Weasel Walter, The Flying Luttenbachers, and ugEXPLODE

Interview by Jack Gold-Molina, Part 2

PSF: I was looking at a review of the Blood Of The Earth album with Marc Edwards.

WW: Yeah, I'm an underdog but I am not without my adherents. If I didn't have people like you and the people that support my work I wouldn't be able to run the label. I wouldn't be able to do anything, so I'm grateful. I feel like my music, right now, is for epicureans. We live in a world where everyone is so hyper-saturated with media, the people that follow my work, it just hits them the right way. It resonates with them in this certain way. I am glad it does. I'm certainly glad if people check out what I am doing. Obviously, I think it's valid and worthy or I wouldn't bother doing it. (Laughs)

I see what I do as an alternative, like a real alternative. It's not mainstream, it's not trendy, it's not cool. You don't get any brownie points for listening to my music, from society at least. Maybe from me. I consider my music to be a real alternative to a lot of bullshit that is out there. I am prolific and I play with all of these crazy people and everybody kind of ignores me, and that's their tough shit. They're going to look like idiots once they wake up and look at my body of work. It's not really deniable, at this point. I just find it funny that I am so completely ignored by the media and most audiences, but my attitude is to just do it.

PSF: I think with improvised music, and anything that's not mainstream rock or mainstream pop, you are going to run into that because you're not getting the corporate political machine behind you to shove it down people's throats.

WW: But the fucking political machine of the underground is not supporting me either, and that's an age old topic. I'm not here to cry about it. The machine can fuck off, as far as I am concerned. I'm not looking or expecting to get rich or famous, and I never have. (Laughs) This isn't really a topic that's burning for me. Life isn't fair. Very few people in life get what they wanted out of it. So, who am I to complain about it? I feel lucky that I can do what I do at all. I'm not really in a position to cry about so-and-so magazine not putting me on the cover, or any of this horseshit. I'm over it. I'm not this angry young man that thinks the world owes him a living anymore.

PSF: So you're in a no wave band. Can you tell me what that is about?

WW: I'm in a band called Cellular Chaos. I play lead guitar and sometimes I sing. The bass player's name is Ceci Moss and she is a very intelligent, smart music fan who I forced to play bass in my band, and Marc Edwards plays drums. Right now it's an instrumental trio that works at the nexus of no wave, anti-rock, and free improvisation. It plays songs. (Laughs) They are recognizable. The performance approach is somewhat confrontational in terms of the fact that I think most audiences are boring and passive and they seem to want to stay that way. So, our performance is sort of against the passivity of the audience and this dividing line between the band and the crowd.

There is a bunch of stuff on YouTube. I would recommend the more current stuff over the old stuff just because I think the current stuff is better. We haven't recorded anything yet. We don't have a Facebook page, we don't have a MySpace page. We are against it. We are trying to be a live band that you have to go see, not something that you Google, download their entire discography and make some kind of knee-jerk reaction in 15 seconds about whether you like it or not. A lot of things have been lost with the Internet. It almost hurts us not to pimp out the internet and promote ourselves, but we don't care. We care about being a good band that plays these crazy, fucked up shows. We don't care about being a band that that you can download their entire discography off of some blog. I guess that is kind of agitprop in some way. It's a statement.

PSF: In a good way.

WW: Well, good. I'm glad you think so. I think a lot of things that were great about live music in general have been lost over the last few decades. I'm not yearning for the past, I'm yearning for the excitement that it used to have. Cellular Chaos is a move to reinstate the danger of a live show that I think is missing from most bands' presentations. We will record, at some point. We will put out a record, it's just not time. I had a band called Cellular Chaos on the West Coast that wasn't very serious, but this band has been around for a year and-a-half and it does what it does. It's virtually ignored. We don't care, we do what we do.

New York is a very pathetic milieu, in my opinion. (Laughs) I live here, but I live here in spite of what it is. There is no scene here, as far as I'm concerned. Not for what I am interested in. There's a few bands.

PSF: I have heard that from guys I know who went out there a few years ago, free jazz guys.

WW: New York now is not the romantic, idyllic mecca of culture that it used to be. It's a fucking shopping center for rich people, and if anyone thinks it's anything other than that, they are kidding themselves. It's not a creative mecca, these days, for this kind of aesthetic. I came here in spite of it. I came here thinking it was the end of the line, the end of the world, and that if anything was going to go further, I probably had to come here to accomplish it. But I have a lot of peers here, and I have a lot of peer respect. I really don't have any audience in New York at all. There are a million bands in New York and if you don't go out and hit the bars and schmooze people, you don't exist. That's the sad truth of New York.

There are so many bands that no one is desperate to find an awesome new band. This is not the seventies. It's not the eighties. Every asshole is a fucking professional artist or a musician or a filmmaker, and no one gives a fuck. The only bands anyone gives a fuck about here are the ones that have this social gratification scenario around them. Like, if you go to their show, there are going to be all of these hot girls there. But, am I bitter about this? No. I just think it's the way the world is. I don't care. If I cared I would go out to bars and shake people's hands and try to trick them into going to my shows.

My attitude is, I make this music, it's awesome. If you want to come see it, that's great. If you like it, great. If you don't, fuck off. I can only do so much. I do so much musically that it's not really possible for me to be a social butterfly and finesse people and convince them to come see my music. I use New York as a working base. I play here all the time to very small or nonexistent audiences, and I deal with people from all over the world who like the music.

PSF: I was at the website for your label, ugEXPLODE, and I saw the Orthrelm Anthology CD.

WW: Orthrelm is an incredible group made up of the guitar player Mick Barr, who is probably one of my favorite living musicians, and a drummer named Josh Blair. They primarily existed in the first half of the 2000s, and they made some of the most insane music of all time, in my opinion. I was in a position to reissue a lot of their work in the sort of definitive, remixed form, and I jumped at it because it is some of my favorite music. That's the story behind Orthrelm. They have reformed. I don't know what their musical agenda is right now, but Mick Marr is one of the finest composers and conceptualists of aggressive music that exists on the face of the earth. He is basically a legend.

My site has samples of almost everything, so if anyone wants to know what all of this hype and bullshit and hot air is all about, go to the fucking site and listen. I know I am good at blowing my own horn and I always have been, but it's not hubris as much as it is general enthusiasm. I am really into music. I'm not getting rich and famous, and that's not really the point. The point is to make great art.

I survive, and I do this weird thing with my time. This is my contribution to society which is being outside of it and commenting on it and providing a safe haven for people who are different and think differently. I guess I'm working for the underdogs. That's my thing. Do I want to be an underdog? No, but if I am, I am more than willing to accept that. Do I want to be poor and obscure? No! But I want people to like my art because it is good, not because it gets me laid at a party. If there aren't 100,000 people at every show I play, it doesn't break my heart. I disagree heavily with most people's musical tastes, so why would I expect them to be worshipping what I do? It's not about them.

I have adjusted to the reality of the situation. I don't have any delusion that just because I do something it is going to catch and everybody is going to start kissing my ass. It never happened, it never will. It's not my motivation. I play in a lot of weird bands that are generally fast and aggressive. I play within a lot of different idioms. In terms of improvised music, there is a certain kind of momentum I am trying to achieve. I don't know that there is anything marketable about that, at this point.

PSF: You did an album called Ninja Star Danger Rock.

WW: It's a trio I made with Henry Kaiser on guitar, Charles K. Noyes on drums, who is one of my big drum influences, actually, and I play bass guitar on it. It's a filthy, disgusting improvised music record that is nauseatingly dissonant and queasy and weird. It's a totally fucked up, retarded record and I like it, so I put it out. Once again, I don't know how marketable that is, but I found it valid and I found that it expressed a different side of my work. I really love Charlie and I love Henry and we made this record. If people want to hear it, that is totally cool. I think it is one of the most heinously offensive records I have ever made, musically. I think it's hilarious. It's awesome.

I can imagine most people hearing this record and going, "Oh my god! This is the worst music I have ever heard." But to me, that makes it almost the best music ever, because it's so insane, and so clueless, and weird and wrong. I love that. I love that about art! (Laughs) But I'm me, and not everybody is me. All I can do is say what it is. One weird person will read that description and go, "That sounds fucking great!" And they will go straight to it. Everyone else will have already turned off by now.

I am starting to support other groups a little more just because I find that they are in the same position I am in. They are making somewhat revolutionary music that is being ignored by even the underground. I put out full-length releases by the band Burmese from San Francisco, which I was in for several years, and this young Brooklyn band called White Suns, which I think is the best band in New York. Whatever limited cache I have or influence I can put behind them I have and I think they are better off for it.

In a weird way, I don't want to be a record label but I do feel a responsibility to document a certain kind of work that is going on that is being totally ignored, even in the underground. I spend a lot of time dealing with the label these days, and I do what I can musically. I don't have the resources in terms of players that I wish I had.

Part of the reason why the Luttenbachers ended was because it was untenable. The way it was operating was completely untenable. At the end of The Flying Luttenbachers, we had the best unit we ever had playing the best music we ever had, and we had the worst audience. It was like having a full-time job that didn't pay anything, and we couldn't do it anymore. We couldn't do it financially or psychically. Would I like to work on that level again? Yes, I would do it tomorrow if the people were there.

Sometimes your rent is cheap and you can fuck around and make great art with people because you have unlimited time. The reality of the major cities, at this point, is you can't even be a bum in the major cities. You can't be a poor person in New York. You can't afford it. It's impossible. Nobody has free time. Nobody ever hangs out, at least not in my field. I'm sure there are people who go to techno parties and their parents pay their rent and they just get high and dance all night, but that's not really what I am talking about.

It has been almost impossible to find a working band in New York. So, if anyone questions why my work right now isn't of the exact quality or level of fastidiousness of period "X" in my work, that's my alibi right there. I don't have the people, I don't have the time, I don't have the money to make a band like The Flying Luttenbachers currently. Would I do it again? Yes. I could and I would, but something is going to have to change in society.

Right now, what my music is about is survival. It's not about thriving. It's not about, 'hey man, I'm at the top of my game.' It's about struggle. Society is pretty much telling me, "Quit. Nobody needs you to do this." And my response is, "Fuck you." I'm going to do it anyway. That's what I'm all about at this point -- survival. And the music that I do, the music that I release currently, reflects this state of emergency, this state of things not being quite right, things not being optimal. I think there are a lot of people who can relate to that.

PSF: Most artists, probably. You have really got to be on the corporate side of things, and even then, trying to make it, the sacrifices you have to make...

WW: Here's a theory I have about the arts, Jack, and let me know what you think about this. You and I have lived through an interesting period where there used to be a market for weird music, and you might call it finite. Okay, fine. But there were a lot of people getting by for a long time just doing weird art. Now, because of the internet and the economy, music is becoming folk art again. It is by the people, for the people, and it can't really be sold anymore. The money is gone.

PSF: A lot of people are saying that. I think it has become extremely difficult to earn a living as a musician unless you've got some other kind of support. I think the most important thing as an artist is to stay vital to your art and to keep pushing the art forward. People who stagnate, they are stagnating the art. People don't realize how important they are to the music. If one person finds an album like Ninja Star Danger Rock or an album like Infection And Decline and they are like, "Fuck yeah! That blows me away," and then they go out and they start making music like that, more people are going to hear it and more people are going to recognize it. Even just a handful of listeners can make a huge difference. But on the other hand, catering to the masses, it's precarious.

WW: I think you tend to think of acceptance as like this all or nothing thing. It hasn't always been that way. There is a middle ground where you are not a million selling artist and you still have an audience and you can survive. That has eroded somewhat. But the thing is, I have always worked in this lower echelon where I was always productive enough and busy enough and smart enough to figure out how to survive, and I know a lot of artists who worked the strata of the underground scene to the point where they could survive, and they got wider recognition. I guess part of my perennial complaint is I always believed I somehow deserve to be on that level that a lot of my peers are at.

There are a lot of artists who will never make a dollar making music, and that is probably a good percentage of the whole. I am not one of those people. I have always been a person who couldn't accept that they were going to have to go to a 40 hour-a-week job to get by and then do music on the weekend for pleasure. In 1998, I said 'fuck it, I'm quitting my job and I am going to do this,' and I proceeded to go into great debt and poverty for a long time. But, the thing was, I did it. I did all this crap for what it's worth, and I took a lot of blows and I suffered a lot, but I came through it with a certain amount of experience and depth that couldn't have been had any other way.

I understand my position in relation to the scene because of what it is. I don't agree with the mainstream, even in the underground. I don't agree with the status quo, I don't agree with the taste. That kind of leaves me out in the cold, but that's just the way it is. Some of my favorite musicians got left out in the cold. It doesn't freak me out.

Here's an anecdote. I went and saw this great movie the other night called Glen And Randa. Glen And Randa was made in the early seventies and it is what I term a 'feel bad movie.' It is basically a nihilistic assault on the audience. I find it to be black comedy because I understand the intent completely. It turned out that the screenwriter was there with Robert Downey Sr., who is responsible for one of my other favorite feel bad movies, which is Greaser's Palace. I didn't have like a slick question, but I said, "You know, I watch your movies and I feel like you are inflicting these movies on the audience to make a comment about your own alienation." And they were like, "Absolutely. I made this movie 40 years ago and nothing has changed." That was enough for me. It was like, okay, that's what I'm into.

It's not correct. I'm just a fucking disenfranchised person. The music I relate to and the music I make reflects this. If you are disenfranchised, of course you are never going to have mainstream success unless it's a fluke, because your art is against them. It's against everybody. I'm okay with that. That's just my position. That's my reality. Do I think more people would like and listen to my music? Yeah, but there is all of this social bullshit precluding it. But, whatever. (Laughs) If it happens it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.