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interview
with Jason Simons and Steve McBean
Munich, Orange House 16th November 2005
 the actual act of the night would have been the
Constantines from Toronto, but for some reason
Dead Meadow and
Black Mountain got scheduled for the same day so it was three great shows instead of one.
Dead Meadow is a threepiece from Washington D.C. that modulates some of the most lysergic vibes and drones one can possibly swing to, almost a spiritual experience if you close your eyes an let their sound shake your body and flood your mind.
Black Mountain from Vancouver B.C are one part of a trinity consisting of the sexational
Pink Mountaintops the (insert adjective here)
Jerk With A Bomb and the raisiny
Black Mountain.
So here is another of our taralluci & vino Interviews, this time 170 had a chat with Jason Simons guitarist / singer for
Dead Meadow and Steve Mc Bean guitarist / singer for
Black Mountain-Pink Mountaintops, also part of the conversation were Steven Mc Carty drummer of Dead Meadow,
Tohkamak
disciples Tohkka5 and Philnomenal with wine and green soul food and Indio the Magyar Vizsla…
pictures by Tohkka5 and 170, live
pictures under http://pix.guitarsgalore.net
 TOHKAMAK: Steve If you want some more of the wine help yourself!
Steve Mc Bean: Cool!
TOHKAMAK: It's in there.
Jason Simons: Oh in there?! Heheh! (points at grappa and fanta bottles)
TOHKAMAK: Yeah, heh! It's that good old farmer wine from Sardinia, we brought like 50 liters with us last time.
Steve Mc Bean: lol
TOHKAMAK: Alright, so how did this tour come about, like did you guys know each other, did someone hook you up or was it just coincidence?
Jason Simons: No we had never met, I think it was their idea.
Steve Mc Bean: Yeah when we were here last, we were just talking, what would be a good tour...
Jason Simons: Yes like it's cool with two likeminded bands, especially like with our resources, you travel around with a bus and you know. Like, well this night it's three bands, almost every other show it's two, so both bands can really play for an hour and plus. You know cuz both of us have long songs and jams and all that, so we both can totally do our thing, no one has to finish fast and every thing.
TOHKAMAK: ok, like last time you were here with
And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead and that was a little different back then.
Jason Simons: Oh yeah exactly, this is that thing, so equal time is really good, I'm sure for Black Mountain it's the same way. When you have to play like 45 minutes or like half an hour you're like hmmm, you can do five and a half songs you know which is like ah huh...
TOHKAMAK: last time you were here in Europe with Black Mountain I believe it was in June, was that just a couple of dates or a longer tour?
Steve Mc Bean: Yes, May or June It was three weeks, that tour was weird. Because most of it was in Germany and it was actually just us. Cuz we were supposed to play with
Kinski but they cancelled it the very last minute and I dont know...
TOHKAMAK: Yeah
Kinski
are good, do you guys know the
Wellwater Conspiracy? They are also from Seattle.
Steve Mc Bean: No.
Jason Simons: No!
TOHKAMAK: well it's more like a project of the drummer of Soundgarden, Matt Cameron and the first guitarist of Monster Magnet John Mc Bain, he left after "Spine Of God". They are recording at Cameron's place, or at least they did for a while, on the last record they had Glenn Slater of the
Walkabouts playing keyboards and on the ones before Ben Shepherd of Soundgarden and Josh Homme of Queens Of The Stone Age were adding vocals and playing bass on some songs, it's very diverse stuff some tracks got something of The Who, others are more sinister kinda like Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, some stuff then is rocking in a Nuggets / Pebbles fashioned way. You might like it, before that they had an other project called Hater which was very much along the same lines, it definitely owes a lot to the
13th Floor Elevators. You guys are into the 13th Floor Elevators? Well I think so.
 Jason Simons: How can you not like
the
13th Floor Elevators, they are one of the best bands ever. People always talk about Roky Erickson but not enough about Stacy Sutherland's guitar playing, which is so awesome.
TOHKAMAK: Yeah totally, then there's also this other guy, Tommy Hall, with the jug percussion.
Jason Simons: Oh yeah! He was like the brain, yeah yeah, cuz he was like a philosophy student, so he gave it that turn.
TOHKAMAK: He didn't even play an instrument...
Jason Simons: Oh yeah, well he did the jug but he did most of the songs, well him and Roky Erickson wrote the songs. But he was like the fucking, acid, religion dude, you know.
TOHKAMAK: just recently I was reading something about Roky Erickson, he lives in Austin now, he even played one show not too long ago somewhere. Also he was accused of stealing mail from his neighbors, but apparently there was some sort of misunderstanding there, but he had mail all over the place, like attached to his walls.
Jason Simons: Yeah, I saw a
13th Floor Elevators
reunion one time when we were in Austin randomly, well you know there was the original musicians, well original bass player then Roky Erickson's brother was singing. Roky Erickson was there in the audience, people kept shaking hands with him.
TOHKAMAK: Well Steve, with Black Mountain are you also gonna play some songs of your other band Pink Mountaintops?
Steve Mc Bean: No, that's a different band.
TOHKAMAK: Is that so? Totally different band, I thought it was the same guys.
Steve Mc Bean: It is, it's the same people but it is a different thing.
 Jason Simons: I haven't actually heard Pink Mountaintops.
TOHKAMAK: But you know the songs?
Jason Simons: No not yet, is it mellower or rockier?
Steve Mc Bean: more folkie, with bongos, and some other stuff.
Jason Simons: Oh cool!
TOHKAMAK: Well the lyrics are so cool, like this song "Rock And Roll Fantasy": you're my rock and roll fantasy, you are my wet dream and I came all over my self, wish I came all over your blouse...
Steve Mc Bean: Heheh yeah!
Jason Simons: Hah!
TOHKAMAK: And then there's this other song, what's it called again, "Just A Tourist In Your Town" with Amber's vocals. Wish you could play those two songs, but it's not going to happen, huh... heheh!
Steve Mc Bean: No we are not going to, heh.
 TOHKAMAK: Too bad, do you know this
band
Gram Rabbit?
Steve Mc Bean: No.
TOHKAMAK: Well they are similar in some ways to Pink Mountaintops, they are from Palm Desert, Southern California, same place Kyuss was from. Great tunes, a girl is singing on most of the songs and they got like a girl with a rabbit costume that is doing some performances during their live shows, that is as far as I understood, gonna put it on between your sets.
Steve Mc Bean: That's alright.
TOHKAMAK: Well being from Vancouver do you guys mostly play there or do you also play the small cities there in Canada?
Steve Mc Bean: Well usually we play like Seattle, Portland and that area...
TOHKAMAK: Well Seattle, so near should be cool, Seattle is a cool city I think, well I've been there when the WTO riots were on...
Jason Simons: Was it wild? Molotov Cocktails and stuff?
TOHKAMAK: No, well I didn't see any of that, but buses packed with marines kept racing past us, and they were trooping downtown with baseball bats, I actually didn't meet up with any of my friends there cuz they were all at the demonstrations.
Jason Simons: Ah, well we had some of that in Washington too, like back in the days with these "Nation Of Ulysses" guys, like throwing bottles, everyone was just like throwing some shit. Think it is crazy in Paris for our show?
TOHKAMAK: Well I don't think it will be a problem unless that place is in the suburbs. Like Paris is like two cities in one, there's the center where all the business takes place but only few people live there and then there's the rest surrounding it, which is like the real city but there's very little there. I doubt it the riots will ever make it to the center, like they had let them mess around but as soon as they burned some cars in the area where the middleclass or rich are living the police intervened big time.
Jason Simons: Well we'll see, the place where we are playing is probably right in the middle.
TOHKAMAK: Steve, so no shows in Squamish, Pemberton huh... but you are actually from Victoria aren't you?
 Steve Mc Bean: Yes I lived there, but it's been a while since I've been there, have you been there?
TOHKAMAK: Yes some years ago, visiting some friends in Courtenay, Vancouver Island is beautiful, been snowboarding on Mt. Washington that was rad, I've also been to Vancouver. We stayed at this girl's place, Rebecca she had a car with no brakes and was living in a house full of musicians...
Steve Mc Bean: Oh, where was that?
TOHKAMAK: Huh, I wouldn't know, somewhere outside of town, but have you been on tour with Pink Mountaintops too?
Steve Mc Bean: Only in the US and Canada.
TOHKAMAK: And are you gonna come to Europe?
Steve Mc Bean: Well nobody asked us yet.
TOHKAMAK: Well we are going to!
Steve Mc Bean: OK
TOHKAMAK: You guys gotta come play on our beach venue in Sardinia next summer, gonna call you up!
Steve Mc Bean: Well that would be cool.
TOHKAMAK: OK then I'm gonna let you go to do the soundcheck now, thanx a lot!
Steve Mc Bean: Fine, see you later.
 TOHKAMAK: Jason, you are all living in Washington right now?
Jason Simons: Yes we are all back in Washington D.C.
TOHKAMAK: And you are all living in the same house?
Jason Simons: No, no we'd probably kill each other, you know. We get back from tour and then you know, you can't talk to each other for two weeks, or you can but you know.
TOHKAMAK: You recorded your last album at home, or the one before, right?
Jason Simons: For the last one we went to a place in New York, Badlands and then we brought it home and did some stuff. But the first ones we did it all our selves. Well the first one was on Tolotta records, you know the label of Joe Lally of Fugazi, they where a big help in getting it going.
TOHKAMAK: And are you guys into Indian Classical Music, like ragas with tabalas, sitar and all that stuff?
Jason Simons: Oh yeah of course! Ali Akbar Khan, yeah and others, I like Ali Akbar Khan very much, he plays the sarod, kinda like a sitar but more like a guitar, it's great stuff.
TOHKAMAK: Well that kind of music is great to get in to a certain mood, like it's all in the same mood and its modulated around that, like some stuff is perfect for some mornings in the summer...
Jason Simons: Raga is so cool cuz it's like, yeah it captures like one mood but then they like stretch it out...
TOHKAMAK: Like all that drone stuff, which in your music is also present, I see some similarity there in the way it lets you find your own path to float throughthe atmosphere you create.
 Jason Simons: Yeah I love that kind of stuff, it's obvious. Yeah!
TOHKAMAK. Are you into movies? Like Jim Jarmusch kind of films?
Jason Simons: Definitely, the Wu-Tang Clan, oh yeah Ghost Dog and GZA and RZA were in that new one coffee and cigarettes, great!
TOHKAMAK: Well that one I think he started quite a while ago, cuz like the part with Tom Waits and Iggy Pop I've seen a long time ago, that's cool stuff. I was thinking your music would totally fit into one of those moves like his "Dead Man" movie with Johnny Depp and the guitar playing by Neil Young. Also vice versa having some elaborated visual projections would work real well with your live set, but that's just my personal feeling.
Jason Simons: Yeah totally. That's like the problem with modern movies, there is no mood, like no mood I could get into...
TOHKAMAK: Do you know Lars von Trier? A Danish director...
Jason Simons: Yes.
TOHKAMAK: Have you seen his new movie Manderlay?
Jason Simons: No I haven't.
TOHKAMAK: It's the second part of the trilogy he's doing, part one was Dogville with Nicole Kidman, the new one is set in the southern US of the '30s with slavery and all that but one can easily draw relations to what is happening right now in Iraq. Ron Howard's doughter is taking up Nicole Kidman's part...
 Jason Simons: Ron Howard the director, yes she was in "The Village" too, that's like the ultimate example of what I was talking about, it could have been a perfect horror story but they always gotta throw in their insane twist and make it bullshit, why don't just tell a nice story and keep it like... I don't know.
TOHKAMAK: well Lars von Trier always puts in a shocker towards the end that will most probably really fuck you up, but for the rest it's some of what you said too.
Jason Simons: Well a shock is always good, I like the new Herzog, Werner Herzog is always cool.
TOHKAMAK: Herzog yeah!
Steven Mc Carty: Have you seen the Idiots by Lars von Trier?
TOHKAMAK: No I haven't seen that one yet.
Steven Mc Carty: It's great!
TOHKAMAK: Yeah I gotta wacht that one. But you guys really would dig "Breaking the Waves" the story takes place in the'70s in Scotland and the movie has those parts where there is just a picture on the screen like a painting with rock music from the '70s blasting and then you see the picture is moving, like there's a creek once and another time around a mountain and then all in a sudden a helicopter is flying through the picture, and the story is also full on, kinda like that one with Bjork "Dancer In The Dark" just that instead of the musical stuff there is hard rock and instead of death and love there is sex and love, well kinda.
Jason Simons: Wow!
TOHKAMAK: are you gonna bring out the John Peel session you did, is it gonna come out as a record on Matador like your other albums?
Jason Simons: Yes we are gonna bring that out, but on our own label, that will be good.
TOHKAMAK: Is your next record also gonna come out on your own label.
Jason Simons: No, but we might bring out a live record on that one we'll see, and also our first records.
TOHKAMAK: Yeah the live record you already did is awesome, really "got live if you want it" is one of my favourite live records. We are also bringing out some live records on our label ggWRECkURDS, it's just stuff we recorded, real raw stuff. We did a show with the Black Lips right on the beach in Sardinia in September, the tape of that show is kinda crazy. Are you also gonna record Black Mountain.
 Jason Simons: Yes, live records are always cool, that's a cool dog, what's his name?
TOHKAMAK: Indio.
Jason Simons: Real nice dog, Indio, I want a dog like that, that would be perfect.
TOHKAMAK: OK then, thanx
Jason Simons: Yeah man, well you're hanging out...
TOHKAMAK: yeah we're hanging out, maybe gonna go to that Portuguese bar Maroto, after the show, put on some 13th Floor Elevators and
Brian Jonestown Massacre...
Jason Simons: Yeah that would be cool, it's always cool to hang out after the show.
TOHKAMAK: Have some more of the wine and they got good stuff there too.
Jason Simons: Yeah that will be good!
for live pictures go to http://pix.guitarsgalore.net
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