Photos From 2023
Author: Jane Pain
35MM photographer, writer, and musician. A New York City native living and working in NYC. Vocals in LA-based Safe Word. Vocals and electronics in the Tech-noise duo Appetite with Ciarra Black. Plays solo as NYDN.
All inquiries and comissions: JaneChardiet@gmail.com
PLEASE DO NOT REPRODUCE ANY IMAGES WITHOUT CREDIT.
stay in touch:
Instagram: Jane_____Pain
Twitter: @coldforever
Interview + Track Premier, with Peace De Résistance
Peace de Résistance is the solo recording project of Mose Brown. Best known for fronting the punk band Institute and playing drums in the hardcore outfit Glue, Brown has drifted from his roots to create “demented glam rock” for the 2020’s. Following the 2020 demo tape Hedgemakers, Brown is self-releasing the project’s first full length LP, Bits and Pieces on his very own newly minted label, Peace de Records. Today the world gets a second peek into the full length, with the release of the second single off the record, “Alphabet Au Pair”.
With heavy nods towards The Velvet Underground, “Alphabet Au Pair” is a dreamy snarl towards the “privacy iconoclast” Alexa- as in the Amazon’s voice assistant, not a typical femme muse. The albums leans into a romanced anxiety about what it means to be a modern person: surveilled, uninsured and overworked.
Listen to “Alphabet Au Pair” from the debut LP “Bits and Pieces” out April 13th on Peace De Récords below, while you check out the first ever interview about Peace de Résistance.
Mose and I sat down at his dinner table for the first ever Peace de Résistance interview over some cauliflower rice and sweet potatoes to discuss where the project comes from, how music is like scent and what his go-to bodega order is. Just in case we ever get a live show, you’ll know what to bring as a token of appreciation.
Jane Pain (JP): I did not hear anything about Peace De Résistance until the demo (Hedgemakers, Glue Records, 2020) was announced and I was an instant fan. And I am your partner’s sister and your close friend! I want to know a bit about where the project came from.
Was it a quick inspiration that blurted out in Covid isolation? What was the inception of everything?
Moses Brown (MB): The tape was me just learning to record at home. Barry (Institute, Chalk) told me how he recorded everything, which is passing through a four track that goes into the headphone jack in a computer without recording onto tape. So it gets all warm and stuff, but you don’t have to deal with recording on tape.The first demo was just me playing around with that set up. Blowing out the channel of the four track.
JP: So it was you, locked up in the attic just kinda making something to make it?
MB: Definitely wanting to shake the cobwebs and freshen up my songwriting skills and try to do something completely different. I would get a guitar tone, realize that it sounded stupid and was like… ‘Lets go with that!’. Trying to do dumb, extreme choices. I was like ‘this feels good, I like this’.
JP: So this was fun to do?
MB: So fun to do.
JP: I am glad that you found a bright spot at that time. Were you surprised by people’s response to the demo? I feel like it was kind of an internet darling and people really responded to it.
MB: Definitely, because it was recorded so badly I was like… ‘People like this’? The thing that bugs me still is the drums. The drums sound like trash, because they were recorded with one microphone. If I had recorded the drums with Sasha (Artifact Studios. Firewalker/ 80HD) or something, I would have felt different but I just felt like they were bad.
JP: And that is hard, because that is your main instrument. Did you record them in the attic here (Brown’s Bed-Stuy apartment)?
MB: Glue had a practice space, so I went in there one day during the height of lockdown. I remember going in there with gloves on and full gear and realizing that someone had been in there at 11AM… and it was 5PM and I was like “OH NO!”.
I just had one mic, recorded the drums. I used a glass bottle of Michels of Brooklyn pasta sauce. That is the “ding ding ding”.
JP: That studio situation elicits so many memories that feel so far away. When doing anything, it felt scary and naughty. When we were washing our groceries.
The LP (Bits and Pieces, Peace De Récords) doesn’t strike me as having the same spirit of ‘I am just going to record this shitty and get it out’. What changed in your attitude between the tape and deciding to do the LP? What were you setting out to do when you first started writing the LP?
MB: I guess, people liking the tape. Specifically, friends really liked the tape and gave me confidence that I could do more songs. The song quality on the demo was bugging me a little bit, and I knew I could record a bit better. Then I realized that I had ten songs, and thirty minutes of music and it was going to be an LP.
JP: Well, I am stoked on that, because I was one of those friends, and I was really hoping that there would be more.
I was really honored when you asked me to take the picture for the cover of Bits and Pieces. I got even more excited when you sent me the LP and I got to listen.
I know we were going for a timelessness, and a glam look and whatnot with the cover. Institute releases always have your art on the cover. What was behind your decision to have a photograph of yourself on the cover?
MB: I wanted to dive in real hard to the solo album thing: here is a picture of the person who made it. I wanted the record to look super classic.
JP: Why did you self release it, on top of that?
MB: I don’t even know when in the process I decided that was what I was going to do. But, I just realized… I did the tape? I could do an LP? And working with Sacred Bones and other small labels made me realize that if I am not going to play a show ever or tour or do much promotion I should do it myself. If this flops, I want the responsibility to be in my lap. I wouldn’t want to ask someone to put it out and not play any shows, not want to talk about it. I realized I can do this myself and I don’t have to bother anybody.
JP: I guess you have not gotten to the part where you are sending these records out yet, but so far, what has the process of putting out your own LP of your own music been? What have you learned along the way?
MB: It takes a long time. I gave the pressing plant everything in July and now, hopefully, the records are sent out in the next couple weeks. Fingers crossed. It cost a lot to do, about $3,000.
Being the one person talking to the record plant was a lot. They don’t have a relationship with me. I probably got sidelined as the weird dude who is just putting out one record.
JP: You mentioned you did have a little snafu with the album design as well…
MB: Yes, I misplaced the accent on Resistance and I had to fix it with a sticker.
JP: I had to personally place a sticker on all the FKA Twigs records that did not have the FKA back when I worked shipping records for the Beggar’s Group. I don’t think it is that uncommon, and thankfully a sort of easy fix.
Do you have a plan for the label? Is it a home for all of your side projects? Do you want to release music from other people?
MB: I think it will just be a vessel for this project, but I don’t know. We will see. Now that it is all on the books… How do you pay other people? Tax stuff? I don’t want to figure that out.
JP: When I think about some of the people who run labels, I have faith you can figure it out. You just mentioned that there isn’t a plan to play live, but is there any desire to do that… at all?
MB: Maybe it would be fun to play live with a band, but I would want it to be something special. Recreating the LP live wouldn’t be that much fun. I would be bothered by everything that was missing. Like ‘there isn’t that synth thing there… Where’s the cowbell?’ I need that. I would think that if I was to perform live it would be something totally different. I love the juxtaposition of recorded Velvet Underground versus the super rough bootleg live recordings…. Maybe I can do something like that.
JP: That sounds really cool and like a good development of the music, considering the spirit of it. I hope that happens!
Did it feel like a challenge playing everything by yourself, or does that just come naturally?
MB: There were definitely times with the guitar where I thought I physically couldn’t play the parts. Coming up with what I was looking for and then… Oops, I can’t play it though. That was the only hard part, really. But it was fun.
JP: Margaret (Brown’s partner, my sister, who also works on Pharmakon in said sauna studio) told me the attic that you guys use as a studio can get up to 120 degrees, with no windows, and you can’t stand in the studio in parts of the studio because the ceiling is slanted… and that your computer is a piece of shit…
Was there any romance in that? I have been in less than ideal situations trying to make or record something and for some reason the challenges seem to add character and strengthen the memory of the experience. It can also just be funny and makes a good story. Like the time my drummer had to record with a mattress leaning on his back. Did the circumstances feel like part of the process or was it just frustrating to be trapped in a sweltering attic with a computer that is breaking down?
MB: It was kinda fun. The only problem is that you have to run a loud ass fan to stay cool. Thankfully everything was direct in, so I don’t think it showed up on the recording.
JP: Were there any unlikely inspirations that worked their way into the LP?
MB: Madonna, “Ray of Light”.
JP: That is a really good song, I can’t blame you.
I am thinking about all the accents that are on the record, so it was funny learning that there was a jar of pasta sauce used on the demo. Are there any other sonic inspirations? Or reading a book? I noticed that the last song includes “Journey To The End Of The Night”, which made me wonder if it was a reference to Celine.
MB: It was definitely a nod! But the song doesn’t really have anything to do with the book. It is a morbid song, and that whole book is very morbid. And sad.
JP: Darby [one of Mose’s cats] came out, because she is waiting to be name dropped.
MB: Hi, Darby! You inspired a song.
JP: Is Institute still a band?
MB: Oh, yeah. I think that Arak and I are going to start recording things at home. Once we move and I have a new studio. Do Institute, but write by recording it at home and then going into the studio and record a new LP. That process worked so well, I realized Institute needs to be doing it.
JP: I can imagine that working well for you guys, especially being spread out in different parts of the country.
MB: Lower pressure, that is what I am all about.
JP: Is Peace De Résistance your moniker that encapsulates all your solo endeavors, and Peace de Récords the vehicle? Have you thought about that at all?
MB: No, not really. All I know is I want to do this Lp and then put out another LP of this stuff. That’s the only goal that I can see right now.
JP: Are you excited to share this record with people?
MB: Totally. Even based on the first single, I had people say that they really liked it. Well, if they like that one, they are going to like the rest of them!
JP: Having listened to the record a lot, I can attest that is true. But I like that confidence.
I know you do visual art as well… Have you been working on visual art lately?
MB: No. That was the thing. But I just made a lot of music and decided I was just going to focus on that.
JP: I almost feel like all mixed media artists had to focus in on one thing, or lean into one thing heavier.
MB: I don’t know what it was about the pandemic, but I could only pick one thing.
JP: I felt like I needed an escape, and for that reason I was more compelled to make things that helped me escape. I can see music as being more stimulating and exciting and transport you outside of your head a bit more than working on drawings.
MB: I would draw and be like… What are these drawings going to be for? There is no record? There are no flyers, there are no shows happening?
JP: This will be my first published interview since the pandemic, so it feels like I have to talk about it. Since there were no shows, what got you through the past two years, hobby wise? Did you learn how to bake bread?
MB: We {Mose and his partner} started going camping. Me and Margaret tried to learn how to surf, your Dad was teaching us how to surf. Going to the beach. It was such a chill zone.
JP: Yeah, especially the first summer, the only joy I experienced was going to the beach. I wanted to go as much as humanly possible.
But I did want to talk a bit about the lack of shows, specifically, and how the role that music plays in your life right now may differ than before the pandemic hit. We have live shows again, in spurts between infection spikes. Where does music fit into your life now? Did the pandemic factor into your decision to play things all alone?
MB: Before the pandemic, my whole world would be centered around when the next tour was, and the next place that we were going to go. I definitely miss that. Now instead of it being a means of traveling and stuff like that, it is a hobby that I get to do on Sunday. I just have to work all the time now, so what else am I supposed to do?
JP: Yeah, I guess if you are not touring all the time, you have to work your stupid job. I saw that a lot of your lyrics are about labor, actually. Do you mind speaking on that?
MB: Totally. I would sit down and wonder what I wanted to write about. A lot of the songs are about tech and tech taking advantage of humanity and making money off of people, stealing their information and stuff. We are a motor to run their system. Why can’t we get paid? We need to make more money!
The songs are definitely about the horrors of being alive and working right now. It is such a unique crazy period. And the inspiration for the lyrics were Cleaners from Venus. They are such well crafted pop songs, but they are lefty propaganda.
JP: That was something that I really liked about the record too. The contrast of these warped pop songs with Crass records style, scathing lyrics. Something political and current in a package that is a bit more unsuspecting.
MB: I think I needed to figure out a way to write about stuff. Lyrics need to be coming from you. I struggle with making a living, having health insurance, being agressively marketed to on the internet.
JP: How does being at a show feel to you right now? Do you feel like something has changed?
MB: Yeah, it is crazy to be back at shows. Touring still seems crazy to me, because I am going to inevitably get sick and then what do we do? Do we just cancel shows for five days?
JP: I guess you just hide out in a Motel 6 and sweat it out. SXSW was last week and I started to see Covid declarations on twitter today.
MB: Yeah, everyone probably got sick. That is just what happens now.
It is weird. Seeing MANAT a couple of nights ago was amazing, but at the same time I was being smooshed. I was two feet away from two dozen people. And everyone is screaming. It was freaking me out a little bit.
JP: You felt freaked out?
MB: In little glimpses. But it was too fun to worry about too much at the moment.
JP: I did get particularly smooshed at that show. I am covered in bruises, including two really bad ones in a perfect line across my legs where I was being smashed into the stage.
MB: It was good just to hear music, loud.
JP: I think everyone used to take shows for granted, because we never really thought that something like this was going to happen in our lifetimes. But going to shows now really makes me remember why I was attracted to punk and noise and live music in the first place. I feel like I have turned back into 13 year old Jane who would go to ABC NO RIO every Saturday no matter what, sober, and so fucking excited about whatever the fuck was goling on. I have that energy. Every show feels special and new again. Do shows feel special to you, after having them gone?
MB: Totally. But also, I used to stand and watch everybody. After not going to shows for two years, I realized that if I don’t want to watch something, I do not have to stand there and watch everything. I will protect my ears.
JP: Do you have any high hopes for summer? Spring is here and it feels like a really exciting time, and like we are going to step into a lot of experiences that we have been missing for years and a new chapter in our lives and music.
MB: Everyone has been cooped up, doing stuff. I just hope to come into summer and find out that all of my friends have been doing amazing shit.
JP: I have been wondering if inflation will cause another big uprising this summer. What the fuck is going on? It is happening so quickly and dramatically. It makes me wonder if we are about to hit another Great Depression even more dramatic and messed up than the first, because of how much the world has changed since then and how many more bills we have gotten accustomed to paying.
I wondered if an undercurrent of collective malcontent in our country was in the Bits and Pieces.
MB: Why is minimum wage in Texas still $7.25. Billionaires make so much more money, but workers have been making the same amount of money for fifteen years. The math doesn’t add up.
JP: And the people we exalted as our essential workers are bearing the burden of being underpaid the worst. Being told that they can’t take time off if they have active covid. Transparently evil.
On that note, what is the ideal function of music in your life? It certainly eases the pain of this reality.
MB: I don’t know. Music is just the best thing ever. It is to enjoy. It is magical. It is crazy. It is like smell or something, where the weird tone of a guitar can make you think of something.
JP: Wow, I never thought of it like that before. The way music works on the mind and how scent works with memory is really similar.
MB: When I like something a lot, it feels mysterious and nostalgic. It is channeling something, reverberating deep in some part of me. I don’t know what that is.
JP: I can think of music that will always remind me of a super specific time, burned into my memory as a feeling. No matter how many times I heard it before or after, it is associated with this one time. Do you have any musical memories like that?
MB: My Dad loved Public Image Ltd a whole bunch and I had second edition on CD. I had a CD player alarm clock. And I remember bringing it outside and skating a ramp in my front yard. Whenever I hear “No Birds” it feels like my CD player alarm clock is playing this, and I am doing an axle stall.
JP: Hell yeah. That is so sweet. For a while now, I always ask an off hand last question and I like them to be about snacks.
MB: “Fuck pirates booty….”
JP: I am going to fancy deli, do you want anything?
MB: I am going to need extra cheez-its. And ice cream, honestly. I fuck with it. I recently became obsessed with it. And, a snack to me, is a deli sandwich.
JP: Ice cream is a drug like food. Having something that is that indulgent, and cold. It is an experience. Well, let’s leave off on this: what is your favorite ice cream flavor?
MB: Chocolate fudge brownie. Gimme all the different chocolates.
All photography by Jane “Pain” Chardiet. Do not reproduce without permission.
Covid Chronicles, March – December 2020
I began a project doing social distance portraits. I would walk to my friends houses, and snap a portrait of them in or in front of their house from a safe distance. I worked on the project obsessively, and now how hundreds of photos of the New York City underground on lockdown.
This series is currently being compiled for a forthcoming zine. I estimate that there are at least one hundred different homes documented. I shot the series at every chance that I had. In the end, I think the project may have saved my life.
Posterboy 2000
Sedona, AZ
More work for Soft Skin Latex.
Restroom at the Hoover Dam
I feel obligated to mention that I did not shoot any photographs indoors/ the models without masks unless the models and myself had quarantined and gotten tested. I followed CDC guidelines to the best of my ability, shooting or not.
I am immunocompromised, and do my best to protect myself and others.
I felt that I needed to practice photography as a form of harm reduction. Like most artists, the pandemic presented limitations to my work that I thought would be impossible to navigate at first. This is a celebration of the photos I was able to take in spite of this years’ circumstances.
More on my experience will be published alongside the Social Distance portrait series.
New Zine “Soon”, T-Shirt
Good Things (UK) has released my newest zine “Soon” alongside a new T-shirt that features the cover image.
“Soon” is a collection of new photography and writing. 24 page, silkscreen cover, green riso, sewn bound, a5, edition of 50, circle cut into cover
comes packaged in silkscreened envelope
choose a paper cover colour:
red, white or yellow
Shirts are two sided, with two styles to choose from
Limited Edition Shirt; Benefitting NYC Health & Hospital Workers
Flying Saucer Press has curated and created a limited run of tee shirts from NYC artists to benefit NYC healthcare workers caring for Covid-19 patients
Click HERE to see all the shirts and support.
The Jane Pain shirt is a picture of a pile of humans at a Lumpy & The Dumpers show because I miss shows and I miss slimy puddles of smelly friend flesh.
Photos From Winter
Alexander Paul Gonzalez (Low and Slow) , after our show with Acyrlics got shut down by a bunch of cops pointing guns at us and moved two more times. He is the champ.
Free Download: Safe Word "Paralysis"
Fittingly released the first week of social distancing and PAUSE orders following the Covid-19 outbreak in the USA.
Photos From Summer
Photos From Spring
Little update on things lately. Just ran out of storage in my media uploader, so I now have a fire under my ass to make a real website which is weird. End of an era!
Interview with Special Interest
It is Saturday night in New York City, and Special Interest have come from New Orleans to share a bill with gay hardcore heroes Limpwrist. They are gracious enough to speak to me in the green room as they prepare for the gig. The drummer of Exotica (who are opening the show) powders a canary yellow latex dress for guitarist Maria Elena Delgado before assisting with getting the darn thing on- you know the struggle if you wear latex yourself, especially in the summertime. Vocalist Alli Logout has a friend applying ferocious eyeliner for the stage, and has to do most of the interview with their head tilted back and their eyes closed. Other bands and friends begin to filter in backstage, and I can not let the opportunity to speak to Special Interest slip through my fingers, but I am suddenly intimidated by the task. Because Special Interest are important.
They exude revelry and raunch but are also utterly devastatingly honest. Honest about things like a mental breakdown and subsequent institutionalization, about systematic racism, the thrill of a great fuck. Special Interest do an unparalleled job at challenging dire political and cultural concerns while maintaining a distinctive spirit, equal parts celebratory and confrontational, both live and recorded.
While they tell me that they were influenced by bands like The Screamers and early LA punk, they are incredibly refreshingly their own. No one sounds like Special Interest, for real. The discord of Maria’s guitar work somehow perfectly compliments Ruth Ex’s electronic drums and synth, which replace a live drummer in this psycho-punk “No Wave” outfit. We talked about some of the annoyances of being a “Queer band”, favorite regional culinary delights and which member is a recovering Oogle.
Jane Pain: How did you guys get together, and did you have any specific intentions sonically, thematically or otherwise for your music?
Maria: Alli and I met in Denton, Texas before either of us moved to New Orleans. We put together a band for Not Enough Fest which was organized by Osa Atoe. I moved to New Orleans and Alli moved not long after. We were like ‘let’s start a band’ and it was just the two of us. Originally I asked Nathan, and then Ruth ‘Can we have a band that sounds like The Screamers?’, and it never did.
Ruth: I don’t remember you saying The Screamers thing… Maybe I just didn’t get the memo.
Well maybe now we know why you don’t sound like The Screamers?
Alli: We both played guitar in the original line up. Maria played the guitar more though, I played mostly with a power tool.
Was this an incarnation of Special Interest or proto Special Interest?
A: Special Interest was a two piece.
How did you feel walking away from your first practice? Did you know that you had something special?
Nathan: It was a lot of messing around at first.
Ruth: I felt really nervous because I had never been in a band before. I did not feel good after the first few practices.
It is super sick that you guys are playing with Limpwrist. They are a very important band to me and I am sure to a lot of other queer hardcore kids. I found them when I needed to. It helped me to know that they existed.
In my research, I found you talking about how you understandably don’t want to be defined as a band by your personal politics or sexual identity or marginalized by being a queer band. I know that it is hard for people to look past that, even when they are being supportive of it. Would you rather exist as a band now, possibly being pigeonholed but also making a difference by offering visability for a lot of people or would you prefer to be a band in some distant ideal future, where you can just be a fucking band in the same way that a white straight dude can be in a band, and it is about nothing else except what you play.
N: I wasn’t old enough, so I wasn’t there but I feel like in the early L.A. punk scene there was a lot of experimentation going on and there were a lot queers in bands, a lot of women in bands, a lot of brown people in bands and it was probably just because it was L.A. in the late 70’s, but that has always been really interesting to me. How it just happened. Very much pre-identity politics, in a way.
M: It was also in a time where things were actually multi-cultural . That is sadly not the case now, not that many people have a special thing where things are actually diverse.
N: That scene also went away very quickly went away. Things turned into California hardcore, and it was just kinda gone.
It’s almost like it got ruined by it’s own awareness, or when things got recognized.
N: Yeah. Limpwrist was important to me too. I moved to Montreal when I was 18 and took a bus to Toronto and saw them play at Vazaleen which was a Will Munro party. He passed away from cancer in 2010.
He did these parties in Toronto, and Vazaleen was queer rock n’ roll and queer punk parties. I only got to see the party in tail end, but I have never seen it work quite as well as it did back then. Maybe now going to a club now and hearing Peaches would not be my cup of tea at all, but at the time it was fun and wild. It was cool, about 2005.
I then got to see them in Olneyville in Providence a year later… Another wild show in San Francisco that was a warehouse eviction party that was completely insane.
A: When I was 16 I got my first leather jacket, and on the sleeve I had Limpwrist with a pink triangle. On the back I had the DRI thrashing guy. It was really important to me when I was first getting into punk to find queer bands.
First and foremost, when I got into punk I called it guitar music. As a teenage I felt like I liked it, but I just wished there were more black people. My friend put his hand on my shoulder and was like ‘Alli, the founders of hardcore punk were all black!’ and put on the Bad Brains and it was all over for me. Completely over for me. But it was important for me to duelve into all the black members of the early 80’s hardcore scene and find my way into the queer spectrum, and in that I found Limpwrist.
Honestly, Limpwrist was one of the only good gay bands. I really hate playing with other bands that are gay because we get booked on shows with bands that are gay, because we are gay and it has nothing to do with anything else. And there are a lot of bad bands. I don’t care if you’re gay or you’re not, if you band is bad your band is bad.
A: But we just want to play with good bands. We want to play with bands that we admire.
M: You can see that with us playing with Boy Harsher, a band that it very unalike us.
N: I guess to answer your question, we are a future band.
A: I wouldn’t want to exist in any time but now. You said something about existing in a time in punk where you are just a band and it’s not about identity or any of that… It’s not the goal. I am so happy we are here right now, because we are on the brink of a major collapse of everything. I think that what we are doing speaks to that. I want complete, total destruction of everything. I don’t want to live in a time where people are not thinking about what is happening. Everybody is always going to get beat up for being whatever.
I am excited to be alive right now. For so much of my life I didn’t even think that I would make it to see 26. Everybody who is queer, everyone who is trans, everybody who is black… You don’t think that you are going to make it because the state is literally trying to kill us. All of the time. Every corner.
M: We also did not want to play with straight people. None of us wanted to play music with straight people.
R: You mean, within the band? Yes. That is very intentional.
Speaking to collapse, and not thinking that you would make it this far… Was ‘Spiraling’ about starting over after the collapse, or was it about the collapse in it’s self.
A: The collapse. It was written pre-mental breakdown, and then post. I wrote a lot of the songs while I was in a psych ward and I was reading Assata Shakur’s autobiography…
In an institution, reading her autobiography about the state and the fuckery that she went through. I just wrote about everything I was feeling and everything going on around me. That is pretty much all I know how to write about. I feel like the way that everyone plays in this band, and the way that everyone came into music is a lot different than a lot of people.
Maria just started playing music.
M: When I turned 30.
A: And Ruth just started playing music… I remember your first show with your solo project. It was so incredible.
R: I started playing music to be in a band and start a band, so I guess it worked. I guess it was successful.
How does this band- the experience, the shows, writing music, interacting with each other… How does it support mental wellness for you? How does it exasperate it?
R: It definatley can do both of those things. I feel like the process of getting together and playing music feels really natural. There is very little verbal communication, we are all able to connect with one another. Being able to experience that is fucking cool, and feels really great.
We have a lot of good shows, but it’s always a crazy emotional rollercoaster. The response is always so different. The circumstances can be painful, so it is good to be around people that you like for the painful shows. Overall, it feels great. It is really cathartic and I feel like a lot of stuff that I can not verbalize about the condition of the world and how chaotic and fucked up things are, we are able to express that sonically, and that feels good.
N: Touring can be physically and mentally exhausting. That is the biggest thing for me. I like to be able to get out of New Orleans. My bands have taken me pretty much everywhere that I have been able to travel to in the world, and that is cool. But it also wears you down. It wears me down, at least, and I am not really built for it.
R: I feel like I have to get fucked up all the time just to deal with the stress with being around people when I am on tour. I am actively trying to figure out a way to negotiate that better, but that is a difficult thing to deal with.
I became sober, and that is one of the issues that comes up with my relationship to live music. It is strange to relearn how to go to shows and figuring out what I like and what I don’t like, socially. If I can’t handle something sober or don’t enjoy it as much sober, do I even really like it?
R: Being at shows sober made me feel like I was 14 again and really intimidated by everyone.
M: It gets easier though. It took me like a year of not drinking. But honestly, just get a soda water, it’s easy. Just sitting alone feels good.
Sometimes the only alone time that I get is when we are on tour and we are in a place where I don’t know anybody and I just sit there alone. It is kind of amazing. We are always doing a bunch of shit at home.
And everybody knows each other and what everyone is doing.
A: New Orleans is a small town. It is so small and anything good in New Orleans is thrown by our little group of friends. All the good parties, all of the good shows.
It’s funny you should say that because I was talking with a friend last night and he was saying how you guys made the whole current scene in NOLA, that there wasn’t much else good going on. I wasn’t sure if that was reality or just his perspective of what is going on down there right now.
R: No, we are a product of the scene.
N: It might be sleepy, butt here are things going on.
A: It’s either usually been Oogles who are constantly leaving on a train or deep, deep weirdo post train kids. And then there are party queers. And we are a little mixture of everything.
It’s a mixture? Who is the Oogle?
A: [points to Ruth] She came into town on a train with a banjo. Sorry to call you out.
R: I came to New Orleans when I was 19 with a banjo, it has been a wild ride, but here I am today. So you could do it too, kids! Drop that banjo…
A: You could be the party faggot of your dreams.
Would that be your advice to the children then? Drop the banjo?
R: Drop the banjo, get a shitty keyboard and that’s it.
True, true. I did want to ask about that tour with Boy Harsher, I know you guys touched on it. Was it super cool? I know Jae and Gus are fucking awesome, but how did that tour mesh with ‘their’ audience?
A: I am happy that we did it. How often are we going to have an opportunity to play with a band like that? We all thoroughly enjoy their music. Their crowd is either O.G. goths who were incredible and loved us and were really nice or what I call ‘children of the algorithm’. It’s cool. However you get into whatever you’re into is fine, but it was a lot.
I get really stressed out by how people fetishize me and my body and my presence. Especially on stage or in any kind of creative thing that I do. I was having a little bit harder of a time with it on that tour than on other tours.
I guess that was kind of what I was trying to get at with the second question. People who read about you on a blog or some hype and looking at who you are instead of what you are doing. Not that they do not genuinely enjoy what you are doing, but being preoccupied.
A: I like to think about if I saw myself on stage, at any age, I would be so esatic and excited. So it was fun to be able to play for people who really needed it, and to play for people who didn’t even know that they needed it. That is my favorite part of it.
M: We played for so many chicanos. That was super special for me.
A: But it still is how punk is, there is one or two black people at a show. And that is really intense for me.
N: It was cool to play places with really huge sound systems. But also I feel like you are playing these big venues and you just don’t get the same reaction as when you play smaller places. When you’re playing this huge stage people just don’t react the same way. Sometimes you have this gut reaction like ‘Fuck, they hate it.’, but I don’t think that is actually true. People are just weird and they don’t know what to do with themselves half the time.
R: It also automatically makes what you are doing a big spectacle. The intimacy is gone.
A: In Portland we played to so many people that is was awful. It was so extreme. I never thought that I would play to 800 people. It was really intense. And I looked out into the crowd and it was just a sea of white people and I was filled with rage. I hated it.
After so many shows I was like ‘we suck, we suck’, but finally we got to a city where we had friends and people were moving like how they do in New Orleans…
And you’re back.
A: We’re back… whew… It was such an intense shift. But Portland was intense.
I think I hate Portland?
A: I think Portland is really gorgeous.
R: I think also people who were not going to see us just don’t know what to do with us. They are like ‘It’s like a punk band, but it’s not a punk band all the way and I can kinda dance to it but I don’t know how’. When people are not familiar with it they get caught off guard.
And that could be kinda nice. Do you guys have plans for a new record?
N: Yeah, we are writing a new record now. We recorded three songs so far, and we are going to record again in a couple weeks. We are going to try and have it out by early next year. Early 2020. It sounds great so far, I think.
Any departure from the Special Interest we are used to?
N: When we started we were using this old Univox drum machine from the 70’s and we just completely cut that out. We recorded the last record with Quintron which was cool but also he has a lot of interesting ideas for analog production and mixing but the digital aspect of stuff is kind of new to him. We found someone else to record us in New Orleans and went and heard our drum machine through his system, and it was the shit, it’s over.
R: It’s like high definition. It’s more fucked up and mangled sounding, but clearer at the same time. It’s definatley more demented than the last one.
N: Yeah, I would say.
More demented! That sounds great! Yay!
R: We are not going soft.
Do you have any irrational fears? Is there anything that freaks you out?
M: DO WE.
R: This is a question for Ruth and Maria.
M: Girl… Ruth and I are the neuroses twins. We found out on this tour that we both hate space. Space makes both of us incredibly nervous.
Outer space?
M: Yep. Thinking about it… At all, pretty much.
I mean, it’s pretty fucking scary.
R: I hate sitting around a fire and talking to people if I do not know them really well, I think it is horrorfying, An intimate group conversation with people that I don’t know really well is hellish. I was looking at some skyscrapers yesterday on the train yesterday and while I was talking to my friend all I could think about was falling out of the window of a skyscraper. That’s really scary. Total irrational. I feel like when I look at anything I have a flash in my head about how I were to violently die if I were to get too close to it. That is pretty irrational.
Catastrophic thoughts.
R: Catastrophic thoughts, pretty compulsively.
I identify. How about a NOLA specific question. What is the most insane carnival experience that you have ever had?
A: I have to rack my brain, I don’t know but I love that question. As a group or individually?
Can be either.
A: The group one is Hanks.
R: If you have been to New Orleans you’re probably familiar with Hanks, the 24 hour fried chicken and liquor store. On Mardi Gras our friends in ULTRALITE set up a generator show in the parking lot of Hanks. We played with Alli in the back of a truck. We played the fucking parking lot and it went off without a hitch until someone set something on fire and we had to scatter.
M: One of NOLA’s best art punk bands.
N: You know what is crazy though… Someone had made this homemade float and they pushed it into the neutral ground, lit it on fire. It was blazing. A cop car goes down St. Claude, drives past it and keeps going. And these people that were at the Hanks show that don’t live in New Orleans were like ‘Oh my god, there is a fire, this is fucked, we’ve got to get out of here’ and cut the music and everyone split… But it probably could have kept happening.
R: And I feel like people keep setting that float on fire on Mardi Gras. I feel like it happened last year too?
The same poor float?
R: yeah.
A: I did a generator show at Rally burger. Went off without a hitch. Maria’s other band Malflora and my band Lassie played… Who else played. What is that Flipper worship band that I don’t like?
Alright, Alli, you make movies. If you had an unlimited budget, what would your dream Special Interest music video be?
A: We have been talking about cars and explosions. Stunt cars. An action movie. Car off a cliff.
I am starting a new interview tradition where I end each interview asking a snack or candy related question. Wanted to ask about your favorite New Orleans delicacy. You guys are known for good food.
A: Triangle Deli ribs and macaroni. It’s a gas station. It’s at least the best macaroni.
M: Dong Phuong King cake, MOTHER FUCKER.
R: Mine is not good or something that I neccescarily like but I am very fond of it… The New Orleans Elmer Chee-wees which are bland sterofoam like Cheetos. But I just think they are so good. In the grand scheme of snacks they are kinda nasty, but I have a real soft spot. I like things that have a sterofoam texture for some reason.
Do you like circus peanuts then? I was just telling someone who had never had them about how they are the worst.
R: Yeah, those are good. I like Munchos, those weird rehydrated or powdered chip chips.
N: New Orleans has a big Vietnamese community. Nowhere near as big as Houston, but there is this one place Tan Dinh and it’s Vietnamese soul food, it is so rich. They have wings with fish sauce on them. It’s so good.
JANE PAIN 