To Live and Shave in L.A. (TLASILA) is an experimental music collective. Begun in 1991, its members live throughout the continental United States, in Belgium, and in Hungary.
As of January 2008, TLASILA is:
Tom Smith, Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra, Ben Wolcott, Don Fleming, Mark Morgan, Weasel Walter, Nandor Nevai, Liz "Misty Martinez" Armstrong, Chris Grier, Andrew Wilkes-Krier, Thurston Moore, Graham Moore, Andrew "Gaybomb" Barranca, Sickboy Milkplus, Mark Shellhaas, Kelly Jamison, Patrick Spurlock, and Balazs Pandi.
The Wire Interview (complete and unedited)
Adapted from a long-form interview with Tom Smith conducted by David Keenan in 2002. Portions of the interview appeared in the magazine's August 2002 issue. The "dub exemplars" section was extracted and amplified into a feature article in issue 14 of the online magazine Blastitude.
Keenan began with questions about Tom's earlier efforts.
BOAT OF / PEACH of IMMORTALITY / PUSSY GALORE
TO LIVE and SHAVE in L.A.
Following a move to Miami's South Beach district in 1991 I began recording at Sync, the studio owned by Frank "Rat Bastard"
Falestra. Rat and I struck up a partnership which continues to this very day. Weeks after being ensconced at the
studio I received an encouraging communiqué from the Noiseville label. They seemed to have dug
Taxi zum Shoah (an unreleased
1988 album by Peach of Immortality), but were more interested in releasing a seven-inch EP than a full-length album. Their
timidity was understandable, as POI had resolutely failed in setting any charts (save those measuring flops, debacles, and
meretricious discontinuities) alight. The Noiseville roster was fairly dire, but, y'know, beggars, choosers...
As to thumbprint, dub, always. I was jolted into consciousness (or at least into a premonition of my eventual descent into
abject formalism) in 1976 by Lee Perry's Super Ape. After picking myself off the floor I knew that I'd heard the clarion -
action was inevitable, my fate sealed. Music should ideally be entropic, should move in all dimensions and spatial
configurations... (Or not.) And it should fucking kick ass while doing so. (Or rest between kicks.)
(Feel free not to worry about this next paragraph – this is really just for my benefit, David. A list of pre-Super Ape
influences. Once I’d heard Perry’s genius at work, I suddenly realized how everything I loved could coexist within the
confines of song form...)
Of course, I knew the roll call of dub exemplars from my early, perhaps too precocious university research: Poe, Baudelaire,
Joyce, Russolo, Ball/Tzara/Honeggar/Schwitters, Theremin and all Russian avant-gardists (1920-1930), Pound,
Bunuel, Duchamp, Man Ray, Henry Miller, Leger, Dali, anyone labeled Entartete Kunst, The Three Stooges, Welles, Nin, Dot Parker, Callas,
Pollock/Krasner, Burroughs, Lee Marvin, the Pierres, that sad Nazi bastard Veit Harlan and his 1958 homoerotic apartment
wrestling film (with partial live electronic music soundtrack, which lifted the narrative from dreary pulp
sediments to rarified peaks of surrealism) The Third Sex, Sun Ra, Partch, Karlheinz, Saul Bass, Joseph Stefano, black-and-white Kubrick,
Cage, Ken Anger, Iannis, Russ Meyer/Stuart Lancaster/RM’s women, Fluxus (in doses), Albert and Don Ayler, Jess Franco’s zoom,
Witold Lutoslawski, Cecil Taylor, Price/Steele/Lee/Cushing, mid-to-late Albert Zugsmith, all atomic test footage, all Toho
monster kino, Link Wray/Junior Raymen, all Doris Wishman, Situationists (esp. those with bad hair), global student revolt and
the inevitable erotic aftermath, Soviet sci-fi kino, Funkadelic (particularly America Eats Its Young, which is still too
brilliant for words), Beefheart/early Mothers, Yoko Ono's Apple albs (and through her, Ornette), Hendrix (I wore out two
vinyl copies of Band of Gypsys for "Machine Gun" alone, not too mention everything else, even the shitty Alan Douglas comps),
Jack Bruce's first three solo albums and his live Cream work, Fela (ca. '71, thanks to Ginger Baker), all Uriah Heep fans,
New York Dolls (for their music, esp. the staggering Too Much Too Soon), Can/Cow/Faust/Wyatt (specifically for
End of an Ear
and Ruth Is Stranger Than Richard), Nitsch, Muehl und ander Vienna Actionists, (Iggy and) Stooges (purists prefer
Asheton, but Williamson was the King Tubby of guitar – his complete and utter flameout post-Stooges only amplifies the truth of the
assertion), American television director Greg Garrison, Miles (1969-1975 only, and woe to all pretenders), some Mahavishnu (but nothing after the original quintet split in '73), Sparks (the first five albums, especially
Indiscreet, still audaciously
brilliant after 20+ years), Jamie Muir, La Barbara, For Your Pleasure (hundreds of spins), all noir fatales (1944-1961),
The
Slider, "Time" from Aladdin Sane, Nico/Eno/Cale/VU, most pre-Utopia Todd, esp. the peerless
Wizard (but not Todd), Portsmouth Sinfonia, Gary Glitter/Glitter Band, a photo of the Sex Pistols in an April '76 issue of Melody Maker (which for me was
almost as significant as actually hearing their music), the titanic Electric Eels (although in truth I didn't know of them
until the Rough Trade "Agitated" single was in my hands ca. '77), the unknown promise suggested by Verlaine's "Break It Up"
solo from Horses, Braxton, the one true living God, Ramones' first two albs (but nothing after), plus everyone else I was
ignorant of in 1976, or still remain clueless about, or perhaps have just omitted.
(Everyone in this daisy chain is of equal import. All other pre-'76 exclusions are intentional. Great free jazz, for
instance, is not always dubwise, ditto for psych and Krautrock. Almost all 60s punk is by necessity dub. Fill in the blanks
for yourselves...)
Still, I had a better than average head start. I could read when I was two, and I spent far too much time in libraries being
probed and tested by laconic Southern academics. My family, God bless 'em, were from the cheatin' side of town, and my
parents' untutored aesthetics were strictly South Georgia style, a dollop of hot pepper sauce atop a weeping heap of
cornstarch. Hillbilly tonk, (white) country gospel, the Baptist Hymnal. My dad owned and managed a stock car racing team in
the early 1960s, so from the age of five I was exposed to the inimitable, obliterative sound of the quarter-mile oval: a
droning, hypnotic roar, punctuated at pertinent intervals (which nonetheless seemed random) by a distorted screech pumped
through a crackling PA system, all of it sent blasting into the open air, and most of it sent back, reflected by stands of
nearby pines. I didn't need to learn about "noise" - it was in my blood before I was ten. These sounds infused me with
warmth, color, widescreen curiosity. After receiving an uncle's used short wave receiver as a gift in 1969 I was shattered,
again re-born. From that narrow bedroom in Adel, Georgia it's just a couple of clicks to this rented Moscow flat near the
Perovo station on the Metro's Yellow Line...
I reckon you can call it White Trash Electro-Acoustics if you prefer to titillate, but for me it's simple - I'm a purveyor of
organic folk, a product of environment, a fusion of innate (and perhaps largely wasted) intellect and Southern dyspeptic
aesthetics.
But - I have no patience for misreadings of Deleuze, Virilio, and Derrida (especially texts appropriated by Scanner and Terre
Thaemlitz apologists). No faux-academic bores. No beards. No Morton Feldman (except when played at an inappropriate - jacked
-up - volume. No lathe-cut wax cylinder CD-R Tandy C-45 fucking losers, at least those who totemize such tools as
signifiers of unalloyed intent. (Or, not.)
The real avant-garde is smiling.
TLASILA? Seething subtext, hysterical pretext. Radical expression that demands galloping repression. Volumes boiled away to
reveal...
With TLASILA is there a deliberate aesthetic that you are attempting to
realize?
Yes.
How would you articulate it?
I call it PRE. As opposed to notions of "post," a negation of the errant supposition that spiffed-up or newly hatched
movements supplant others fit for retirement. I first wrote of PRE in a 1980 issue of
Hot Java, a short-lived Athens, Georgia zine. (Catch the B-52s reference?) I suggested that art, music, cinema, literature was of infinite duration, by nature
endlessly resonant, and as such made genre distinctions (and hand wringing over aesthetic periodicity in particular)
obsolete. Marc Weitz from Menlo Park and I also discussed the nature of PRE over a series of 1998 conversations, and together
we decided to apply the term to the music we helped bring into being. It just fits, y’know? I’m not suggesting that anyone
else adopt it, or even consider it. Nothing is fixed.
PRE? As in: all possibilities extant, even the disastrous ones.
When were TLASILA formed?
In 1988, while pondering rental options in the (uh, electro-acoustic) porn section of my local video shop, I chanced upon a
title of such staggering banality that it fairly took my breath away. Porn producers have always appropriated mainstream
Hollywood titles - Screw the Right Thing, Edward Penishands - but when I saw
To Live and Shave in L.A. (director Ron “The
Hedgehog” Jeremy’s pitiable twist on the bracing 1985 policier To Live and Die in L.A.), I was overjoyed. I knew that my next
project would have to bear the name.
In May 1990 I recorded the first rough To Live and Shave in L.A. demos. They were sketches, nothing more, but I sent them to
Don Fleming, and his enthusiasm was very encouraging. With his approval, I felt secure enough to continue. My aim was to
combine multiple streams of constantly shifting text to explore everyday human emotions – through such a corrosive, allusory
wash I hoped to reveal thematic connections that I otherwise might never have bothered to uncover. (This may remind certain
of your readers of the standard Gyson-Burroughs palaver, but my libretti are not random, owe nothing to stochastic or
aleatory operations, and in their specificity are rigidly fixed to character. My approach is strictly cinematic. Which, er, was kinda
theirs too. Oh well, I borrow from the best!)
(That noted, G-B were of course a profound literary influence, and my admiration for Burroughs’ crypto hyper-fi oeuvre is
undiminished.)
The musical backdrops were predicated on the possibilities inherent in a collision
of free dub, extreme musique concrete, aggressive, improvisational trash rock, a subversion and adaptation of the tropes of 60s roughie / grindhouse cinema, down
home country-gospel seasoning, and glam-operatic vox ('cuz punk/metal posturing has always struck me as a goddamned lie - not
Hell, not Rotten, not T.V. Smith, not Ari Up, not Styrene, not the Kleenex chicks or the dudes from Metal Urbain, not Dave E,
but hordes have gotten it wrong, constricting themselves in suffocating tics and tropes... not for me!).
So, Noiseville asked Peach of Immortality to record an EP for them, and after receiving Tim Seaton’s long-distance assent, I
blew them off long enough to accept yet another invite from Don Fleming, this time to travel to New York to record the Tom
Smith Don Fleming: Gin Blossoms EP for the (also long dead) UK imprint Seminal Twang. I dashed off a few lyric fragments, we
looped Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Sal Mineo, and Hugo Montenegro samples, and set to work. Don mixed everything; we knocked
five songs out in an afternoon. It was the first time I’d sung since the Boat Of days, and I suspect that this was Don’s
primary goal. He may still rue the day, as I’ve yet to shut up.
Rat Bastard and I began recording Spatters of a Royal Sperm in November 1991, and by the end of December we’d completed the
masters. Each of its four tracks was inspired by women with whom I’d experienced either an intense (or oddly stultifying)
love affair, and these themes were reflected both textually and sonically. Although I’d not yet made the name change from POI
to TLASILA, it was more or less the first official To Live and Shave in L.A. recording.
What was the early sound like?
The Spatters EP began with loops culled from JSBX's eponymous album (the one after
Willie Horton), a half-eaten cassette tape
found on Miami Beach's Washington Avenue (from which a very warped fragment of the Rolling Stones' "Get Off of My Cloud" was
salvaged), dire mid-70s American (sub-REO Speedwagon) proggers Head East, and a soundtrack excerpt from a 60s Barry Mahon
nudie. Over these beds I layered live tape manipulations (too sources many to mention) and vocals, usually three or
four threads per song. Rat Bastard mixed everything - as much as I enjoy having total control over my work, I am equally
enamored of ceding that authority to others. (Besides, Rat was a revelation, and remains a superior technical adept to this
day. I've learned much from him.) The overall effect was shocking – when it worked (in retrospect, two of the
four tracks seem a mite too diffuse in tone), it pulverized, yet drew the listener into the maelstrom. Where they would
dance, move, smile... feel itching sensations... cower, suffer a stroke, and crap themselves. Intellect and libido
simultaneously tweaked, exactly what I was shooting for.
Noiseville liked it as well, but... The label went belly-up before it could be released. To deflect this horrific jinx and
sever a few foul ties with the past, I made the name change to To Live and Shave in L.A. a permanent one, and decided to
issue the next album myself...
The first proper To Live and Shave in L.A. release was 1994‘s 30-minuten männercreme. It was assembled from January 1992 to
November 1993, with Rat and I sharing mixing assignments. Seventy songs were recorded, of which 40 were selected for the
album. It was a mélange of looped samples, musique concrete passages, cut-up radio transmissions, hard disk and tape
manipulations, and live club recordings, over which Rat’s bass, the contributions of a handful of guest musicians (including
L’Trimm’s Tigra DeRougemont and Harry Pussy’s Bill Orcutt and Adris Hoyos), and my vocals were added. To my delight, it was
hailed as something of a breakthrough, even by cunts who had written me off a few years previous to its appearance. A decade
later, however, it sounds rather patchy – several of its tracks could easily have been omitted for other, more interesting
songs. Still, it ain’t that dreadful, and fans refer to it to this day.
What's with the name?
Essentially, the more exalted one’s intent, the more insipid the moniker should be.
(At least that’s the way I felt in 1988.)
Your music stands resolutely outside such categories as rock, improv, concrete, etc. How would you describe your
relationship to genre?
Genre is obsolete.
Do you think of your music as rock based?
No. But... Why Popp when one can Deicide? Few panties are thrown at Mille Plateau (f)artistes, and those that are seem to be
made of a dreary brushed cotton offering midriff support.
Who do you see as TLASILA's peers?
No one seems to have had the unfortunate urge to follow our misshapen footsteps with any avidity, but there are a few folks
whose work I openly admire: Gerard Klauder (both Diaghilev and Nijinsky in one wan corpus, the iconoclast behind (the
alternate) TLASILA 2, TLASILA 3, and leader of scabrous South Florida cabalists Dixie Prix - his editing skills and
aesthetic reckoning are second to none); Andy Bolus, the waterlogged brain propelling Evil Moisture into marvelous, insensate
lurch (his lubricious light-speed collages make mockery of the likes of Stock, Hausen and Walkman); Jodie McCann, aka
Monotrona (who resides in a dense, palpitating universe of her own mad devising – her recordings are extraordinary, without
precedent); Nandor Nevai, the sick fucking genius behind the now-defunct Flemish Masters imprint; Sightings, the best band in
America for at least three years now - they continue to evolve at a demonic pace, and dullards be damned; Seymour Glass, the
Bananafish editor and member (with the fab Barbara Manning) of Glands of External Secretion – his music, rarely critiqued, is
brilliant, wholly wry and unyielding; Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes, Galen, etc.) and his beautifully warped Hanson Records
roster; and Schimpfluch Gruppe, the Swiss Actionist collective – they are without peer.
You worked with basement infidels like Prick Decay and Lake of Dracula - did you share something in common with those guys?
I take umbrage at the characterization. An infidel has no faith. These artists believe. Decaer Pinga’s Dylan Nyoukis abjures
mediocrity with every waking breath. Jim, Heather and Chris (Lake of Dracula) rehearsed relentlessly (in a loft, thank you),
and their lone Skin Graft release sent arcs of licorice-flavored spunk jetting off the turntable. Why not deem Autechre or
Boards of Canada drawing room infidels?
What did I share in common with Prick Decay and Lake of Dracula? Friendship. A love for Manolo Blanik sandals. Adjacent
dachas in the Yaroslavl countryside..
Was the whole tape-noise underground important to you?
No.
What's the Miami scene like?
No scene, really. A few eccentric singer-songwriters, slovenly, half-arsed noise wastrels, dire Sonic Youth clones – that’s
about it. There are exceptions – Rat Bastard, Ben Wolcott, Dan Hosker, Gerard Klauder, Rene Barge. All groovy cats.
Was there an element of pranksterism to TLASILA? Yr titles like "Peter Criss vs. Peter Christopherson" were fantastic.
The titles are more sleight-of-hand than anything else. (But thanks for the kind compliment.)
How did your lyric style evolve?
Loads of experimental writing throughout high school (obvious, unfocused, the usual gush), far too much Meltzer and Bangs in
my early college work (Creem was an exemplary mag, and I wore the influence over my sleeves, regardless of season), and still
a bit precocious in the early 1980s. From the mid-80s my style – whatever the Hell it is – seemed to be in its nascence. By
1990 I was in full stride, and as the decade ground on my heels were often caught in delightful drainage grates. I write for
characters, and I sing for each of them. There are interior monologues, conversations between characters within verses,
references to film, music, art and literature (all fixed to the imagined predilection of character), the gamut. As previously
muttered, I compose cinematically. In real life, dialogue is trammeled. I try to retain a sense of that in my writing. As for
my petty editorial crimes (I’ve been published regularly since the mid-70s), editors hate me. I take forever with
assignments; many have disowned me outright. I become quite excited at the prospect of penning a Blues Traveler menu or a
Morbid Angel think piece, but give me a Table of the Elements CD and my eyes glaze in an instant.
Do you feel close to any particular poets or vocalists?
Proximity at this late juncture is impossible: Ezra Pound, James Joyce, Henry Miller, many moldering others. As for singers:
Galas, Roxy Ferry (‘71-’73), Ricky Williams (Sleepers and Toiling Midgets), Steve Marriott (Humble Pie ‘69-’73 –
fundamentalist Wire subscribers may snigger, but the man had extraordinary technique and control, and at his peak he was
every bit as avant as Derek Bailey); early Funkadelic-era Clinton (incredible nuance), George Jones (late 50s – early 60s
specifically – complete and utter mastery of form); Joan La Barbara, Maria Callas, Marc Bolan, and James Marlon Magas (Couch,
Lake of Dracula, Miss High Heel). God knows I’m utterly hopeless when compared to any and all of ‘em.
Are you influenced by Hermetic texts like Fludd, Bruno, etc.? That's what your lyrics often remind me of.
No, not at all. Trismegistus, Agrippa, Bruno, Fludd and Bruce Russell can all blow me. I’m not into mysticism, although e do
get a kick out ov old TOPY (and related plagiarists’) texts from thee 80s.
Is music concrete important to you, or were you more interested in noise a la Whitehouse, Merzbow, etc., or neither or
what?
Musique concrete, rather like dub, is pretty darned central to everything that I am. I’ve no interest, however, in
replicating form – the ideas were important, have long since been inculcated, and thar she blows. (I’m no electro-acoustic
fetishist – there aren’t too many binnnng-blip-blurp-zonnngs in my work.) As a kid I created concrete intuitively – I’d fuck
around with my parents’ Sylvania hi-fi console, spinning their gospel and Broadway soundtrack albums at the wrong speed, off
their axes, switching maniacally between phono and tuner, etc. I never tired of the sound, and now it’s spread over morning
toast. Noise bores me to tears. Whitehouse? One-note vaudevillians memorable only for their criminal misreadings of Sade. (That said, Great White Death was a fine comedy album, on par with Cheech and Chong’s
Big Bambu.) Merzbow? He may be making an
effort with his new prog loop stuff, but I lost interest around 1671. It’s nice to be blasted on occasion, but so few
purveyors swagger. (Sudden Infant/Schimpfluch Gruppe’s Joke Lanz, for instance, has the required heft. Sadly, the average
noise clod is more Robbie Benson than Bob Mitchum.) A few noisevolk are making an effort to change, but I'm still
unconvinced.
One thing that really struck me is how well you organised and composed with noise and cut-up sound - what do you think of
noise music, despite what people say (that it's very easy to tell the difference between "mere" noise and its really focused
use).
I do not think of noise music. The silences through which it attempts to cleave are inevitably far more interesting.
Can you tell me a little about the compositional process? How much is composed, how much is improvised?
As with American International Pictures’ pre-production regimen, I begin with a title. Sets are assembled, and a script is
drafted. Then we shoot, break for a three-week lunch, film a bit more. Some thesps adhere to script, others mug incessantly.
After we wrap, eons of editing. A few select test screenings, and then… More tweaking. Finally, the obligatory premiere,
barbs and huzzahs slung in equal measure. Then, a well-earned piss-up. Rub my weary orbs the next morning, and begin again.
How has the TLASILA sound developed up until now, or is it possible to talk of it in linear terms like that?
Yes, David, it is possible to speak of the linear development of the TLASILA sound. It rarified, coalesced, finally fucking
worked with Wigmaker. God and Country Rally! sends it packing to a new redoubt - more polar phase shift than sonic manifesto,
however.
What were/are your live shows like?
Usually, a
big bloody mess. No control whatsoever over any aspect of the proceedings.
Impossible acoustics, frequently hostile venues. Often we were too goddamned
loud, so would-be adherents were pushed back to the bar, to the sidewalk outside
the club.
Can you give me a bit of the flavour?
Sort of a pineapple curry with the pungent aroma of shadow benny.
Was it very different to the records?
As dissimilar as Monica Belluci is to Hag Thatcher…
Tell me about the process behind "Wigmaker" - did it really take 5 years?
Yes.
How come?
The album mirrored the disintegration of my marriage, became a metaphor for it. Reconciliation followed estrangement, which
harrowed further reconciliation, which exacerbated mistrust, which led to outright loathing. It dragged on for years, and the
creation of Wig was inextricably linked to that collapse. “Blandina, Oberwilding ‘77” represents the initial, duplicitous
shocks; “Honeycomb Tripe” is a howl of cynical resignation. (With myriad subtextual shadings, of course.) Not pretty, but at
least I tried to be fair.
Was it just a particularly rigorous process?
Yes, very much so.
Thousands of hours of studio time alone. Thank Christ I was employed as an engineer; otherwise I could never have afforded
the expense. (I did everything after hours, off the books, etc.)
Was there a lot of remixing?
I’ve got twenty-two 90-minute DATs stuffed with
Wigmaker mixes, edit sequences, test templates,
"micro-splice" structures, etc. And I pruned 15 minutes from each disc – initially it was set to run 150 minutes! Sanity
prevailed. I wanted the album to be absorbing, not a commiserative ordeal. After all, divorce is a rather prosaic subject.
It’s all in the telling.
How do you feel about the many TLASILA follow-up bands?
How could one not be flattered? It was wonderfully absurd – I couldn’t have designed a more perfect finale. Better to have
one’s fans devour the corpse!
You seem to have spawned a mini-industry - what was it about TLASILA that touched such a raw nerve?
God, I haven’t a clue. You’d have to sift through a lot of tea leaves to get to the root of it all. TLASILA 2 were parodists
(and former sidemen) with a feverish anti-TS manifesto. (They were completely full of shit, of course.) They bootlegged a
TLASILA radio performance from our 1999 tour and issued it twice, once on CD-R, later on CD through the aegis of an unwitting
Belgian label. Cheeky fuckers. TLASILA 3 were anti-TLASILA 2, although they shared a member in Rat Bastard (who tried to be
in as many of the clone bands as possible.) Gerard Klauder’s alternate TLASILA 2 and 3 pricked the pretensions of T2, and
created a hilarious, detourned mirror of their web site. The former released a raft of CD-Rs preceding the other clone
recordings. It was hard to keep track of it all! I Live in L.A. produced the first live show of any of the spin-offs, and
they seemed to be the most sincere in their adherence to TLASILA performance norms – they ripped through a fairly accurate
recreation of our set. I Love L.A. never actually did anything, but they announced their existence with great fanfare,
produced a comically terse anti-anti-manifesto, and had the best name of the lot. Born in East L.A. were dead serious (they
existed for some years as Biela Or Belial); they issued an interesting cassette on the White Tapes label, and made
a few swank
t-shirts along the way. To Live and Shave in L.A. 1975 existed only on record, and their lone CD-R release was agreeably fucked.
I can’t imagine that I would inspire such fealty to an idea.
Tell me a little about your new group OHNE.
Background: In 1997 TLASILA and Schimpfluch Gruppe shared a bill in Paris. I was blown away by Schimpfluch’s performance, and
Dave Phillips of SG seemed to enjoy our set as well. We became friends, and stayed in touch. The opportunity to create a
project arose in August 2000 with To Live and Shave in L.A.'s hiatus. Dave asked Swiss laptop demon Reto Mäder (aka rm74) and
Daniel Lowenbruck (proprietor of the East Berlin-based Tochnit Aleph imprint) to join the group, and we became OHNE. Dave
comes from the new Swiss Actionist school. Since 1988 he’s been testing the limits of performance with Fear of God,
Schimpfluch, and Runzelstrin & Gurglestock. He explores a dizzying spectrum of audio curiosities with breathless enthusiasm,
and takes no sound for granted. His most recent solo album - IIII - is a fine précis of his perspective. Reto investigates
sonic calamities, errors, failures, and infuses them with tremendous warmth. His collages fairly drip with menace, nuance,
and seditious humor. Brilliant performer as well. His solo albums on the Swiss Domizil imprint are must-owns. Daniel deftly
transmutes the latent energy of hardcore’s splintered hyper-speed breakbeats and widescreen distortions into a sort of
harrowing stasis. It’s quite remarkable. On stage, he acts as Dave’s evil twin – more than once I’ve found myself covered in
appalling goop after falling prey to a “spitting action.” As for yours truly, I am most definitely not calling the shots with
OHNE. It is a tremendous relief. Who wouldn’t relish the opportunity to be subsumed into a group identity after working for
the better part of a decade on The Wigmaker? I focus on engagement, drawing the audience into the performance with voice and
movement. So far, things are going well. Following a creaky Parisian debut we’ve performed in Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus,
Russia, Poland, and now the Czech Republic. Soon we head for Slovakia, Austria, Slovenia, and Switzerland. Two memorable
performances thus far – Art Teritorija in Kaunas, and the Bunkr in Moscow. Both quite astounding. Limited-edition albums
documenting our performances in Minsk and Yaroslavl have been issued (and are only
available in Belarus and Russia), and we hope to issue a compilation of tour highlights and aberrations (accompanied by a separate DVD) later.
We returned to the fray in November 2004 with a mini-tour of Finland and Russia.
Just couldn't get enough of those Northern
climes.
OHNE sound quite removed from TLASILA, whose aesthetic always seemed resolutely trashy. Is this accurate?
OHNE’s sound is indeed quite removed from that of TLASILA, whose aesthetic was aggressively literate, wholly removed from
avant-garde norms, and infused with idiot grandeur. That TLASILA refused to wet themselves over the risible muzak promulgated
by the daft Stalinists at Wire Kultur Kontrol (and other rags and hacks who ought by now be extremely embarrassed) should by
no means suggest that we weren’t serious. But… Our avant-garde was a lot more fucked up, and a lot more fun. (Incus
completists aren’t exactly known for their scintillating wit and breezy cocktail party banter.) At heart, we were anti-idolaters. That I’m an unrepentant snob perhaps muddies the distinction, but, y’know, dichotomy rools. TLASILA accepted all
genres, all sounds, and those that we in turn rejected were heartlessly recycled. We also embraced all things human, relished
them, licked them. Some folks want wan wax cylinder scritch; others want Momente (or Cannibal Corpse, or James Last) and a
double fucking vodka. As NWA so sagely noted in “Gangsta Gangsta”: “We don't just say no, we too busy sayin' YEAH!“ So, yeah,
we were pretty trashy.)
Did you feel that you'd taken the TLASILA concept as far as possible?
No. I just became bloody sick of it. The clones wiped the foul mess up but good, and set me free. Oh, the contradictions!
We're back, and I must recant everything.
Can you tell me a little bit about the various members of TLASILA and what their contributions were?
Certainly, David. Thank you for asking. Rat Bastard (known to his mum as Frankie Falestra) had the unfortunate luck to hook
up with me in 1991. He mixed the whole of Spatters and half of the tracks on 30-mm, and we shared engineering duties on
almost all of TLASILA’s albums. He first joined me onstage in 1993, and played bass like no one I’d ever before seen. (Frank
has large hands, knows his instrument very well, and is particularly adept at absurd, fiery fret board runs. He throws
himself and his bass about with malignant abandon – more than one person’s shins have been abraded by the tuning pegs of his
Gibson after he’s slung it into the audience at the end of a verse, song, concert.) The noise you suggested I composed came
primarily from none other than Mr. Bastard – he ran his bass through a vintage Russian distortion unit which made the
goddamned thing sound like a pair of GE turbofan engines scarfing water lilies and postal inspectors on the second RET
centerline of Gatwick runway 26L. (With harmonics intact.) Outstanding fellow.
Ben Wolcott joined To Live and Shave in L.A. in 1994 – we met at a party he threw early in the year, and as he was
entertaining his guests with Miles Davis’ Dark Magus (at a time before it had been reissued on CD) I was impelled to
introduce myself. When we met to discuss TLASILA a week or so later I was delighted to learn that Ben – from the age of
twelve – had been building electronic circuits, crafting oscillators from schematic diagrams, and experimenting with light
and motion to create queasy audio environments. I played him a few cuts from the then-just released
30-minuten männercreme,
and he expressed interest in contributing to the effort. With Wolcott in the fold, the band’s sound veered wildly off course.
(Which was the desired intent.) His hand-rigged oscillators howled with disapproval – they were as prone to pitch loss as any
old VSC3, and were easily damaged. Nonetheless, they produced a briar-flecked thicket of decelerating, vertigo-inducing
static through which Rat and I were forced to hack.
This line-up recorded everything from ‘Helen Butte’ vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell to
Tony Conrad, Fat-Ass.
Rat now primarily performs with Laundryroom Squelchers, a sort of noise carnival sideshow troupe who make one helluva racket
and spill many cheap American beers. His importance to the Miami underground scene cannot be overstated. After a stint with
glorious Miami sleaze-rock merchants Frosty, Ben dropped out of the music racket and now works as an art director for film
and television. He also pulls out the oscillators and light contraptions for the occasional solo performance/installation.
How did Andrew W.K. get involved?
Background: I met Andrew in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1996. I was in the midst of a production tour, and wanted to record an
album’s worth of material with Aaron Dilloway and Julie Huntington, both former members of the magnificent mid-90s teen no-wave coven The Galen. Aaron assembled a stellar cast of Ypsilanti/Ann Arbor luminaries for the project, which was soon
christened Sucking Coeds. Among them were future members of Wolf Eyes, Nautical Almanac, Metalux... and Andrew Wilkes-Krier.
He was totally cool (he must have been 16 at the time), utterly lacking in pretense, and enthusiastic as hell. We recorded
for the better part of two days (Andrew played drums and treatment-slathered drum machine; I played optigon and T. Rex cut-ups), but unfortunately the tapes were lost, or burned, eaten, something. The only record that survived was a cassette copy
made on a 15-year-old stereo Walkman clone with failing batteries. Nonetheless, in 2001 the droogs at Gods of Tundra released
Team H.E.A.T., a re-mastered, pitch-corrected CD-R of the sessions. It’s ultra low-fi, hardly begins to convey the sounds we
produced, but it stakes out an aesthetic nonetheless. Andrew and I were reacquainted in 1999 in NYC, and spent several
memorable evenings together stalking the streets of SoHo, talking about music, literature, work,
girls, life. Andrew was putting his studio together at the time, and although I never had the opportunity to hear an in-progress version of
AWKGOJ, our mutual pal Mark Morgan (from Sightings) did, and he raved and raved. (I also let AWK hear a few minutes from the not-quite-yet-completed
Wigmaker, and his nods of assent were much appreciated.) When Andrew hooked up with his management team
and the shit really started cooking – the crazy early gig in Brussels, Dave Grohl asking him to open for Foo Fighters, the
Island Def Jam/Mercury deal, Radio 1, the two NME covers, “Party Hard” ringtones – man, I was so delighted for him. It’s
always great when someone cool can break into the asylum. Now that he’s been added to the Ozzfest line-up, Christ... I love
so much of I Get Wet – “Party Till You Puke” is especially brilliant. Pundits almost never site the (obvious) Sparks
influence – AWK prefers the Moroder-produced material to the Island stuff, but man, if they only listened closely... In their
prime, the Bros. Mael were untouchable.
Clarification: “Production tour” - three months in Chicago, with the odd Detroit-Ann
Arbor side trip. I made the still-unreleased Miss High Heel studio album The Family’s Hot Daughter, Scissor Girls’
S-T-A-T-I-C-L-A-N-D, Brian McMahon’s 17 Volts, Duotron’s dubiously
titled Duotron vs. Tom Smith, an unreleased album for Nandor Nevai’s Aborted Christ
Childe project, and Team H.E.A.T. Miss High Heel: an assemblage of the most fucked-up talents from the Chicago no-wave scene.
The group comprised Jim Magas, Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers), Azita Youseffi (Scissor Girls), Jodie McCann (Duotron),
Nandor Nevai, Mike Green (who relocated to Chicago in the early 90s), a few other wandering souls, and for
piquant seasoning, Jim O’Rourke. I mixed and produced the sessions, recording approx. 150 minutes of material. Those tracks were then incessantly
remixed, and the resulting dub versions were used as templates around which other songs could be created. Our mission was
accomplished – the album is hopelessly raw. We twice performed live (a great New Year’s Eve 1995 party which featured
MHH, Duotron, and Bobby Conn), and an early January ’96 radio gig at Chicago’s WZRD-FM. The latter recording, more a series of
comedy routines than an actual performance, was issued on the Skin Graft sub-label B-Sides in 1997 as
Split Wax Cylinder (Inscribed: Beast 661). The studio album is a million times better, but it will likely never be issued. Just too fucked-up.
Are you involved in anything else except for your new Mego band?
Yes, there’s a lot of stuff on the horizon. The TLASILA
retrospective box, reissues, production stuff, a solo album I kept putting off for years but recently managed to complete,
more collaborations... I prefer to keep it (relatively) low-key, and take my time. (OHNE will continue as well.)
Let me know what's next for you.
Coffee, a shower, lunch with new friends we’ve met in Bratislava, retrieval of the van, and then a bucolic drive to Vienna.
Rat and Tom decided to revive To Live and Shave in L.A. during the mastering session for "God and Country Rally" in Miami Beach on December 30, 2003. In short order the group was invited to perform at Carlos Giffoni's No Fun Festival (which took place over a long weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in March 2004).
Mark Morgan (guitarist and vocalist with New York's confounding, brilliant Sightings) had a standing invitation (he was to have taken part in TLASILA's 1999 tour), as did long-time Smith pal and musical associate Don Fleming. Andrew W.K. came aboard in April of 2004, and Ben Wolcott signed on in late July.
Chris Grier was brought in by Don in August 2004 to fill the role of TLASILA majordomo, a job he performed with admirable ease (and just the right amount of menace). Thurston Moore threw his support behind the group in December 2004; he appeared with the collective at the Noise Against Fascism anti-inauguration ball in Washington, DC on January 20, 2005, and he performed on the forthcoming Noon and Eternity album. (As is Mr. Grier.) Graham Moore was invited to lend his talents in August 2006; Moore is a member of Atlanta, Georgia's Black Meat as well as the proprietor of the Blossoming Noise label.
Collectivization Accelerates
Andrew Barranca was roped into the fold in December 2006, as was Belgian breakcore phenom Sickboy Milkplus. Weasel Walter performed with TLASILA again during the collective's April-May tour of the States in support of their Les Tricoteuses compendium. Misty Martinez rejoined the group on that excursion as well. Ms. Martinez and Nandor Nevai recorded and performed with TLASILA in August 2007 during the sessions (and lone club date) for the soon-to-be-released Cortege album. Former Peach of Immortality stalwart Mark Shellhaas and Ill Humor alumnus Kelly Jamison threw caution to the winds and entered the Shave gulag; Patrick Spurlock, a composer and performer from the rattlesnake-infested wilds of Moultrie, Georgia, helped swell the collective's numbers. And in December 2007, Hungarian percussionist Balazs Pandi joined the ensemble. Mr. Pandi will make his debut with TLASILA in April during the group's European tour.
Profiles (from TLASILA's 2004 tour guide):
electronics, bass guitar, etc.
guitar, synthesizer, backing vocals, etc.
guitar, bass, electronics, majordomo
electronics, treatments, stage management
guitar and treatments, etc.
guitar, electronic, backing vocals, etc.
vocals, electronics, etc.
keyboards, backing vocals, etc.
oscillators and treatments, etc.
BIO 2
(Adapted from bio page of TLASILA's former "mpolk" site, with modifications and updates.)
If you're confused by certain omissions (particularly those relating to Peach of Immortality, Boat Of, etc.) , have no fear - an extensive background bio section will be readied. Each member of TLASILA has an absurdly lengthy history and discography; for the moment, this "abbreviated" version must suffice.
Peach of Immortality V
May 1991 -- December 1993; Miami Beach, FL)
[Smith moved to Miami Beach, finding a new career in commercial audio and film production. Meanwhile, (Mike) Green remained in Athens, GA; in early 1995 he moved to Chicago, in time joining No-Wave stuporgroup Miss High Heel; (Debbie) Richardson lived in Atlanta, performing with Magic Bone and Out of It. In May of 1996 she co-founds the promising but short-lived A-Aachen AAL Nevada Jim with Smith and (Fred) Ware (III). Following Ms. Richardson's abrupt and still-mysterious August '96 departure from the group, Brian Cook, erstwhile bassist of Atlanta tribal rockers Pineal Ventana, joined NV Jim for the remainder of its abbreviated run. In October 1996, after only five live gigs (three in Atlanta, one in Philadelphia, and one in New York), and three studio sessions, the group took a breather. In December 1996, the band rather casually called it quits. Ware now works for a South Georgia-based television production firm, and Cook performs and records with the group Black Love in Athens. (Tim Lane) Seaton (Smith's partner in the 1988-1991 incarnation of POI) found impressive success in Hollywood, CA, managing a subsidiary of a massive, very recognizable entertainment conglomerate. (Discretion is the better part of valor.) From January 1992, Smith began the final performance phase of Peach. His collaborator? Sync Studios co-owner and long-time Miami freak-scene avatar Frank "Rat Bastard" Falestra.]
"S.H.P."
[A version of R.E.M.'s "Shiny Happy People" recorded at the invitation of the Texas-based Staplegun label for inclusion on their 1992 tribute comp.; later rejected in favor of Mitch Easter's more reverent version. Recorded by Sync engineer Edward Bobb.]
***
My "Limp" Went Husserl on Me
(produced by Rat Bastard and TS)
[The abandoned precursor to 30-minuten männercreme. Fifteen songs were recorded from January-August 1992 at Sync Studios; only "Good Old Gospel Ship," "Trip Right Over It," and "Shot Your Mouth Off" were retained for 30-mm. Recorded by Bastard, Bobb, and Smith.]
***
"Trey Stigmata"
[Recorded in the Fall of '92 for the Dossier label's proposed P.K. Dick tribute compilation Time Out of Joint; scheduled for a German release in 1993, but never issued. Recorded by Edward Bobb.]
***
Spatters of a Royal Sperm
(produced by Rat Bastard)
[Recorded November-December 1992, Spatters was a four-song 7" initially scheduled for an early 1993 release on the Noiseville UK Singles Club; the label died and the EP went unreleased. This single paved the way for what would become the TLASILA "signature" sound, at least as it was heard on 30-minuten männercreme.]
***
Antonio Calfskin Kiltie Loafer in Brandy
(VHS NTSC) [Maverick sexploitation director Doris Wishman's July 1993 video adaptation of the Spatters EP; over 90 minutes of tape had been soiled when Miss Wishman withdrew from the project. A shame, because much of what was shot was both hysterical and utterly perplexing). Sadly unfinished. A few pirated clips appeared on Midwestern public access video programs following the 1995 tour of...]
(May 1990 -- Present)
In 1990 Smith began recording rough demos credited to "To Live and Shave in L.A." (The handle was pilfered from Ron Jeremy's brazenly idiotic, same-named 1986 paean to labial depilation.) First line-up: Bastard and Smith.
30-minuten männercreme (1991-1994)
30-mm was the result of three years of recording, of tinkering with the formula Rat Bastard and TS had worked out with the unreleased Peach of Immortality EP Spatters of a Royal Sperm (two of its songs were later interpreted on video by sexploitation pioneer Doris Wishman) and the shelved POI album My "Limp" Went Husserl on Me (from which three 30-minuten tracks - "Trip Right Over It," "Good Old Gospel Ship," and "Shot Your Mouth Off" - were eventually extracted). Recalls Smith, "If I'd had the sense to remove both "Slot-Tod" and "Hackworth," and perhaps "Very Wide Pink" (which refers to the sash worn by its protagonist, you pervs), or "Thirst for Love," which goes nowhere - and which is probably the point (!), and replaced them with Spatters' "Bad Couple" and "The Plot That Failed," then männercreme might be the (ahem) masterwork some claim it to be."
It's holding up well, however.
It was recorded at Telemundo Network's Radio Promotions studio in Hialeah, Florida (where TS worked from 1992-1994), Churchill's Hideaway (the moldy rugby bar where TLASILA, Harry Pussy, and other fugged-up gruppen first regularly performed), and Sync Studios, Miami Beach (owned by Rat Bastard and the ever-inventive tech wiz Looch) from late '91 to '94. Harry Pussy were recording at Sync at the same time, making what would become their debut "nose ring" single. "I knew them from The Alliance, the indie cinema which Bill managed," said Smith. "And Peach and Harry Pussy had shared a number of bills together, so drafting them for 30-minuten service was easy."
The album wouldn't have been the same without Adris's drunken intro.
For a dozen or so shows Peach of Immortality (in its final, pre-Rat phase) was Oscar Perez, Rachel DeRougemont, Tracie Phillips, and Smith. Oscar was a filmmaker, Tracie was a party planner, and Rachel was the one and only Tigra from booty pioneers L'Trimm! This line-up recorded the short, live pieces on 30-mm: "Hitchhike to Oregon," "This Is Colleen's Incredible True-Life Story," "Amp," and at least a dozen more which didn't make the final cut. ("At London's Narrow Pantsuit," "Who Turned Out Soft?," "The Lead Shoes Coerced," "Smoke My Habit," et. al.)
Rat performs on but two of männercreme's forty songs - "Hitchhike" and "Strength into My Blows" - but he engineered and mixed half of the album.
1994-2002
Oscillator wunderkind Ben Wolcott joined in March, 1994, and the trio quickly solidified. In the wake of männercreme's positive critical reception, TLASILA embarked on the first of an eventual ten national tours, confusing audiences from Orlando to New York and back. On return, they kept the meter running at Sync...
Shave cognoscenti consider the 1994 trio to be the definitive configuration. They cut the following albums:
Prostitution Heute
"Helen Butte" vs. Masonna Pussy Badsmell
Vedder Vedder Bedwetter
An Interview with the Mitchell Brothers
Tonal Harmony
God and Country Rally!
Peter Criss vs. Peter Christopherson
Commmiinnggg! and Practis'd the Black Art
Les Tricoteuses
Where a Horse Has Been Standing and Where You Belong
The Wigmaker in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg
(See DISCOG)