Look, I’m just going to come out and say it: Clockcleaner are pretty much the best band going in Philadelphia right now. I feel like Clockcleaner are virtually ignored in Philadelphia. If the local alt-media knew what was good for them, they’d latch on to Clockcleaner now and never let go because this band is the real deal. They completely walk the walk and are absolutely unafraid to talk the talk. That is a rarity in the Philly music scene.

I forgot to report to you all that the ‘cleaner were on cover of the May 2007 issue of the esteemed Maximum Rocknroll fanzine. Interviewer Doug Mosurock (check his excellent column in Dusted) was nice enough to email me a copy of the interview. I’ve also included a (now outdated) video interview that I conducted with Clockcleaner singer/guitar player John Sharkey. Enjoy the drama/look into Clockcleaner’s eyes and hate them…

First up, before I give you the interviews - I should let you know that I watched Clockcleaner play at hipster-haven JohnnyBrenda’s with Sightings on Tuesday night. It sounded a lot like mid-1990’s South Jersey hardcore-type shit…OK, not really. They sounded great, though…really slowed down and weird.  I can’t wait for the new record.

Some photos Ian Meyer took of Clockcleaner playing live at Tritone

CLOCKCLEANER’S JOHN SHARKEY + FUN VAMPIRE LABUDA VIDEO INTERVIEW: This interview is a little bit outdated but better late then never, yeah? It was conducted in my kitchen the day before Clockcleaner left to impress Texans and indierock losers at SXSW. Thrill to John and I discussing the internet and the Cro-Mags and a lil baby. Immediately after the interview I burned Sharkey a cd full of Miami Bass music and a Geto Boys cd. (uh, thanks to Pie and Ian for figuring out how to edit these and put them on youtube) Click each link for youtube action.

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part 2

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part 4

part 5

CLOCKCLEANER MRR COVER STORY INTERVIEW

Interviewed by Doug Mosurock
Originally run in Maximum RocknRoll

Clockcleaner is one of the few modern bands who are willing to put themselves as far out on the line as they have. Gigs end in blood and tears. People leave in disgust, try to fight the band, find themselves outwitted. Soundmen walk away from the board. Those susceptible to epileptic fits are advised not to enter the room when they play. Traversing a gut-shot, ear-splitting dynamic, the Philadelphia trio (John Sharkey – guitar/vox, Karen Horner – bass, Richie Charles – drums) are making your average show the dangerous, virulent place it used to be, channeling several decades of sickness, fear, and antagonism into a caustic weapon of harsh sound, pitch-black lyrics, and bad vibes. I’ve seen them four times in 2006 and each show was more exciting and nervewracking than the last.

This interview was conducted in Brooklyn, following the news that Bob Weston (Shellac, Volcano Suns) was coming out of semi-retirement to record Clockcleaner’s new album in Spring 2007, for release by a responsible, sensible label to be named later. Their plan is to tour nonstop following that.

A lot of people we knew interrupted us during the talk. We’d all had a bit to drink and nothing was left out of the conversation. Don’t sue us.

MRR: What brought this all on? What brought you along this path?

John Sharkey: What, you mean rock and roll?

MRR: Rock and roll is a given. I’m talking about this band. This is about Clockcleaner. A lot of people reading this might not know who you are.

JS: Alright, this is how it happened. I moved back to Philly from Cleveland…

MRR: Why did you move to Cleveland?

JS: Because I hated Philadelphia.

MRR: Why did you hate Philadelphia?

JS: Because it was full of petulant retards

MRR: What year was this?

JS: 2001. Just a bunch of kids going to, like, dance parties and shit. Pretty weak city, so I moved to Cleveland, climbed to the top of the mountain, saw what I could see. So I moved back, saw Richie Charles on the street, said “Let’s start a new band,” and that was pretty much it.

MRR: How’d you know Richie?

JS: I’m really popular. One time I pissed in Richie’s dead tomato plant.

RC: It bummed me out.

MRR: Did it come back to life?

JS: No, it didn’t.

RC: Urine will not bring dead plants back.

JS: I’ve peed on girls and it didn’t bring them back to life, either. Why should it to a tomato plant?

MRR: Alright, so you ran into Richie, agreed to start a new band, and that’s it?

JS: Actually, it was Richie’s idea. I thought it was good, so we decided to play music. We got a bass player at first, who I will not mention by name, who’s the kind of poseur who plays without a pick, doesn’t turn his treble knob up … basically is a total bozo. Anyway, we started the band, wrote almost the entire first record with this guy. And then he quit, because we were gonna start practicing in a place where Richie lived, and he couldn’t handle the fact that …

RC: That a black guy lived there.

JS: That a black guy lived there. So we told him he was out of the band. Then we got another guy who has a corn nut for a penis, and then recorded the first record. So that was basically how it went. That was year one. We put out the first record, The Hassler. That was with Warren Slagel on bass.

MRR: Warren Slagel.

JS: Warren Slagel. So it’s basically all history from there.

MRR: Did you play in any other bands in Philly before you left?

JS: Not really. I was in a band called Assstabber, which was sort of a joke doom band. Richie was in At Bay …

RC: I was in Pearl Harbor Payback.

MRR: So when you left Philly, John, you must have been, what, 20?

JS: 19.

MRR: And Cleveland must have been … Why did you go there? It’s not a city most people think about when they’re moving someplace.

JS: Basically I had friends there in 9 Shocks Terror – Steven and Kevin and Tony and Wedge.

MRR: And you’d seen them in Philly?

JS: Yeah, I met them through shows. They thought that it would be a good idea, that I would share a kinship with those Clevelanders. So I moved to Cleveland. Things were pretty erratic for a few months. It took me a while to settle in and find a job…

MRR: Pretty erratic? What happened?

JS: I moved there in a house with Steve and Kevin. I didn’t have a steady job for six months. I’d get drunk a lot, because beer was a lot cheaper. Basically I’d just spend my time making trouble, terrorizing people, fireworks, fistfighting. This one time, the first week I lived in the house … this kid, I guess I’ll say his name, it was Jake Kelly, he lived at Speak in Tongues, which was this stable for … (we get sidetracked here, talking about the now-departed Cleveland venue, and food). So this kid Jake was kind of an artist, he thinks he’s hot shit. He came to my house, after a long night of drinking. And I kind of wanted to just chill out at my house, but the party showed up there. And Jake was kind of in my face, saying all kinds of ridiculously dorky things

RC: An artist!

JS: Yes, an artist, he’s a cartoonist. But without a penis. So after about twenty minutes of him standing there trying to berate me, I kicked him in his face, and threw him forcefully off my porch. Then he walked sixty blocks back to his house.

MRR: So you basically hit his reset button.

JS: Yeah, and for weeks later, kids who were his friends kept coming up to me and saying shit like, “That was great! You really shattered his ego! He’s been moping around, and he’s really a shell of a man now.” And that set the tone for how things were for me in Cleveland from that point on. It wasn’t like, y’know, let’s fuck with the new kid anymore, it was more like, this kid’s an asshole. So it was about two years of things like that. I got bored of that. I was supposed to join 9 Shocks while I was there. I sorta did. I moved back to Philly, started Clockcleaner, and now I play the sporadic tour or gig with 9 Shocks, went to Japan with them, shit like that.

MRR: So how did you meet Karen?

JS: When Warren Slagel was in the band, we played with her old band, Readyset, and we were taken by her bass styles. I always had her in the back of my mind, knowing that Slagel wouldn’t stand the test of time. So right before we recorded our first full-length, Nevermind, we kicked him out, because he would just show up stoned, and basically he was an all-around pantywaist.

RC: Not Clockcleaner material.

KH: No!

JS: Not one bit.

MRR: So what does it take…

KH: What is Clockcleaner material? Not to be whiny!

JS: No whining. Karen’s penis is infinitely larger than Slagel’s.

KH: I’ll testify to that.

JS: You gotta be willing to go out there and put your nuts on the line.

MRR: But why? You’re talking to young punk America, they don’t know what it takes. Maybe it means going to the mall and spilling a drink on the floor.

KH: It means not whining, not talking shit, and …

MRR: That’s funny, because we’ve just been sitting here, talking shit!

JS: It’s basically, like quit your job, quit your fat girlfriend, and be in a band for real. But nobody does that in Philadelphia. Man Man can blow Tom Waits all they want, but they still won’t make him cum.

MRR: Everybody, Sharkey is eating rice with his hands off a bare tabletop right now. So this man is truly hard.

KH: White rice! What do you want?

JS: It’s just basically, like, regular stuff. Kind of having the nuts, or the guts, to go out there and just give it all up for a while. Like not having a steady job, or having a steady routine. I mean, we all have full time jobs, but we can fuck it all off for a while, and make it work for us.

MRR: So what you’re basically telling me is that Clockcleaner is a reaction to Philadelphia

RC: It’s heart. Clockcleaner is heart.

JS: Clockcleaner is definitely a reaction to Philadelphia, and to a lot of other things. I don’t enjoy dance music. I don’t enjoy DJs who are balding, heartfelt singers…

MRR: How do you feel about union guys?

KH: We like the unions!

RC: Turn the tape off. Fuck scabs.

JS: One time I fistfought a scab and beat him so bad that he couldn’t look out his right eye for about three months.

MRR: So is it a reaction musically as well?

RC: No, fuck that. Nobody’s ever heard any music from Philadelphia.

KH: Philly doesn’t matter.

JS: It’s not really a reaction to Philadelphia music, it’s a reaction to music in general.

RC: It’s more than just our stupid city

JS: The city has always been kind of … just a place to live.

KH: No offense to our city.

JS: The people don’t give us any validity in town, just because … I dunno.

RC: I think they’re intimidated.

JS: It’s very much an intimidation factor, and it’s also the fact that we’ve never kissed anyone’s ass to get a show, never really played by the rules.

MRR: Let’s talk about the bannings.

JS: We couldn’t play in Philly for a while…

KH: There were a lot of places that wouldn’t let us play.

MRR: So you could play, you just wouldn’t want to?

RC: Mayor Street’s not gonna come after us if we play somewhere, but a lot of places wouldn’t have it.

JS: Milton Street, his brother, might have something to say about it.

RC: Michael Nutter might show up.

[some girl walks past] Hey, Doug!

JS: Hey, baby! You got a boyfriend?

RC: You got a sister?

KH: You got a brother?

JS: Sup, Mama!

RC: No, seriously, since Johnny Doc signed up with us, we’ve been playing, like, electricians’ unions, Mummers’ parties … We play the Mummers Parade every year.

JS: We play the St. Paddy’s Day parade.

RC: We’re a working punk band, so we can find cash and gear on the street.

JS: The bannings were based on unruly behavior that was not extremely out of the ordinary. Much exaggeration.

KH: We were looking for drama, created some new drama.

JS: People were looking for a band to get behind and hate. And we filled those shoes quite easily, and I’m fine with that.

RC: That city loves to cry.

JS: Everybody in Philadelphia loves to moan and eat brunch.

KH: What’s amazing is that they have nothing to cry about, but they want to cry anyway.

RC: The fuckin’ Phillies, the fuckin’ Eagles … the fuckin’ Clockcleaners! We’re the bums.

JS: Everybody in Philadelphia eats brunch and blows each other. Everybody in Philadelphia loves Modest Mouse and hairdos, and saggy boots. Nobody likes to get fucked up.

MRR: Well, you’re basically describing Brooklyn, too.

RC: Well, we don’t live here!

MRR: You were saying the last time you were here that this is the softest town you’ve ever been to.

RC: I did say that.

JS: And I concurred, and added that I felt confident that if I needed to fight, then I could fight this entire town and win.

MRR: Maybe Williamsburg or Park Slope. There’s a lot of parts of this borough that you’ll never go to.

RC: Dice Clay will never come to see us play.

KH: We’d love him to come see us play.

MRR: Yeah, but you’d really need to work the drivetime radio angle.

JS: I love drivetime radio. Kidd Chris is the only person that I will up in this interview.

(hipster comes over … you should have seen this kid …)

HIPSTER: (mumbles something about doing a line)

JS: Fuck doing a line, we’re trying to do an interview, you fucking retard!

RC: Look at your hair!

MRR: Everyone, a guy wearing a leotard just walked over here.

RC: You look like a shitty Beatle.

JS: Nah, he looks like a jolly green giant.

HIPSTER: My mom’s not proud.

JS: Doreen is proud.

HIPSTER: My whole family thing didn’t work out. Oh, you’re doing an interview?

JS: Yeah. It’s going pretty good so far.

RC: We’re hired.

[useless conversation]

HIPSTER: Come downstairs and find me when you’re done being a faggot.

JS: Hey, I’m kicking ass tonight! Karen’s over in the bathroom line talking to some guy about anal sex.

KH (from line): What’s that?

JS: Karen, she’s the godsend.

MRR: Is she the steadying influence you need in Clockcleaner?

JS: Karen has been the perfect addition to this band since it’s started. [to HIPSTER]: Get out of here, you fuckin’ skinny prick.

MRR: Let’s talk about Karen’s perpetual black eye. I noticed that it’s healed.

JS: Well, she used to have this boyfriend, and they were kind of into roleplaying, Renaissance fairs, punching each other during sex …

RC: Life-sized chess boards.

MRR: I guess he’s out of her life now?

JS: Yeah. Karen’s the kind of deviant we’ve always wanted, minus a bruise or lesion or two. She’s kind of like the rug in “The Big Lebowski.” She really tied the room together.

MRR: What’s up with that six-string bass?

JS: She inherited that. It’s not by choice, it’s by necessity. None of us can afford gear.

MRR: Let’s bore everybody and talk about gear. You’re a supporter of the Crate PowerBlock, right?

JS: Yeah, the PowerBlock. $99, 150 watts, Everett can suck me. Richie plays a drum kit.

RC: I play some drums.

JS: Karen plays out of free gear, all of it Crate.

MRR: So you’re kind of like freegans?

JS: We’re kind of like freegans, except we don’t have calendars made out of used tampons. None of us have a Slingshot reminder book, none of us have goofy hats or, like, blow each other on the weekends for fun, or like, on videotape. We just do regular stuff. We basically live under a bridge, we have a boombox and we play the first Bauhaus record and the first Modern English record under the bridge, smoke cloves …

RC: And all the animals that cross my path have become my pets.

JS: I call Richie “Spacebeard” sometimes. We hang up dead cats off the ceiling of the bridge, we let them ferment, we eat them.

MRR: Let’s go back to this Bauhaus/Modern English thing. I listened to your new demos, and you’ve moved into direction that some might construe as death rock, that some might construe as gothic punk. Let’s touch on that.

RC: Yawn.

MRR: No we need to talk about this, because up until now, your band has referenced a lot of things, like an AmRep/Touch & Go Midwestern sound, that has largely been discarded over the last 10 years or so.

JS: This is all I can describe it as. The way our first record came out was a demo. It was kind of the first thing we’d ever recorded together (The Hassler, Manic Ride Records), so it was kind of premature and sophomoric. The second one was much more focused, but still … not exactly how I’d have liked things to come out.

MRR: It’s a great record!

JS: Oh yeah, it’s a great record, it’s the first record I’ve been proud of.

KH: You can blame it on me!

JS: You’re not on it.

KH: No, I mean the new sound.

JS: No, I can’t blame it on you. You didn’t write any of the songs. I write all those stupid goth songs.

MRR: It’s more of a focus from the first one. I’m not talking about The Hassler, I don’t believe that it exists…

JS: Neither do we. We believe a song or two does but not that album.

MRR: But Nevermind really just lurches on, it gets slower as it goes on.

JS: Well, Nevermind was written as an album. It wasn’t written as songs; I wrote it as an entity. I wrote the songs, Richard and I conceived it. The bass player that would have been on that record really didn’t’ focus hard enough on it, so it was left up to us, and we decided to make it a chunk instead of a bunch of songs. The new one is like … having been back in Philadelphia for two and a half years, there’s certain things about that city that just make it not a pleasant place to live …

MRR: Explain.

JS: It’s just a shitty city, it’s like, the murder rate is higher than most places this year…

MRR: Have you guys experienced any crime?

JS: Well, I live in the shittiest part of the city. I live in North Philly. I come home and there’s a bum pissing on my fuckin’stoop. I have to lock my car in a gate, behind a barbed wire fence, or it’ll get keyed, like it did a month before I could do that. Philadelphia is … and none of us can move. None of us are deep enough in the pockets that we can just up and move to Brooklyn or something.

MRR: Well, what about elsewhere in Philly?

JS: That’s not even an option for anybody. Housing prices are rising due to false demand. It’s not as cheap as it was a few years ago, even. And people will attribute that to more and more affluent people moving into the city, and that is true, but nothing’s really changed. The quality of life in the city has not improved, but the costs have.

MRR: I think it’s fair to say that that’s happened across the board, though.

JS: It has, for the most part, everywhere you go.

RC: It’s clear that housing costs are the reason why Nevermind sounds the way it does.

JS: That’s true

RC: To answer your question.

JS: Housing costs also dictate a lifestyle.

RC: What are you getting at here? What kind of interview is this?

MRR: I think it’s important, because how you live is dictating how you sound. It’s clear you’re not really trying to be a certain kind of band.

JS: You gotta realize that all of us live check-to-check. None of us live like we’re deep in the pockets.

MRR: Yeah, like all of us.

JS: There’s nothing more different than us than your local schlub who’s a carpenter or something

MRR: So you’re craftsmen.

JS: I screen t-shirts, Richie brews beer, Karen pushes the pencil her ass off. We all have day jobs, but we still can work 45 hours a week, practice three nights a week, and are able to tour when we feel like it

MRR: Are you seeing the same things in other places when you’re out on the road?

JS: Not exactly.

KH: Other places seem to be way more interesting. We meet people living the same way, but it seems way better.

RC: Every city you go to, that’s like the drinkingest city in America. Trenton? Forget it.

JS: Oklahoma City? You’ll never get more fucked up in Oklahoma City than you will in Lawrence, Kansas! Or Branson, Missouri!

RC: We love drinkin’ in fuckin’ Madison, that’s for sure.

[We break to get more beers]

JS: We love to tour as much as we can.

[interrupted by HIPSTER #2]

HIPSTER #2: I was just Berdancin’.

MRR: We should talk about Berdan. He’s a big influence on Clockcleaner.

KH: No, he’s not.

MRR: Well, maybe on Sharkey.

JS: Berdan’s penis is gray and stiff, that’s all I have to say

MRR: It’s like E.T.

JS: Berdan’s dick has rigor mortis. It doesn’t get hard. It’s just dead.

MRR: OK, we’ve hit a cul-de-sac.

JS: Berdan has a cul-de-sac, it’s called his fuckin’ vagina.

MRR: OK, back to touring.

JS: We did a bunch of touring on our own means.

KH: Playing all places other than Philly are excellent.

JS: Yeah, Philadelphia sucks to play in. It’s a fuckin’ fickle town. You know what towns we like to play in? St. Louis. Great people there. Corbeta Corbata, great band to play with. Cleveland. The Homostupids, the best band in America. I say that with all my heart. Number one band in America.

RC: Those guys kick ass

JS: They rule. Best band in America. Cleveland is good. Lawrence is good.

RC: Lawrence is great. We didn’t actually play a gig there.

JS: We ditched our gig because some girls got mad at us because they made us dumpstered potato stew.

MRR: Food Not Bombs.

JS: Did they even flyer?

RC: Yeah, but all the flyers were on dumpsters in back alleys, which is also where they get their food.

MRR: So they were just targeting to their audience.

KH: It was very uncool.

RC: Yeah, but I climbed up on a goalpost there, and we went to William Burroughs’ house. So that town rules.

JS: (looking at GG Allin records) So many great songs on here.

HIPSTER #3: (walks over to table) I’m a huge fan of Clockcleaner, so the first thing I did was got an H&M jacket.

KH: Yeeaaaoh! WOOOO!

JS: Then I got a military hat, and my penis grew 30 inches …

MRR: It lifted up this table we’re sitting around.

JS: Still not as big as Zac Carr’s enormous schlonger. He puts out forest fires with it.

KH: Who is this Zac Carr?

JS: Oh, he was that guy in that stupid outfit. Towns we like. Cleveland, Ohio. Lived there, loved it. Austin, Texas. It only sucks there because everyone in that town has nothing to do but talk about how awesome their town is.

MRR: You played with Trail of Dead down there, right?

JS: They cancelled, because I think one of them found some aspirin for them all to snort. But we played it, and slayed the crowd, which is normal. Those cities are great. Baltimore, kinda cool town to play in but there’s a bunch of fuckin’ dorks there. And Brooklyn, Manhattan, always a good time there.

MRR: What bothers you? I wanna hear about your hates in general. There has to be something in your lives to make you play this kind of music.

KH: What do you mean, “this kind of music”?!

JS: Well, it’s malcontent, it’s slow.

RC: It’s regular stuff.

JS: It’s everyday things that most people can handle, but we can’t deal with.

RC: Who is this guy? I hate this question!

MRR: Go write a song about it.

KH: Give us some drugs!

JS: I’m sick of being sad.

KH: Awww.

JS: It’s true. I’m sick of being a sad man.

MRR: Well, what’s there to be sad about? You live in a shitty place, but you got your woman.

JS: That’s true, I do have my woman. She has big jugs, which is nice.

KH: Jugs are everything.

MRR: I heard you on WFMU the other day talking about how girls are only good for cleavage.

KH: I said girls are good for many things!

JS: No you didn’t, you said girls were good for one thing!

KH: MANY things, cleavage being one of them! I said MEN are good for one thing.

JS: What we hate is fuckin’ poseurs, and tuna fish.

KH: I like tuna fish.

JS: Basically, what Exodus hates, we hate. Exodus ’85 is our aesthetic. It’s not really what we hate so much as it’s … what we hate.

MRR: What you’re no longer willing to tolerate.

JS: Yeah.

KH: We don’t like bullshit.

JS: Bullshit is thriving around us. It’s like plastic fools, and plastic people, bullshit ideas and bullshit music. I don’t give a fuck about politics. I like war. I don’t give a fuck. I truly like wartime. I like to drink beer, I like to have a good time, and there are a lot of things hindering that. And those things upset me. I like Jewish people. I love Jews. If I could convert in good conscience … if my old lady was Jewish, the fuckin’ SECOND we moved in together, I’d be like “fuck it, l’chaim!” Mazel tov, stomp on a fuckin’ wine glass, and I would tool my fuckin’ Jew broad until she fuckin’ came Lucky Charms. No, but like, it’s not so much what we hate, it’s just a lack of tolerance for stupidity.

KH: And bullshit.

MRR: Ignorance?

KH: I think you saying ignorance there is too highbrow.

JS: It’s like, 90% of the people we encounter day-to-day are just completely full of shit. I have no time for bullshit. Can’t you just, like, wanna get laid, get drunk and enjoy your life? Why can’t you enjoy things?

MRR: People can’t own up to things. I was kind of embarrassed, because I booked your first show in NYC at Lit, but I had quit working there by the time you played, so I wasn’t there to run things.

JS: Was that you?

RC: Yeah, thanks.

JS: I had to take a fuckin’ Heineken bottle to the guy who was running it. That was the first time I was even almost physical with a promoter. He wasn’t gonna pay us anything, and I grabbed a bottle and told him, “I’m gonna break this over your face if you don’t give me $60 so we can get home.” And we got $60.

KH: And we paid for gas.

JS: And Extreme Elvis got $60 too, which made us happy.

RC: That guy kicked ass.

JS: He was like, you guys know what you’re doing, you held that guy by his shirt and threatened him until we got paid. I’m not gonna do a job and not get paid for it. Playing music is a job that we like, but we’re still gotta be paid for it. Bob Ross got paid for every fuckin’ one of those paintings he made. And I’m sure he loved it, painting happy little trees, clouds, waves.

KH: Happy clouds!

JS: Bob Ross is a big influence.

MRR: We got lost on a tangent talking about goth.

KH: Goth is a little more melodic punk.

JS: No, goth is a little more dramatic punk.

MRR: But you’re not like…a circus band.

JS: I dunno, a lot of my family’s died in the past two years. It sucks. Gets you down. Half my mother’s side has died in the past two years. And I wasn’t ready for it. When I was a child in school, kids’ relatives would pass every now and then, and I didn’t understand that. Then all of a sudden I turn 23 years old, and they all drop off like flies. I can get into some weird topics, but I don’t wanna get into it.

MRR: Well, we’re gonna have to talk about something, because you’ve answered all of my questions.

JS: Well, I figured out … This is a good one. Astral traveling is a real thing, I know that. I’m being serious. The month after my grandfather died, I started dreaming about him. He would be sitting in my car outside of my parents’ house, asking me about a doorway, and I would wake up paralyzed in fear. I finally talked to my mother about it, and she explained to me that she’d been having the same dreams, not as vivid as you … but we haven’t buried your grandfather yet. He died of cancer within three weeks. He went from being 240 pounds to 190 pounds in a week. He had liver cancer, dropped fifty pounds. I saw him a week before he died, and I almost couldn’t look at him, because he was green, a shell of a man. And he died, and the last thing he did, my mother told me, was hallucinate. Because when you die of organ failure, there’s a certain chemical secreted from your glands that makes you hallucinate. The last thing he said before he died was “Johnny’s hiding underneath the bed.” And I was on the phone with her when he said this, she was in Delaware, where he died. And he dies, I start having these dreams, and I’d wake up like three nights a week, totally paralyzed with fear, feeling like he was actually there. So that’ll affect what kind of songs you’re gonna write. He’s buried now, he’s been interred, but that fucked me up for a while … That and I do like the first Bauhaus record, the first Modern English record, and the first Dead Can Dance record. Killing Joke, but you know. I guess things like that can seep into your brain when you’re trying to be creative. That’s it for the interview. We want to start painting downstairs.