Strange Horizons, September 2002

by Strange Horizons

  Orgel: A couple years ago, Jeff Katz, the young adult program coordinator for the Seattle library system started doing the “Shake the Stacks” series, getting bands to play the libraries, getting kids to see the library as a place to go, which was really very clever. So we played one of them—

  McNulty: We were so excited to play—

  Orgel: We just clicked, it was so up our alley. We did summer library tours two years in a row, with the contacts they gave me.

  McNulty: A lot of stuff has happened because of that. We played at the library in Bellevue, and then it hit the fan and we were on NPR, Weekend Edition, and Bellevue public access. Also, we helped out with a guy who was doing a movie about James Tiptree, Jr.—we do a song about her.

  SH: Yeah, after the NPR spot, two of the editors at Tor mentioned you on their weblogs.

  McNulty: Oh, really? Tor Books? That's really exciting.

  Orgel: The library thing, sometimes it's good, sometimes it's a little bit of a bummer, because you're in this podunk little town, they look at it and go “huh?” but overall afterwards, it's pretty positive.

  Stratton: The kids get into it, and a lot of the younger adults, after they warm up and get adjusted to the music. It's like being in cold water. Older people, once they've adjusted to how loud it is, they start to absorb what we're doing, and then by the end of it they see how the kids react, and they're into it.

  Orgel: Next spring and summer, we're going to go on a tour of pretty much the whole nation, and I really want to do libraries. We've got dates booked at libraries St. Louis and Ann Arbor. I've been writing people at the American Library Association, but I haven't gotten a lot of response yet. Though the publicity we got from just doing libraries in western Washington—we made a documentary about that—it's been kind of amazing. “There's this metal band that's playing libraries!"

  Stratton: Both my parents were librarians and library directors. My mom works on various literacy programs, and that's sort of where that came from, but it also comes from playing so many rock shows. People take home the books we throw, then come back to us a couple years later and say “I hadn't read a book in twenty years."

  McNulty: And it happens more than you think.

  Stratton: So we're all like, “this shit actually could work, you know?” So that's another angle, to make something worthwhile out of it.

  Orgel: And we want to play cons.

  Stratton: Why not play sci-fi cons? Although it's preaching to the converted, I just want to play to a room where, when you say the name of the author, everyone will go “woooow!"

  McNulty: Well, it happens in San Francisco and Portland.

  Orgel: I figure if we get into a con, it'll be worth it just to get someone to pay some serious attention to us.

  Stratton: One of the reasons we haven't done half the shit we want to, is because we're lazy. We've all got lots of little things going. One of the things we want to get from the ALA is some kind of advance money so we can buy a new van or fix up our old one, or some kind of sponsorship. Exactly the same sort of thing we'd ask for from a record label, some kind of tour support.

  SH: I wonder if Tor would be into that?

  McNulty: I'd sell out to Tor Books like that. (snaps fingers)

  Stratton: It's tough to get support. We're not super radio-friendly.

  McNulty: That's kind of what I love about it, playing libraries.

  Orgel: Yeah, it's brutal metal, but it goes over in libraries.

  SH: Maybe you could play one of the parties at Orycon.

  Stratton: Oh, that'd be great. We'll learn a bad cover song if they want—"Born to be Wild?” Though we should clarify to people out there reading this thing: We're not a filk act, by any stretch of the imagination.

  Orgel: Another thing we're doing is we're going to put out a split single with Thomas Disch.

  McNulty: It's him reading the first chapter of his book; a rap song by a guy called Saddam X who's popular like Britney Spears, but he's a totally militant Muslim, and militant Islam is really an underground popular thing—

  Stratton: He's a twelve-year-old suicide bomber who lived and became a rap singer.

  Orgel: On the flipside, we're doing our song about him [Disch], and a couple others. We'll package it like an Ace Double.

  SH: Have any writers other than Disch approached you? Are you on any author's radars?

  Orgel: I met Ursula K. LeGuin. I gave her the 45 that has her song on it. Someone else had told her about it.

  Stratton: I met Octavia Butler. She must have thought I was a babbling freak, I was so nervous.

  McNulty: She's got our gear, though, right?

  Stratton: She's got our song about her, and our video. And we did talk briefly with someone who was really close to Robert Anton Wilson.

  Orgel: I'm on his mailing list.

  McNulty: Yeah, he's aware of Blöödhag.

  Stratton: We were trying to put together something with him.

  McNulty: It was you guys who were talking about Damon Knight, right? Down in Portland?

  SH: Yeah.

  Stratton: I just read The Futurians on recommendation from my mom. That's the book about the early days in New York, about their little clubs, and their inter-scene politics back in the day, who was sleeping with who and whatnot.

  Stratton: And Forrest J. Ackerman—should we tell the story? I'm so embarrassed.

  McNulty: We screwed up like three times. He was supposed to introduce our record, and he called my answering machine.

  Stratton: He left a great introduction.

  McNulty: He left two great introductions—I erased the first one. The next one he did was so great, it was like Boris Karloff. Then my phone got cut off, so I lost my voice mail.

  Stratton: We were too embarrassed to call him back and ask him to do it a third time.

  McNulty: The next time we're down there, I'm bringing a tape recorder or something, and we'll get it for real. I love that guy.

  Orgel: Have you seen his house?

  SH: No.

  Orgel: It's well worth seeing.

  McNulty: You've gotta see it next time you're in L.A.

  Orgel: He's got a whole Metropolis room.

  McNulty: A whole Fritz Lang room.

  Stratton: You go down in his book room—

  McNulty: You just want to fall over.

  Stratton: Everything you ever wanted. Entire collections of pulp magazines on sliding bookshelves.

  Stratton: To answer the earlier question about whether we're going to expand—I think doing this literacy thing is about as far as we need to go.

  McNulty: I don't want to get off this science fiction and metal thing too much.

  Stratton: I don't know what normal literacy programs do—they have celebrities read to kids? We'll do that same thing. If we get tired of rocking it then we'll just turn it into a program.

  SH: In the Multnomah county system down in Portland, they have a program called “Read To A Dog.” They bring a nice dog in, and the kid goes into a room with it and reads to it.

  McNulty: That's good, because it gets them over the fright of reading aloud. A lot of kids have that problem.

  Stratton: They've got someone who isn't going to interrupt them, or lose interest.

  McNulty: And it doesn't matter how long it takes for them to sound out a word.

  Stratton: Good idea.

  SH: We've seen you a couple times in Portland—

  Orgel: Portland, we always have great crowds. They're so well-read there. We have this standing thing where you bring a book report in, and we'll refund your door price.

  McNulty: We've gotten a couple too. We got one in San Francisco. San Francisco's the best town, it's like the most well-read punk-rock town in the world.

  Stratton: We don't ask for much, like 200 words.

  SH: The people who come out and see you in clubs, are they mostly thrashers, or are there a lot of science fiction fans who come out and see you?

  McNulty: It's a c
ombination of guys who thrash, are into metal and enjoy the metal scene, guys who are geeks and just like sci-fi, and people who know us and/or like the band. It's a bunch of people you wouldn't think would be going to a hardcore show.

  Stratton: We get librarians and old folks and people who are into the various writers.

  Orgel: The one thing I like a lot that we've heard is “y'know, I'm not into this kind of music, but you guys put on a good show."

  Stratton: Yeah, it's a diverse crowd. The best part is that people are willing to brave these stinky rock clubs to see us, people who, you can tell don't belong there.

  McNulty: The intellectuals.

  Stratton: The intellectuals, you can tell they don't go out to rock clubs.

  McNulty: Like this sci-fi writer guy who came out to see us, and brought his girlfriend with him. She was dressed up to go out, you know what I mean, and this guy dragged her along to this stinky rock club to see Blöödhag. And then I sat there and talk to him about science fiction and horror for forty-five minutes while she was sitting there, and I felt so bad....

  SH: How do the uninitiated react to the science fiction evangelism thing?

  Stratton: Anybody who doesn't get it, they'll just yell for us to shut up the whole time.

  McNulty: And that's great, because then we can yell back at them.

  Stratton: A lot of people appreciate the enthusiasm we put into the show.

  McNulty: Even if they get sick of our talking halfway through the set, as soon as we start playing, they shut up, and they're rocking. As long as we keep the music up, we're all right.

  Stratton: We hear a lot of this at the show: “I don't read a lot, but I like you guys.” That's the opposite of “I'm not into this music, but I like you guys."

  McNulty: A lot of rockers don't think we're serious.

  Stratton: They get there, and the first song is about Joanna Russ, the author of this and this, and everybody laughs. Some people laugh cause they know about Joanna Russ, and they know about the joke I'm telling, but most people laugh because they think the next song is about Satan and pussy. So they're like, okay, that song was about an author, but by the time the fifth song comes they're like, “oh shit, these guys are serious.” And as soon as they start getting hit with books it's like, “oh, these guys really are serious."

  Orgel: It's gotten Jake in trouble a couple times.

  Stratton: I talked my way out of both of those fights.

  McNulty: Either that or I have to actually fight.

  Stratton: You never know what's going to happen. Seldom do we have no response.

  Orgel: The cool thing about Portland is the books don't come back.

  Stratton: Sometimes I have to give them a little lecture.

  McNulty: We have actually stopped playing. I've walked offstage. In Phoenix, we both walked offstage.

  SH: Is there anyone you're reluctant to do a song about?

  Stratton: Like I was saying earlier, I don't want to do a negative song. It's kind of like, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. I want to use the band as a way to promote these authors and get people to actually check them out, not just to talk shit about them.

  McNulty: We're not going to do L. Ron Hubbard, we're not going to do Dean R. Koontz, V. C. Andrews, Stephen King, Michael Crichton. Why bother?

  SH: J. K. Rowling? She would fly for the kids in the libraries.

  McNulty: It'd be silly not to cash in on that. I like that shit.

  Orgel: Pullman's better.

  McNulty: I don't like that comparison. One's better? It's a totally different deal. One's this, and one's that.

  Stratton: Whenever we can, we want to put together CD's of similar authors. Like for kids’ authors—we have a plan to do a CD with Roald Dahl, C. S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, Daniel Manus Pinkwater. Pinkwater, I actually corresponded with when I was a kid, I was a big Pinkwater fan. Got a lot of positive support from him. Couldn't speak higher of him.

  Orgel: Then we're going to do a whole Eastern Bloc album. Lem, the Strugatsy brothers, and a couple others you don't hear all the time. Technically we could do Asimov, he was born over there—

  SH: You guys are really into the classics, like Arthur C. Clarke—

  McNulty: We're half and half, man, hip writers and classic ones.

  Stratton: There's so many classic writers we haven't covered yet that to concentrate on the new guys—

  McNulty: We try to do one and then the other.

  Stratton: We did Neal Stephenson, but we still haven't done Edgar Allan Poe.

  Orgel: You can get a lot of blank looks. You want to do those classics just for the name recognition. Fortunately, we've already done a lot of the big names—Dick, Ellison—we've moved past that, those are old songs now.

  Stratton: The old songs are not as much fun to play.

  Orgel: We've gotten better.

  McNulty: We do resurrect old songs now and then.

  Stratton: We go to rewrite them and every time we start rewriting them, we could do a whole better other song.

  McNulty: There's so many writers out there.

  Stratton: It's kinda nice, because other bands must face the problem of knowing people want to hear their old songs, and never wanting to play them.

  McNulty: Could you imagine having to play “You Really Got Me” or something like Ray Davies has to?

  Stratton: They can express themselves in their solos. There's a drum solo, a guitar solo. We don't have any solos. It's just the way we are.

  McNulty: The problem is, we like so many different kinds of music, it'd be so easy to come up with “this is a punk song about such-and-such, and this is an acoustic song about so-and-so.” We have to put boundaries on ourselves, because honestly I could play a space-rock song about Arthur C. Clarke if I wanted to. We could be a space-rock band right now. We all have the skills to do it, but that's not the point. The point is, when we made it up, we said, we've gotta stick to our guns here.

  SH: So who brought the metal influence to the band?

  McNulty: We grew up on metal. I grew up on metal in high school.

  Stratton: So many metal bands had sci-fi titles, art, themes, but most of the time they don't say “this song was inspired by such-and-such.” That was probably the initial inspiration way back in my psyche.

  McNulty: You know what my inspiration was? The metalhead that I used to sit next to in English class. He would read fantasy and I would read sci-fi. We liked the same bands, but I liked more punk and hardcore, and he liked metal. We would read while the class was going on, and we still got straight A's. That was my inspiration right there. That's what it's all about—you don't have to be dumbass when you're a metalhead.

  Stratton: We want to take the anti-intellectual slant out of rock and say, be smart.

  McNulty: Be smart and rock and still not suck—

  Stratton: It's not rebellious when the only job you can get because you're so fucking stupid is at the convenience store.

  McNulty: And it's not rebellious to talk about drinking and fucking and Satan. It's not rebellious anymore. It's rebellious to talk about reading.

  SH: What are you reading? What's your favorite stuff right now?

  Orgel: Iain Banks. Jack Womack's Random Acts of Senseless Violence—very depressing. Lots of non-fiction, stuff about the Freemasons, physics books. Philip K. Dick. Michael Swanwick, Dorothy Allison. Raymond Chandler.

  McNulty: Iain Banks. A. M. Holmes, magic-esoteric. One crappy sci-fi pulp and one new or modern thing and then one esoteric.

  Stratton: Autobiographies and biographies. History. The last fiction I enjoyed was Michael Chabon's Kavalier and Clay. I was a big comic collector for years, so that really spoke to me. I just read the latest Johnny Cash autobiography, the Dee Dee Ramone autobiography, Graham Chapman. I can't stop thinking about the minutia of other people's lives. One of my favorites is Akira Kurosawa's autobiography. I live a few blocks from the library, so I'll go in there and search up various people
and see if they have an autobiography and then request it.

  Orgel: Our drummer, what's fun with him is to turn him on to the classics. We're conditioning him. He's not here with us because he's got a gig with another band. He's very enigmatic.

  SH: It's like you live the lifestyle, always reading.

  Stratton: Well, my cable's out.

  McNulty: I read constantly, three books a week. Not voraciously, but a lot.

  Stratton: I kinda had the rebellious reaction to having librarians for parents. I got into comic books, movies, anything that wasn't regular books, though I never stopped reading, and I snapped back eventually.

  SH: Finally, one more question, the most important of all: teleporter or time machine?

  Orgel: Teleporter.

  Stratton: Teleporter.

  McNulty: Can the time machine go back and forward in time, or only back?

  SH: Both ways.

  McNulty: Cause if you go back in time and you can't come back—I gotta be able to get back. But if I could go back in time, I'd already have seen the Velvet Underground and Black Flag at Redondo Beach and stuff like that. I would go everywhere, I would go back to all the places I'm interested in.

  Orgel: I've been waiting, it's the year 2000, and where's my flying car? Why aren't we wearing silvery clothing?

  McNulty: Where's my hoverbelt? They have the technology.

  Orgel: If they wanted to make a flying car, they could.

  McNulty: They got jetpacks, but I want a hoverbelt.

  Orgel: That's why a teleporter.

  McNulty: I'm not really into instant matter transportation.

  * * * *

  More About Blöödhag

  Several of Blöödhag's songs can be downloaded from the Web in MP3 or RealAudio format:

  “Jules Verne”

  RealAudio format

  “Octavia Butler”

  RealAudio format

  “William Gibson”

  RealAudio format

  “Neal Stephenson”

  RealAudio format

  MP3 format

  Blöödhag has produced three short releases and one full-length album:

  G.L.O.W. (Gorgeous Ladies of Writing) (45 EP)

  Hooked On Demonics (Cassette EP)

  Dewey Decibel System (45 EP)