Snobcast: Rorschach Jukebox
By Col. Hector Bravado • Sep 14th, 2009 • Category: SnobcastWhat is the soundtrack of a novel? Or a novelist’s dream life? Rorschach Jukebox attempts to answer these questions with a unique interview format: we ask a contemporary writer 15 questions; they can answer only with artists and track titles. The resulting mix can be heard by hitting any of the mp4 buttons on this page.
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Our subject today is D.R. Haney, author of Banned for Life (And/OR, Vancouver, 2009), a punk and post-punk epic that follows the adventures of Jason Maddox. Maddox’s bumpy quest for romantic and artistic fulfillment take him from the halls of a North Carolina high school to the punk clubs of New York to the world of Hollywood’s also-rans, creating some unforgettable characters and a lot of resonance with any reader who came of age with punk rock. maximumrocknroll vetted Haney’s writing as “spot on” and filled with characters that are “…super realistic. They’re nuanced and interesting and you actually care about what happens to them.”
D.R. Haney has actively participated in underground music, film, and literary circles for more than two decades. His writing has appeared in numerous journals, both in the United States and in Europe. He regularly writes for Brad Listi’s The Nervous Breakdown. Banned for Life is his first published novel.
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1. Jason Maddox, the protagonist of Banned for Life, undergoes a punk rock conversion when he falls from grace after banging his girlfriend’s mom and beating the piss out of a preppy confidant who broke the story around his North Carolina high school. We all have a conversion song — that single that not only opens you up to a new genre, but alters the course of your life. Play a conversion song from D.R. Haney’s life.
“Dissect” The John Spencer Blues Explosion
2. If Banned for Life were to be optioned for film and actually produced, and you had to pick a Wire song to play during the opening credits, which single would you choose?
“Point of Collapse” Wire
3. Okay, now we’d like you to score your own montage from the second passage of Banned for Life. Maddox is hanging out with PeeWee — the diminutive, high-strung New York exile who is biding time in North Carolina until he can get back to NY and start a band. We see them hanging out in PeeWee’s apartment at all hours, smoking weed and talking while listening to records; Jason is at his painting job, getting razzed by the crew for dyeing his hair; they’re getting into a parking lot brawl and hurriedly packing afterwards for New York. What is playing?
“Drink Deep” Rites of Spring
4. Play some fucking hardcore.
“I Remember” Millions of Dead Cops
5. I’ve always maintained that Public Enemy’s Yo! Bum Rush the Show is one of the greatest punk rock albums of all time. Exhibit A: the buzz that runs the length of “Public Enemy No. 1,” broken only by Terminator X’s chunky scratches. Play a song that you think is punk as fuck, although technically not in the genre.
“Agile, Mobile & Hostile” Andre Williams
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6. In Banned for Life, our hero ends up in LA as a struggling screenwriter after years of playing in the New York punk and post-punk scene. In LA, he meets Irina, the enigmatic Serbian beauty. What single do you think best captures the first time he sees her?
“Keechie” No Age
7. At Coors Field, each Rockies batter gets to pick a song snippet that plays on the PA right before his at-bat. It’s the usual butt rock, pop rap and new country garbage that you can well imagine. What plays before D.R. Haney takes the plate?
“13 Monsters” Lightning Bolt
8. During college, I drove trucks for The Denver Post during summers home. Graveyard shift, coming home at 4 a.m. with hands smeared with newsprint and feeling kind of elated. “Gimme All Your Lovin’” by ZZ Top came on the radio, and I heard the song for the first time devoid of the need for music as social identity. I realized the production of the guitars and drums (and the anchoring synth) on that song were straight-up fucking genius. Do you have one like that?
“God Only Knows” The Beach Boys
9. In L.A. Jason Maddox finally tracks down Jim Cassady, the former frontman from the fictionalized band Rule of Thumb, who was a huge musical influence on the novel’s characters. Cassady — agoraphobic, alcoholic, slovenly, overweight and living with his mom — still has a knack for a hook. What does it sound like when Maddox gets to play guitar with his former idol?
“Bible Silver Corner” Rodan
10. You live in the Echo Park area, the same neighborhood where Jason Maddox lives during his L.A. stint. If you were on the city council steering committee that had to pick a theme song for your ‘hood, what would it be?
“Film Noir” Savage Republic
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11. What’s the last song you were pleasantly surprised to hear being played in a retail location?
“We Live Again” Beck
12. Play a song that’s guaranteed to give somebody diarrhea.
“Stag Party” Cherubs
13. Play a song that you thought you were sick of but recently rediscovered, late at night, alone and drunk in your apartment.
“Dine Alone” Quicksand
14. You’re at your favorite spot in L.A. They have an iPod “DJ” playing some self-indulgent crap and nobody’s paying attention. You know what it takes to make this room jump. You push him down and unplug his iPod and throw it at him. Then you plug in your iPod and play…
“They Live By Night” The Make-Up
15. Mr. Haney, please take us home with a little pre-1950s blues.
“Down Baby” Lightnin’ Hopkins
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Col. Hector Bravado is a rant afficionado, handjob connoisseur, and writer of Stuck in My Head.
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A toast to the Colonel. If only every interview were this much fun.
I love the “Gimmie All Your Lovin”/”God Only Knows” question and answer, especially the expression of music as social identity.
Have you heard Brian Wilson’s “Smile” album? I never understood what “Hang on to Your Ego” was doing on Frank Black’s first solo album until I heard “Smile”.
I never really followed the Beach Boys, Elliott, or Brian Wilson as a solo artist, so unfortunately, no, I’ve yet to hear “Smile.” I only like a handful of BB songs, including, obviously, “God Only Knows,” which is the most brilliant record I know made by an artist outside my musical comfort zone. The BB vocal arrangements were brilliant in general, but I say that the way I might comment on first-rate basket-weaving or something else that doesn’t much interest me — that is, I recognize the skill or talent involved without being moved by it. Medieval choirs aren’t my thing.
Did Frank Black have occasion to hear the early (1960s) “Smile” sessions? They were undoubtedly making the rounds as bootlegs, yes?
Dig the mid-80s Wire tune. Good reminder that Wire ruled in the 80s as well as the 70s and the 00s.
Consistent excellence, I agree. I was strongly tempted to go with something off “Pink Flag,” but it seemed a bit too on the nose.
Wire is the shit. I’m constantly trying to turn people on to the awesomeness.
It’s not so much the Beach Boys or Brian Wilson. It’s the difference between music you play because you know what it’s going to sound like and the sounds you come up on that grab your ears. When I lived in San Jose, I’d flip by those Indian movies on TV, and sit captivated, because the music is flat-out awesome, as big as the world and syncopated like a punch in the head, but I know that if I bought a recording of it it would sound lame and affected when I played it. Question eight just nails that notion that we’re all a bunch of bikers wearing frilly girl’s underpants.
Father Guido: I appreciate your work as a missionary. I’ve always tried to spread the word about great music, or in any case music *I* regard as great.
Elliott: I know I’m not really addressing your point, but there’s music that I’ll hear played by others, and I like it quite a bit under those circumstances, but I know I’d never play it if I owned the recording. I learned this the hard way, after jumping on any record that half caught my attention. My taste is expansive in theory but narrow in practice.
Do you ever listen to music for the sake of nostalgia? When I lived in New York, there was a bar where I often shot pool, and Bad Company was was a favorite on the jukebox. Later, after I moved to L.A., I bought a Bad Company hits compilation, thinking it would put me in mind of that bar and the good times enjoyed there, but it did nothing of the kind. And that’s been the case with almost every record I’ve bought because of memories associated with it. It’s not that way with most people I know, who retain great fondness for the music they loved in high school and before, even if they know it’s considered embarrassing.
D. R.: I cannot listen to music for nostalgia. When I try, the music does not evoke the feelings I want it to. I’m better off hearing something I used to hate on the radio (Casey Jones, by the Dead, for example) for nostalgia. Music is powerful stuff, and even buying the recording doesn’t let me control it. I think Father Guido is on to something with his proselytizing: music is for people, and for the moment. You can give it away, but you can’t own it.
@Elliott: Well put.
@Duke: Having just listened to the mix in its entirety, I have to say that the whole thing hangs together really nicely. It has a flavor, its own tang. My favorite surprises: although I was Mr. Hardcore in high school, I listened to a very limited number of bands; I remember their album covers (the skull on tank treads from Multi-Death Corporations and the impaled bodies was indelible), but MDC was just one of the ones I missed. That is some fucking hardcore. And like I said on Facebook, that Andre Williams cut was also revelatory. Naaasty.
I’m with you, Colonel, on Elliott’s remark, and I’ve been meaning to say as much for some time. As for Andre Williams and MDC, those are — no shit — the two tracks that most jump at me when I play this mix, which I’ve done far more often than I’d feel comfortable admitting. Then again, you once cited the Superego bit in “Banned” as a highlight, and seeing that it’s my personal favorite, it would seem there’s some overlap in taste.
But, man, how beautiful are those low notes on the Lightnin’ Hopkins track? That’s why I went for it over so many others — that and the vibrato.
Oh, and Colonel, something else I’d wanted to say but overlooked: the No Age track breaks my heart because, when I think about it in light of your question, it reminds me of a rapture I wish I felt every time I went out and never do, except when it’s in the company of “Irina,” and she’s regrettably no longer, to crib from finance-speak, a going concern.
Lightnin’ Hopkins is the nads. It’s a good mix, too. The first time I heard it, it kept cutting out. I downloaded it special and played it through. Thirteen Monsters stands out for me on the second listen through. As a bonus, my music player cuts it right in to Field Commander Cohen (…workin’ for the Yankee dollar, drinkin’ rum and Coca-Cola…).
Yeah, I somehow don’t think the bass part of the song would go over at Coors Field. But the drums at the beginning — for a band adored by cigarette-shaped hipsters, they sure can get kind of jocky.
@D.R. Haney re: “a rapture I wish I felt.” Yes. Aggregate, free-floating nostalgia. The song that inspires that ache in me is “The Moose” by the Charlie Barnet Orchestra featuring Dodo Marmarosa on keys. I want all my summer nights to feel like that song sounds.
And I have too many “Irina” songs to count. Sometimes I’ll forget an Irina song is on one of my iTunes tracks or CDs, and I’ll play it and get totally blackjacked. Some I remember well enough to avoid; not so much for any lingering feelings of love, but just the overall melancholy at passed time and lost things in general is sometimes too much.
I’ve been listening to a lot of FM radio in the car lately, content to let Central Programming take me to an emotionally neutral place. Doobie Brothers. Miley Cyrus. Toby Keith. Pink Floyd. I’m not sure what that says about my life right now.
The thing I like best about radio is the fluke factor. I think we all have enough self-programming at this point. It’s agreeable sometimes to just spin the dial and see — or, more to the point, hear — what comes.
I’m fortunate, in that music-produced melancholy tends to be life-affirming, in the long run. “So it goes,” I’ll think; “so it goes for us all.” There’s no such solace in the melancholy produced by circumstance — poverty, age, what have you — or so extensive experience has taught me.
Oh, and Father Guido, thanks for slapping that twit at TNB. You’ll know the one I mean.
Father Guido slapped a twit and I didn’t see it? Where? Provide links!
So much for discretion. http://bit.ly/3OjPbL
I promise not to use this information to further antagonize said twit.
Antagonize? Medieval torture is more what I prefer to imagine. But never mind.