannibal, I won't die.

SPEAKER_01

00:58:00

Pagan cannibal, I won't die. Crazy cannibal, I won't die.

SPEAKER_01

00:58:08

I'm as happy and wild and free as a man was once meant to be.

SPEAKER_00

00:58:15

So I won't die.

SPEAKER_01

00:58:18

I won't die. Kill me if you can. I won't happily fly away. I'll just fly away. On my sky blue horse, I'll just fly away. Happy that my mind is free.

SPEAKER_00

00:58:46

I'll just fly away.

SPEAKER_01

00:58:51

On my sky blue horse, I'll just fly away. Happy that my mind is free.

SPEAKER_00

00:59:07

Call me a cannibal, I won't die. I won't die.

SPEAKER_01

00:59:14

Kill me if you can, I will happily fly away.

SPEAKER_00

00:59:22

I won't die. I won't die.

SPEAKER_01

00:59:32

Call me cannibal, I won't die.

SPEAKER_00

00:59:35

I won't die. I won't die.