by Morgan Davis
A little while back I visited Bryan Parker at his home to discuss his new 33 and 1/3 book on Beat Happening, the classic album that introduced Beat Happening and K Records to the world. Bryan has been a friend of Ovrld’s for some time and runs Pop Press International, a local Austin site that feature excellent photography and writing from Bryan and many others. Our discussion centered around the enduring appeal of Beat Happening and K Records than shop talk about the creation of the book, but it’s easy to see why Bryan was so drawn to the subject as he is passionate and extremely knowledgeable about it. This Saturday, Bryan will be hosting a very special event at Cheer Up Charlie’s, in tribute to Beat Happening and in celebration of his book’s release, and we hope this interview will help convince you to go check the event out.
Morgan Davis for Ovrld: Since the book literally just arrived here as we were about to start the interview, why don’t we start by talking about the process for putting it together. 33 and 1/3rd is a series that has recently come back and it’s a pretty coveted series for music writers. Why did you choose Beat Happening’s eponymous debut ? And what went into putting the book itself together?
Bryan Parker: I’ll just take those questions in order, I guess. For the “why this album,” I think that this record represents—and I’m borrowing from my own words now, which I guess is cheesy—but I say in the book that it’s like a flag. It’s representative of so much that came after it, even works, albums, bands that might not sound anything like Beat Happening, or no one would think of in the same conversation as Beat Happening. They really pushed the pushed the boundaries and were on the forefront of bands who adopted the DIY philosophy whole heartedly.
In a way I think that everything that is happening now in independent music is echoed by what they did. It was the first record that K released and I think K is still a very important label today. When you look around they’ve fiercely followed their values, and what they believe to be an ethical way to release music, and not in a way where they think they are superior to anyone. Maybe it’s not even about ethics, it’s just the way they want to make art. I think in some way it is about purity, and having control of art.
I think they are singular example, I can’t think of too many examples of other companies that do it the way they do and to the level they do and for as long as they have. I think it’s an important label, and the first Beat Happening record is a signifier, that represents everything that came after it. That’s the reason why I chose this album specifically. And I guess I am leaving out a lot there about how I came to this album, and all these other questions. But that’s a simple answer. It’s a vital album, it’s a record that reflects the values of independent music in general. And those are all really important to me.
Ovrld: I was curious about the submission process for 33 and 1/3rd. Was this your first try? Your first pick?
BP: Well, since you asked directly, I’ll say I actually submitted the title twice. It was accepted on the second go around. I haven’t said that in other interviews. As a tip for anyone applying to the series, as words of confidence, I think it is about being in the right place at the right time. Like anything else. It’s just on my mind because I was reading this George Orwell essay, “Politics and the English Language,”– otherwise I would never be quoting from Ecclesiastes– and there’s a point where he translates part of The Bible and he is showing the devolution of language, he basically says “it doesn’t matter if you’re fast or strong or smart or talented, none of those things matter, time and chance are the things that matter.” I think that’s true to some extent, particularly with this series. It does matter what else is submitted and it does matter what they are looking for at that particular time to move the series forward. I mean, if they decide to do a Beatles record– which is going to be rare, because there has just been so much written about the Beatles—if they decide to bite on one of those, they aren’t going to do it twice in a row. Two or three years down the line, maybe. But every time, there are tons of Beatles submissions. You’ve got to look at the odds and say “That’s going to be a really hard pill to swallow” or whatever colloquialism you want to put in there.
So yeah, I think it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time for this book. I think there is a whole slew of albums in this run that I was excited to see as somebody who really cares about fringe, obscure weirdo music…to see Daniel Johnston on the list, and Sleater-Kinney, and Geto Boys, even, and The Raincoats…those are all albums that embody most of the books about records that have come out in this series. This was my second time. I didn’t change too much from the first to the second time but the core was exactly the same. But I think I submitted a few different ideas about myself, really. Like kind of selling myself a little more, like “I’m up to the challenge.” I think it was less about the ideas in the book the second time around and more about me selling myself.
The proposal was like thirty pages long, it was pretty in-depth. I think writers are interested in what you do to get approved, so I don’t know if that matters, but in my experience it was pretty thorough. And I knew the band personally. I had primary source material that was as yet unreleased, I had a lot of ideas to work from that no one had written about, necessarily. The K book had just come out not too long before, so I think it was a ripe. That K book, Love Rock Revolution by Mark Baumgarten, is great, it covers so much about a label that has lasted for thirty years. So being able to delve so specifically into Beat Happening, there was still plenty to talk about.
Ovrld: Your book is also so much about that time and place idea, the way things came together to allow Beat Happening to happen at the time that it did. There were things happening in Olympia, WA as well as with the individual members of the group, there were a number of circumstances that brought them together. How do you feel that reflects back to today? Because I agree that a lot of the DIY revolution that Beat Happening presaged is really coming to fruition now. What parallels do you feel there are between what they were working within at that time, when music was not quite as democratized, versus today where some people might argue music is too open, there is too much stuff made by too many people.
BP: Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t get into it too much in the book, but it is in the blurb on the back of the book, this idea that what Beat Happening dreamed up was what they achieved with their independent network of newsletters and mail order and connecting to other bands in other cities and the beginnings of an actual touring circuit…which I guess goes back even further to carnivals and community centers that blues musicians might have been touring around the country…but the very beginning of that club circuit of DIY and independent venues, they dreamed that and achieved it. I think there is a parallel with what we have now with the internet. I know it’s kind of lame to say that phrase “THE INTERNET” but it’s true, it really is. If you look at Op Magazine, which in many ways was a forerunner and ideologically gave birth to Calvin Johnson’s idea of what K might be, it’s the internet in print form. I think there is a direct parallel to that and with the way bands connect now.
I don’t want to be shitty or anything about it, I think it’s wonderful to have these tools but it’s weird to me that it’s like 2015 and I don’t think we really know how to use those tools yet. It’s strange. Not that I am saying I have the answer and I know how to use them. It is just weird, I feel like we’re digging with the wrong end of the shovel or something sometimes. We’re not using the tools effectively. Part of it could be saturation. You mentioned that. I have a lot of thoughts and musings more than I have solutions or answers or anything like that. But I think the tools Beat Happening imagined came to fruition, and I don’t know that it has quite had the effect that we thought it might have. We still have a fairly homogenized music and film and art culture. There’s still a fairly small portion of those artists that get heard and get paid attention to, it’s kind of a bummer to some degree. But also the more I think about it and the more involved I am in the music world, the more interested I am in just what’s in my backyard and community. And that’s all K has ever been interested in, and still are really. It’s amazing to me that they’re undistractable. Is that a word?
Ovrld: Probably not, but it fits the spirit of K…
BP: You could have the craziest, most interesting, most exciting musical phenomena that the whole world has ever seen and they’ll just shrug and keep doing their own thing. That’s the phrase you hear with K so much “we’re just doing our thing,” and it’s so nonchalant. But it rings true for everything they do. They’re content to just like go down to the community center or the art space, not a bar, and people will just sit on the floor and hear them. It’s so supportive and communal. It’s a cool community.
To loop back around and try to answer directly, it’s both like what we have now and what we have now also seems to have turned into a freefall, with everyone just kind of piling into a dog pile of people trying to figure it out. And I think K’s model is more about not engaging in that dogpile. Not that I think they’re better…I don’t want to be condescending about it. I think they have a different outlook, and it’s one to which I’m drawn. I can say that.
Beat Happening attempt to predict their own future with a magic 8 ball
Ovrld: A lot of what your book talks about is the role Olympia itself played in it, in allowing this scene to come together. I know there are human parts of that but I wanted to talk about Olympia. Having lived in the Pacific Northwest myself, there’s an idea of Olympia, a romanticized idea of it being this place that allows this kind of stuff to happen. In your estimation, do you think if Beat Happening were to come out today, and were trying to construct the same thing, do you think it could happen anywhere else? Or do you think is responsible for a lot of the magic of this album?
BP: It’s hard to say. I think you could have shades of grey, there are other areas where similar things happened. Like I am always lobbying for people to move to San Marcos. I’m serious. Just check out of the Austin marketing circus…I think I wrote that phrase today somewhere else, so sorry to recycle it…just go somewhere else. Bastrop won’t do, because it’s like the KKK capital of the world or something. But just get out and do something that’s a little more centered on…
Ovrld: I keep hearing Gruene brought up as an alternative…
BP: Gruene, Texas?
Ovrld: Yeah. And Lockheart, the BBQ town.
BP: Yeah, I would do it. I mean, it’s funny, because you could say “Well, you’re not doing it, either…” and of course I’m not. But I like to think– or maybe I just delude myself—that I am closer to that than anyone else. If there were anyone else that was willing to bite on this plan, I would do it. I do love the community aspect of music and I think I could do without the commercial aspect. I’m trying to decide if I want to actually answer the question or just follow the tangent…I’ll follow the tangent! Then I’ll come back to your question.
I think that we kind of live under this myth, that we’re going to get rich, and I don’t think we are. I’m open to getting rich, but I was talking to another friend I know through K and she lives in Norway and she was saying “That’s the thing, everyone in America thinks they’re going to get rich, and if you just give up, boy, you can really do a lot more. You can follow a different model if you give up the dream that the next song is going to break out or you’re going to win the lottery or whatever it is.”
To try to answer your question a little more directly, Olympia is particularly special. That is no small part due to the local politics and the Evergreen state college. Those are things I definitely hit on in the book, Evergreen in particular. You cannot underestimate the impact that Evergreen has on the music and art that comes out of Olympia, and the weirdos you find there. It is a singular school, there is nothing else like it. I was reading a comment the other day, a person I knew and someone I didn’t know were talking on Facebook. Someone said they were applying to Columbia, a specific grad school in Columbia, and the other person said they love Evergreen grads. I was kind of shocked to read that but also not. There’s no place like it. It’s an interesting place. I don’t know that there’s another Evergreen in the country. I think that has a lot to do with it. I think you can get some very independently minded liberal arts universities that might come close, but it depends on what is in the water there as far as how it’s going to turn out.
Here’s an example that Al Larsen of Some Velvet Sidewalk gave in an interview that I don’t think made the book…he teaches at a school in Vermont and there is a puppet show that has been around for like thirty, or forty, or fifty years and it’s a very progressive, liberal puppet show in the woods or something [I think Bryan is talking about Bread and Puppet Theatre, a famous activist puppet troupe]. It’s independent theatre and it’s centered around this idea, just like K, that art should be accessible, art should be for the people. Art should be free or at least cheap in a way that you can interact with it. It shouldn’t be something that is protected by some vanguard or something like that. And so this puppet show is something Larsen brought up as another example of a place where you have a similar thing happening, just people thinking outside the box. They happen to be embracing an entirely different medium, but even then Heather [Lewis] in the book talked about the theatre she worked in in Seattle…
Beat Happening were always a very theatrical band
Ovrld: Calvin and Heather’s first performances were basically theatre too, they were improvised and people would come up on stage and start to participate…
BP: Yeah, there was a lot going on that’s not about music. If you blur the line between what music is and what art is in general, then I think Beat Happening is much easier to digest for people who want to get into the technicality of music. It always surprises me when people are like “I don’t like this” and it’s like “I don’t see the point in not liking Beat Happening.” It’s almost like what you are really saying is “I don’t feel like taking in this art today.” That’s a better sentence for Beat Happening, because no one is listening to Beat Happening because they’re not like whatever band is technical…
Ovrld: Like Mars Volta, or Rush…
BP: Yeah, exactly. “Listen to that riff, man!” That’s not happening.
Ovrld: There’s a part in your book where you talk about how a lot of what inspired Calvin was that he was very anti-theory. He didn’t like that music theory seemed to strip a lot of the beauty from music and when technicality came to the forefront you had this skill barrier as well as this production barrier. You talked about how he believed so much in the power of three chords that he didn’t believe in learning what there was beyond those three chords, because if you can create something so beautiful and so powerful so simply, why do you need anything else?
I feel like music has this push and pull, where you have primitivism that takes over for a while and we’re back in the swing of that with garage music being so big right now. But I also think a lot of what Calvin says matches up with what Brian Eno said in the ‘70s, even though he was working within the realm of prog. That really stood out to me because often, as technology gets better we lose sight of that because we can do so much more. Now you can make 100 tracks for a song and stack it up however you want. Do you think that simplicity continues to appeal because it continues to be so relevant? Do you think bands like Beat Happening matter because there remains this need to rebel against rock maximalism?
BP: I totally agree with everything you are saying. Is that the easiest way to answer it? Just a yes? To comment on that a little bit, I like the occasional “maximalism,” as you put it. Like a novel that’s completely indulgent, like…
Ovrld: Like 1Q84?
BP: Yes, like 1Q84 or like the David Foster Wallace novel…his huge one that has the tome and the footnotes that are like five pages long…Infinite Jest! It’s a Shakespeare reference! How did I forget that? Anyway. Infinite Jest, which is totally indulgent. Or Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon. Something like that. Totally indulgent. Weird. Maximalism. It’s so crazy and detailed and indulgent that you don’t really even know what to do with it. Or Ulysses. I love that. It’s great…every once in a while. But I do think that pendulum swings, and I think you’re right that it returns to a state of simplicity. I think you look at something like the Transcendalists or something, you have a Thoreau and Emerson and simplify and I think there’s a truth to that. We feel good when we simplify. I can’t think of a better thing than simplifying your life, to be honest with you. It is an appeal of Beat Happening. They just strip away these complexities and make it as simple as possible. I certainly think there is a beauty in that, as opposed to what we mentioned earlier, with Rush or something like that, which is intricate and detailed. Beat Happening is just about fun, and they balance it so well, that’s what makes them a great band. It is fun and it is simple but there is so much complexity, theoretically, in terms of what we’re talking about, where there is so much going on that is unstated. I think Beat Happening does a great job raising questions about, taking the paths and making the decisions they do.
Ovrld: You give this anecdote in the book, where you talk about a cake day celebration in Olympia. Calvin was asked to bring a cake and the cake he made was a garlic cake. You use that as an anecdote to explain the band, because it’s a thing where it confronts you and you think “This is not how this should be…” Especially because Beat Happening is a pop band in their own way. Calvin’s voice is just so different from what you are used to hearing with a pop band and the construction of it is so different from that. So you’re looking at the basic format of a cake but once you bite into it it’s something that forces you to reconfigure your tastes.
I was interested in that because with Beat Happening, the appeal, once you get down to it in this book, is that they force you to confront some of those notions about what you expect from art. When you were writing about Beat Happening, was that a thesis you had going in? Or did that anecdote, once you heard it, crystalize that theory?
BP: I’m just grinning ear to ear right now. It’s a moment I can’t really even think about without grinning. The first time I interviewed Calvin, the first time I met him, was when we had that discussion about cupcakes, which is the lead chapter. Sometimes I just feel like my writing style is I do what makes sense. I don’t fight the story. And it’s like “that’s the first experience I had, so it’s going to go first in the book.” And I think it makes sense that way, because that’s the order I experienced it in, so my brain experiences it that way. I learned pretty quickly that he had this penchant for deconstruction.
So I had that as the thesis of the book, and I had the deconstructed nature of the most simple thing we have, the system of letters that comprises the English language [each chapter of the book is a letter]. And I was talking to Julie Fay– I told her a million times how integral she was to this book—and that was when the garlic cake anecdote was told to me in full. After I had conceived the structure of the book, I heard rumors of this garlic cake and I thought “Oh man, I gotta hear that, this is like the Holy Grail.” And that was the feeling when I heard that anecdote, it was just like finding the Holy Grail, a holy light from heaven, and it was just amazing to hear this story. And it fit so well, to have one of the first experiences I ever had with Calvin be echoed a decade later when I am doing research to write something about the band, to have them so perfectly mirrored, that the first thing he said to me I think was true about him from the time that he was a teenager in Olympia, and it’s still something that is grounded to me as something that is so culturally pervasive, baking. It’s so pure, it’s what we all do, eating, getting sustenance, putting food in our bodies.
Food actually plays a pretty large role in a lot of Calvin Johnson’s art…including press photos
It was absolutely a gem that was uncovered in the process, even after the book structure was decided. I can’t imagine the book without that detail. It’s so perfect for it. It totally reinforced everything…it was like the final nail, or whatever. It was a really strong piece to solidify everything I was already talking about. But there was something else you said, about them forcing you to reconsider things…I think I say something similar in the book, it’s almost a bold claim, but I say “they might be the most punk band ever.”
Ovrld: Yeah, you bring that up.
BP: I really believe that. If you stand on stage and get hit in the face with an ashtray, and bleed and just keep doing your thing, I don’t know, man. Depending on what you want to define punk as…again, it’s the distinction I make in the book…if you want to define punk as this certain sound with these rules, then go right ahead. But if you want punk rock to be about breaking the rules, and to be about toughness and to be about fortitude and be about individuality, then Beat Happening is your band.
Ovrld: It’s interesting because you make that point throughout the book about them being on the other end of the spectrum of punk. You might have punk that is loud and abrasive and in your face but then you also have punk that breaks down the rules maybe in a quieter way, and is therefore maybe breaking down even more rules, because it strips down music to its barest elements. Part of that for me what was interesting was that when you look at the timeline, the twee movement that basically rose out of Beat Happening and K emerging, is almost exactly ten years after the emergence of the original punk movement. I know Beat Happening was embraced in a big way in the UK, too.
I’m going to use a sad music nerd reference here for a minute, but there is the anecdote about Joy Division and a number of other Manchester bands forming after seeing the Buzzcocks play a community center, and then in your book you have the Wipers, the Accused, the Fartz, all these more obvious punk bands that are doing events in Olympia that help Calvin decide “This is what I am going to do.”
BP: And The Cramps. You can’t leave out The Cramps!
Ovrld: Yeah, it’s interesting to me because we have this image of twee as this very cute, very stripped down sound, but a lot of the pioneers of it were coming from that end of punk. Like even the fact that Beat Happening worked with Greg of The Wipers for the recording of the band. Do you think that’s something that is lost on modern audiences? The connection between twee and punk? In your research did you find that the connection between the two isn’t acknowledged as much? Historically was it acknowledged?
BP: No, I think it was lost on people still. But not always. It was lost on me, certainly. I’m not going to sit here and posture and act like I got it right away. I don’t remember how much I divulge in that opening chapter, honestly, but I was in this cutesy band liking Beat Happening, thinking of them as a band that sang about walks and lakes and picnics. It was certainly lost on me for a long time. It is still there. It’s fine to listen to Beat Happening and think it’s fun and silly because it is fun and silly. But yes, it is lost on a lot people. Like in that story, with Calvin and Henry Rollins, the conversation between them and everyone is like “who the fuck is this.” But those who get it, they get it, they get that it’s transgressive. I think that is the make or break point of whether you are going to be a Beat Happening fan or not a Beat Happening fan, if you can see it as something that is transgressive and valuable. Or even perhaps if you’re the kind of person who likes valuable versus enjoyable. Those are two different things. And I absolutely, without a doubt, lean towards the kind of person who sees value in things. When I watch a film, or I listen to music, or I read a book, or I have a conversation, I am always thinking about the value in things. Sometimes I make a mistake and I stop enjoying things because I have become too concerned with the value.
Ovrld: That is another common theme in the book, people talking about how they don’t even know how to interact with him. Especially at the beginning, because you also talk about him as almost this mythological figure in a way, that everyone in Olympia had a story about. That has even been my experience every time I have been to Olympia. Everyone has a Calvin story.
That’s another thing that stood out to me. Even though Calvin is a person who rejects fame in that way, he is still a larger than life figure. A lot of Beat Happening is contradictory like that, and I wanted to explore that. While you were talking to people in Olympia, I imagine you ran into a lot of people who have this romanticized, passionate enthusiasm for everything Calvin does. A lot of people owe their careers to him in a way, because he helped inspire them or foster them or mentor them. But then Calvin the individual seems to reject that. He seems to be a person who questions that and a lot of your interactions in the book are rooted in questions. He frequently responds to things you ask him with more questions, rather than answering what you’re saying.
BP: He is a hard person to interview.
Ovrld: Right, that was what I was going to ask. Did a lot of the info you learned on him, or the band, have to come from indirect sources?
BP: No, I talked to him extensively, and it’s probably ten hours of recordings. I had spent time with him before, just hanging around. But he will always surprise you. At this point I would call Calvin a friend, but he will always surprise you, you never know what the answer is going to be or what the response is going to be and I think it differs from day to day. Sometimes I ask him a question or I run something by him and I think I am going to get a positive response and he just has zero interest [laughs]. Sometimes I take a long shot and he is totally available for that. It just depends. People do this a lot, Heather talks about it, and I know it’s in here where I talk about how with Heather, people are always asking her to explain him. [whispers] “Tell me about Calvin…” And I am guilty of the same thing. I will go to people in that community and go “Do you think Calvin would like…” and they’ll say “Well, why don’t you ask him?” Because it’s scary!
I hope you’ll get to see this interview I’m trying to get together. It’s video footage that has never been released, that I did with Calvin, and here’s an example. I was videoing him…why I wanted to video interview Calvin Johnson I will never know [laughs]. It is so difficult. It’s setting yourself up for misery. I set it all up and Calvin is watching me set it all up. I am not a video guy, really. But I am doing the best that I can. I know a little about it. So I am setting up two angles, and I’m setting up both my cameras, and my audio and light kit and I’m using DSLRs so it’s rolling shutters, so they click off every six minutes or whatever. I have all these variables and it’s way too much for one human to manage. And he is just kind of watching me in silence, it’s very awkward. We’re in the K offices and I’m setting all this up and clearly a little disjointed or whatever.
I finally get everything rolling and we’re good to go and I ask him the first question. “Is there one show, or one experience you had, where you saw a band and you were at a large concert, or an arena rock thing, and it clicked for you and you were like ‘This is not what music should be.’ And music for you was redefined and you realized ‘I want to be in a smaller environment and I want to be with members of a community.’ Is there an experience you can cite that changed your perspective on music?” And he does the same thing in a video interview with Ian Svenonius, who is one of his good friends…
BP: Yeah, he’s great. So I don’t feel like this was personal, but Calvin just pans his head left to right, very slowly, looks off camera, doesn’t really engage you and it has to be a 15 second pause…which is a long, long time…and then he says [in Calvin’s low monotone] “No. That’s a good question though.” And that was his response. He is a hard person to talk to. But he is a fun person to talk to. And when you hit the thing he wants to talk about, he’ll talk to you. There are things he doesn’t want to talk about.
In that same interview, I asked him about K eschewing the desire to grow to the next level. I mean, K absolutely could have taken some of the bands they put out and marketed them in a way where they did some business dealings and increased their size. Sometimes I feel like it’s an inevitable death for everything. Everything dies. So are you going to chew up a lot of stuff and spit it out behind you and get to be this massive behemoth that can’t sustain itself and just ends up like a giant beached whale, rotting? Or are you going to just kind of sit back? Those are the two extremes, and they’ve been on the one extreme. It’s not even by a choice, like “We’re going to not do that,” it’s “We’re going to keep doing what we’ve been doing” and by nature of doing that, they’ve been able to just be the same.
So I asked him some question, “blah blah blah business,” business was somewhere in the question, and he was done by that point. He had heard that word and checked out. When I finished the question, his answer was “We’re not a business, we’re really more of an art project.” I think that’s the distinction. You have to be in his world of talking about that. I think though that he will engage in things that are maybe not his favorite things to talk about. He was very gracious with his time and that this was a book that I was trying to write and I think especially for someone like him to give me time, where the first priority on the day’s agenda might not have been to sit and talk to me, was very kind and gracious. In booking the events that I have put together in the northwest, he just took it on. He knew all these people and I asked to get in touch with some of the people that I wanted to play these events, like the Crabs…I talked to Jonn Lunsford, Bret’s brother, for the book…and Bryan Elliot’s band Enduro…Calvin was super helpful, getting in touch with them and sending emails.
I don’t know if this is relevant, but I think it’s an interesting point and it’s coming to me so I will share it. Calvin is a very formal person. It’s very strange. He has a very formal way of doing things. He is the most amazing punk rock businessman I have ever seen in my life. He loves the phone. He will make phone calls. He will sit and make phone calls. That’s how he gets business done. It is like a 1970’s style. When you call Calvin, and you get Calvin on the phone, the answer is always [adopts Calvin’s monotone] “Hello. K Records. This is Calvin Johnson.” Always. It is very formal. And he will send you an email that says “Hello, this is Calvin Johnson and I am wondering…” It’s very direct and to the point.
Ovrld: That leads into something else I wanted to ask you. Even though Calvin is very anti-structure in theory, there seems to be a kind of structure to K. I feel like that’s part of the reason for the longevity. It’s informal in some ways, and things just happen, and everyone is friends, but on the other end of the spectrum, I feel like there is this process to it and it is very hardcore, and not just in the DIY ethics sense. But also the letter stuff, like the way the name K fits into the LMN (Lost Music Network) and OP Magazine thing, and the radio station KAOS. Then looking at the art you have this hand drawn, loose drawing and then the album font is as rigid as possible. I was curious to hear more about how they manage that business. Because it does seem to defy the odds. Do you think that contradiction is part of it? Do you think that uniqueness is what allows it to survive where other labels that started at the same time and had similar ethics have disappeared?
BP: Yeah, I hear what you’re saying. It is very, very loose at K. But I should say right here, up front, Candice Pedersen basically said…we communicated a few times, I didn’t interview her…do you know who she is?
Ovrld: I’m not familiar with her, no.
BP: To some degree it’s a shame that she’s not part of this book, and to some degree, she’s just not, I don’t know what else to say about it. She was the business manager. She was right there at the beginning, right when K was formed with Beat Happening. And she managed it up through the early ‘90s, I’m going to say ’93. She deserves so much credit for keeping K successful, profitable in a way that could continue. The reason why K survived is Candice Pedersen. And the story I’ve told here is not totally about the financial success or structure of K. It’s more of a whimsical story to some degree. But Candice deserves a tremendous amount of credit.
Likewise, Mariella Luz is now the manager of K, deserves a tremendous amount of credit. She is razor sharp and keeps that business running. “Business” being the key word there. I know that K is an art project more than it is a business, but is has to be a business on some days or it won’t continue to exist. Mariella is phenomenal, she is incredibly sharp and she is so well organized and she knows exactly what she is doing. She can tell you, pretty closely, “this is the number of records we’re going to sell for this, and this is the number of records you should take on tour with you,” she knows her shit and she gets it done. So there is absolutely that structure. They have meetings. It’s an organization like anything else. It’s a very loose organization that centers on art more than anything else. Above all else, art is #1 and that’s what makes it the organization that it is. But it still does have those organizational tools and features and facets.
Mariella Luz is key to K’s day to day operations
Ovrld: There’s this story you tell in the book, where Calvin goes out to the east coast, goes out to Maryland gets these record stores to buy the album even though they’ve never heard the album or anything. There seems to be a throughline in the book that indicates that maybe Calvin’s greatest skill is his ability to take the first step.
BP: Oh yeah. He is super industrious. And that’s true that he is always kind of plugging away at it. That I don’t think that has as much to do with organization or structure, I guess the word for it is grit. He just has it. And he just stays in there and keeps working at it.
Ovrld: You talk in the book about how Heather and Bret would not necessarily have taken the steps or the path they did, like going to Japan, and even though it’s clearly a collaborative process, it seems like Calvin is the catalyst, the engine to move forward.
BP: It’s totally true. Everyone has defined roles. Maybe it’s silly, but I love the Bret chapter. I love a lot of what I have written, but the Bret story specifically…he lends so much to the band, he’s a modern day philosopher. The guy is not really interested in engaging with the culture in that particular way. He’s written books, mostly edited books on Croatian fishing families…
Ovrld: I have actually seen some of those, they sell them on a lot of the islands outside of Seattle…
BP: Yeah! He is great at what he does there. But I think personally that he is very humble, and he’s such a profound thinker, in my opinion. His view of the world is so astute and clever. The guy is super sharp. And I think his conceptualization of what Beat Happening could be and people’s roles, he understood that very well. Interpersonal politics is something he grasps really well. And Heather is the member of the band who had liked being in the back and liked being in a supporting role, but also liked expressing herself creatively and at the core is an artist. Everyone just fit in their roles and worked so well.
Heather is great as a drummer. And I think she is great as a singer too. I think she gets uncomfortable…I don’t want to speak for her…but she actually said this, so I guess I’m not really speaking for her [laughs], “I am uncomfortable in the front.” But I think she is a great singer, her voice is wonderful. Because it really has a softness and a melodicism to it, but it is also not traditionally feminine. It’s a perfect voice for Beat Happening. Sometimes I think it communicates the message of Beat Happening better than even Calvin’s does. Even though Calvin’s is what defines.
Bret Lunsford is the philosopher at the heart of Beat Happening
That’s another reason, just to go back to the first question you asked, that this record is so interesting. Because it is the one I think embodies the sharing of roles more than any other album. Everyone is truly collaborating and having their voices heard and gotten to be a part of it, more than any other record.
Ovrld: Why do you think this album took off the way it did in England? Because it seemed initially that it almost had more of an impact in the UK than it did in the states, even though it did have a major impact on some key figures in America, it kind of kicked off an entire movement in the UK.
BP: I don’t know that it’s fair to say it kicked off an entire movement. I think lots of people in the UK would argue the whole C86 movement…
Ovrld: Right, Postcard Records.
BP: Yeah, that was already kicking and in full effect. And Calvin was a big fan of the Raincoats. I think they’re concurrent. It is fair to say it had a lot of success in the UK. And I think more than in the states initially, until people were like “well shit, we have to take it seriously.” America is weird, right? And I think geographically, as I point out, the Northwest part of the states is made up of pioneers and they’re very free spirited. That’s true of America to a certain extent, but America in general has a weird Puritanical perspective, so we’re exploratory while also being super reserved. And the UK was just a little more open and ripe and receptive to something along the lines of androgyny and challenging gender roles. As Simon Reynolds wrote in his review, the word that stood out about Beat Happening was singular…I think he said the UK had not seen anything this singular and moving [the quote is “Our own shamblers have yet to produce anything this strange, this moving”].
In my opinion Beat Happening really pushed these ideas further than anyone else. They carried it to an extreme. And I will also be the first to say that part of that was just by virtue of what they were working with. But I also think there is something to be said about that, you can’t write them off and just say “Well, the only reason they pushed it to that extreme is because they were so inexperienced.” By the same nature, to undertake these actions of recording and releasing an album, starting your own label, distributing that, taking it across the country and selling it, flying overseas and putting it in people’s faces and pushing themselves forward in that way, that takes a tremendous amount of wherewithal to do when you are so inexperienced. So it’s kind of like the question is in the answer. You can’t write them off for that reason because that reason is what makes them so important, to me.
Ovrld: They also took steps that other bands didn’t, like the plan to go to Japan and to think “We’re going to stand out as really cool Americans.” Most bands are not thinking that way at that time.
BP: Right, they were just so ambitious. “It’s just because they’re so inexperienced!” No, that’s what makes them great. To be willing to run with it. To not sit back and wait until they feel they have whatever credentials or whatever accomplishments or whatever accolades or whatever blessing from the music industry. But to completely say “We do not give a shit about the blessings of the music industry. Or what accolades we have or what accomplishments we’ve made. We are here and we are going to play this music.”
Ovrld: A lot of what came after really supports that too, because you have the International Pop Underground Convention where they brought over a lot of those other acts doing concurrent things and created this unification with different people from different areas looking to achieve similar things. Was there a sense that this album was going to spark this line of thinking? Do you think Calvin and them had an awareness of what they were helping start? Because it seems like there was always a mixture of keeping things simple and aiming really high.
BP: I think aiming high is only a product of feeling like “Why not?” That’s a philosophy I’ve heard these people talk about, like “Why not me?” I think the tendency as humans is to feel like “I’m not going to be the one to be a celebrated band, that’s not going to be me.” So to be like “Why not me, let’s see what happens,” that’s a willingness to take that risk to put yourself out there. But I do not think they ever thought they would achieve what they did. I think more than anything…and I think it’s one of the reasons why they’ve stayed largely a regional label to some degree…I mean they’re an international label in some regards, but they’re also a regional label, and I think part of the reason for that is that they aren’t aiming big, necessarily.
The International Pop Underground Convention was one of K’s biggest triumphs
I think Calvin especially wants to create music that he believes is valuable and worthwhile, and he will do that regardless of anything around him. So anything that happens that affects others, or has a global reach, or reaching anyone else, is purely by nature of chance, I guess. I believe that he would whatever he felt like doing even if he thought no one would listen to it. I also think that after he made that thing, even if no one listened to it, he would still try to get people to listen to it. So it’s both, it’s give and take. It echoes a lot of what we’ve been saying, they fiercely follow their commitments, they fiercely follow their values and their ideals and what they feel is important. But simultaneously, try to use that thing to engage with the world, and say “Here we are!” And that’s what the network is all about, the International Pop Underground, and the Lost Music Network, being this collection of weirdos putting up flags and saying “This is what we’re about” and then seeing what other weirdos are around the country. That is what it’s about. So I don’t think they had any ambition about changing the world or changing paradigms. But I do think they were just themselves. And I think that’s one thing you always see when paradigms start changing, just someone being themselves. And at the core, I think that is something that is so important to this book, it’s a call to be yourself. I think that is maybe the most revolutionary thing about Beat Happening, they were just being themselves, and by being themselves they inspired so many other people to also be themselves. That can’t be underestimated. That’s a lesson we could all still learn today, to just be ourselves and be sincere.
Ovrld: On that note, what current parallels do you think there are? Do you think there could be another Beat Happening, a group that brings together all these different notions of independence so subtly but also simply? Do you think we need Beat Happening the same way we did then?
BP: I think, yeah, starting with the last question and working backwards, yes, we need Beat Happening. I think we need people who are thinking outside the box in different ways, who challenge norms and shift paradigms. I think there is far too much paradigm following in 2015. I think visibility is part of that, just to loop back into the whole technology conversation from earlier. The more visible things are, the harder it is to think outside the box. These were weirdos that no one could see, and that’s kind of when it’s the easiest to be yourself and think outside the box and be free spirited and I think we need people like that. Neutral Milk Hotel is a really great example of a band that I think is very much like Beat Happening. So you could argue there are some musical similarities, and I agree to a degree, but more than that I think it’s about focusing on the local community that was around those people and the emphasis on art above all else and following those values regardless of what anyone else said. No one was trying to get famous in the Elephant 6 collective, at all. Elephant 6 is a great parallel, and I love that it’s in the southeast corner and K is in the northwest corner…
Ovrld: Yeah, basically polar opposite areas in every way…
BP: Yeah, I think Athens and Olympia share a lot of similarities. You have a very forward thinking liberal college, but you also have a small town and you have weirdos. So I think Neutral Milk Hotel is a great parallel, but I don’t think there is a Beat Happening currently. But I’m open. I don’t know who it would be. I think there are some little pockets. K is still doing interesting stuff. It’s just that people want to think they’re not as relevant, but I think they are.
Don’t forget to check out the Beat Happening tribute night hosted by Bryan Parker this Saturday, November 21st, at Cheer Up Charlie’s with Big Bill, XETAS and more.
Morgan Davis sells bootleg queso on the streets of Austin in order to fund Loser City, the multimedia collective he co-runs. When he isn’t doing that, he gets complimented and/or threatened by Austin’s musical community for stuff he writes at Ovrld, which he is the Managing Editor of.