“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
I’m in Hawaii. again.
‘twice last year’ as the man said in the film.
my hotel room looks to the concrete
and not the pacific
which makes me more comfortable
than the trip here last time.
some work to do, a lot, if I’m honest.
but all with good people,
and most of them with expense accounts.
there might be a pilot show done
if we can find an angel.
[which on Halloween might be hard]
I haven’t gone to the beach once,
I’m not a beach person.
and after my walks downtown,
I have to wonder -
if I go to Japan, will I meet Hawaiians?
[but try the dungeness ramen - it's exquisite]
If you grew up in the 90’s, then you’ve lived through the grunge/alternative era, and I’m sure you can name me the big bands (Nirvana, Pearl Jam blah blah blah). However, few people know about the bands credited with starting it all - the true pioneers or so to speak: one of them is the Pixies, the other one is Sonic Youth, and the last one is the Chainsaw Kittens.
Mixing basic punk structure with elements in theatrics and glam-rock, the Kittens made energetic, highly dramatic and original music. As the front man for the Kittens, Tyson Meade earned a reputation as one of the true individuals in the alternative music scene. Before the Chainsaw Kittens, Tyson was in the intense, darkly psychedelic Defenestration, whom is credited in various books as one of the bands that had an effect on Nirvana. Tyson then went on to join the Chainsaw Kittens and developed his skill further as a song writer. His songs are deeply personal, often quirky but always intelligent. He also developed a flamboyant onstage persona and a unique high octave vocal style. Often seen wearing feathers, stockings, and torn up wedding gowns (because, and I quote “I was feeling too ‘virginal’ and ‘un-slutty’ for prom dresses”), Tyson oozes charisma, grace and style rocking the stage, entertaining indeed.
During the mid 90’s, Tyson released his first highly personal solo album dealt into his sexuality, his childhood, and the rock lifestyle. His follow-up, Kitchens and Bathrooms - recorded while traveling around the United States, is available on iTunes.
He currently resides in Shanghai, China, where he teaches English.
[Louis Yu - Oct '09]
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some credit you, and your band, The Chainsaw Kittens with being one of two or three that launched alternative music - how true is this?
I hate to try to credit myself for something that I may or may not have created. At the time, I was fed up with everything going on in music, Thompson Twins, Howard Jones, Hooters, Mr. Mister, Scandal, then later the excruciating sounds of Winger and Warrant. So I started my first band, Defenestration, who are mentioned in the Road to Nirvana book. We had a record out when Janes Addiction were still cutting demos. Billy Corgan wrote me a really nice fan letter when he was working on the first Pumpkins album after he had heard the first Chainsaw Kittens. So, I guess I am one of the alterna-Forefathers.
a rumor is going around that Spike Jonze shot a video for y’all and only charged $5000?
Spike did in fact do our High in High School vid for $5k. He stayed with Trent our guitarist. He is a super nice guy. You will have to find the link on youtube since there is currently no youtube in the PR.
another rumor has been around for years of your famous ‘naked parties’. if this is true, who were your most favorite guests?
Oh NO! I did have naked parties. The most famous was the one that happened during OU’s Greek system’s Moms’ Weekend. At that point, I was well known in OKLA and somewhat famous in general. The Kittens had been on MTV and in lots of mags at that point. Some friends and I crashed a sorority house party and were well received. I was actually fawned over which was endearing. I invited some of the guys and girls back to my place for a party. They of course were fraternity/sorority. Some showed up. Everyone was naked when they showed. To gain entrance, they had to get naked too. They did. Everyone danced to the Ramones and Led Zeppelin. Dancing Days are here again!
so, we have you with the Kittens, and now in China - how the hell did that all come about?
A few years ago, I asked myself ‘What would Heathcliff do?” Of course, Heathcliff the character from ‘Wuthering Heights’ not the comic strip cat. So, here I am - Dazed in Confucius.
one more rumor - your fellow Okies, The Flaming Lips have been called ‘The Greatest Present American Band - agree?
dear circa-1963 corcoran boots,
you know I’m not a materialistic person.
I have one pair of jeans,
and my sunglasses were spray-painted black.
but now that you’re mine,
and thanks to Lori and her insane grasp of eBay,
you belong to me.
[and for $24 plus shipping at that!]
‘I’m wearing the most outrageous pair of boots today!’ I can tell my friends.
in fact, I think I’ll do that now.
it’s nice to meet you circa-1963 corcoran boots,
we’ll be seeing a lot of eachother.
outrageous.
brother Scott has been slowly educating me on Detroit, a place he grew up in and a place that few now are able to stay.
there have been dark-funny stories, dark-and-interesting stories, crazy dance shows and even crazier artists,
but this one today has me floored.
the above is a screenshot of what was shot, The Ruins of Detroit - already being talked about as Pompeii and Beruit before her.
there are more, theaters and an Eastern Industries that rivals the above.
but wow.
with this being ‘Blaxploitation Week’ in the house, I got to thinking about a ‘Whiteploitation’ movement…which got me thinking about this book, which always makes me laugh.
some of the list of things white people like, from the aforementioned:
…you can find more here.
hi there. you good?
I feel we never talk - oh, sure, there’s the occasional ‘here’s what I’m doing’,
but never anything about you.
but since you don’t have a blog,
I’ll just tell you more about ‘what I’m doing’.
the book is coming along - slowly, but still coming along. writing it was easy, going back through each page and making it make sense is another. but thanks to a random email from someone I barely know, I was given an idea of how to make it all work. so, thanks random friend.
got me some new-old boots on the way. I’m quite excited.
headed back to Hawaii on Thursday - which will be fun.
which means I’m gonna have to rock my Frank Zappa on the islands.
need a new addiction? this tea is insane.
this song has been played a lot these past few days - the Swedes really can do no wrong.
I’ve become addicted to Netflix - and shall be posting some of the better ones soon. [it's Blaxploitation Week this week - lucky Lori!]
if you need a ridiculous sausage-and-rice recipe, I’m your man.
we attended some Gay Polo yesterday in Santa Barbara before hitting some wineries for tastings - you know, your basic Sunday.
I think I’m going to like Kodak Gallery is doing for storage these days.
…and I think that’s about the highlights.
I hope it’s nice-and-cool where you are. this time of year it should be nice-and-cool.
[and isn't that a great picture? I snapped that at St. Vincent De Paul's]
we had some lentil soup and friends and their pumpkins over last night. there were power-tools and blueprints, ice-cream and abstract. everyone did very well [I say in a motherly-voice], but Arnold would have to be the winner if there was one. finally met a long-time friend that I had never hugged. the 2 architects, 3 artists and myself had fun. you can see photos here, if you like, or you can just trust it was a nice time. either way.
[Ben Houge is an American composer and sound artist, based in Shanghai since 2004. A 13-year veteran of the videogame industry, he most recently served as audio director for Tom Clancy’s EndWar (Xbox 360/PS3, Ubisoft, 2008), and has previous contributed audio to Half-Life: Opposing Force, Leisure Suit Larry 7, King’s Quest: Mask of Eternity, and Arcanum. More recently, he has been applying techniques for structuring non-linear sound honed in the videogame trenches to sound installations in such venues as Beijing’s Today Art Museum and Shanghai’s Art+Shanghai Gallery. In the last year Ben presented a solo exhibition of algorithmically-generated visual art at [the studio] and released two CD’s. An active participant in Shanghai’s new music scene, Ben has performed at the Shanghai eArts Festival, Shanghai Conservatory, Zendai Museum, and multiple NOIShanghai, RESO, Brainwave Communication, and Antidote events.]
Complete Ben Houge information is available at www.benhouge.com.
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I’ve often called you my ‘most coolest friend’. now be honest, why is that?
I thought it was because I could put my cell phone in my mouth. Or sing Happy Birthday backwards?
rumors fly around to you being from Africa? the son of a preacher man? seattle-bred? please explain.
Yes, pretty much. If someone asks where I’m from, I say Seattle. But if they then ask where I’m from *originally*, that usually kicks off a 5 minute monologue. It goes something like this…
I was born in York, NE, then moved to Milwaukee, then lived a few places in Ohio (where my kid brother was born), then on to Riverside, southern California, where I did most of my grade school, except for the year I spent in the outskirts of Dallas (attending 3rd grade in Duncanville, which I hated), a summer in Norman, Oklahoma, then back to Riverside for a bit before moving to Liberia, West Africa, during which time my family lived among the Vai people in 2 small villages (Gbese, 2 miles from the Sierra Leone border, then Madina, closer to Monrovia, the capital), while I attended boarding school at the International Christian Academy in Bouake, Ivory Coast. We left due to political unrest in 1990, and headed to Seward, NE, and where I finished high school, and then I moved to Northfield, MN, to attend St. Olaf College, while my folks moved to St. Louis, then Lincoln, NE. After graduation I moved to Seattle, WA, to take a job working on the videogame Leisure Suit Larry 7 for Sierra Entertainment. At this point I calculated I had had 21 addresses in 21 years. I pretty much stayed put for a while, until I moved to Shanghai in 2004. If I stay overseas for one more year, my ratio will be back up to 1/3 of my life spent abroad, which is where it was when I was 15.
The reason for all this travel addresses the second part of your question. In the 80’s my parents served as linguists with Lutheran Bible Translators in Liberia (doing things like training teachers, collecting folk tales, and developing new orthographies for indigenous languages). After we left Africa in 1990 my dad became an official pastor, and my folks now work with the Lutheran Church in Kenya, where I am planning to visit them this winter when the weather gets miserable again in Shanghai.
having known you for a while now, you seem to live by a different code than most do. can you pinpoint a certain time in your life where you took on the antonin artaud-esque mindset of ‘that’s not right, I’d like to try things differently’?
It’s hard to point to a specific epiphany. I used to be a picky eater as a kid, and at one point I realized that all of these decisions I had made about the kinds of foods I wouldn’t eat had been made by a five year old, and I started reevaluating everything, and I found that mustard and olives and mushrooms and all kinds of other foods are really quite nice. So I try to live with that kind of mindset, that you’ve got to question what you think you know, or what other people tell you.
Travel helps, too. You notice new things about where you’ve been when you view it from somewhere else.
most-underrated movie of all time?
Well, I can recite Three Amigos in its entirety, since it’s the only VHS tape we had in the village in Africa, but that doesn’t really count as underrated, I guess. I’m tempted to say Prince’s Graffiti Bridge, but I can’t honestly tell you it’s a great film.
A long time ago at the Seattle International Film Festival I saw an Italian film called Denti that I thought was amazing, and I’ve never heard of it again. Funny, creepy, full of Freudian surrealism. Let’s go with that.
what will you be for halloween?
I don’t plan to celebrate, if I can get out of it. I’ve always had a grudge against Halloween, since it’s the day after my birthday, and it always stole my thunder.
..and now, a bonus - I think they do this on av club, but I want you to set your iTunes to shuffle. no cheating, let it play and let us know who and why you have it. even the embarrassing ones.
Vanessa Paradis, L’Incendie, from her 2007 Divinidylle album.
I’ve got a soft spot for French pop. I’ve been curious about French culture since experiencing its colonial manifestation in Ivory Coast. The first time I heard Vanessa Paradis was in high school in Nebraska. A classmate had picked up a compilation of French pop at the clothing store Express, and she didn’t dig it, so she gave it to me. It had two songs by Vanessa Paradis on there, her huge hit from her first album “Joe le taxi,” and another song called “Soldat.” Later on, after I got into Serge Gainsbourg, I found out he had written all the lyrics for her second album, Variations sur le même t’aime (a typical kind of Gainsbourg pun, substituting “theme” for its homonym “love you”). I didn’t pick up her 3rd album, since it was in English, produced by former paramour Lenny Kravitz (she has since settled down with Johnny Depp). So I’ve kind of stayed aware of her over the years, seeing a film or two of hers (Girl on the Bridge), and when I was in Paris for work a year or two ago, I picked up this new album, which is pretty pleasant.
This song, like most of Divinidylle, was produced by French pop polyglot –M– (for more on him, check out the French version of Rough Sundays!).
In fact, I don’t listen to much music on iTunes, still prefer CD’s, so it’s a weird selection on my iPhone. I probably listen to my own stuff on there more than anything (the way David Byrne describes Prince in the Sand in the Vaseline liner notes).
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Ben is opening for Owl City in Shanghai on November 20. Please listen to his songs on MySpace (or buy them in iTunes) and help him become the next internet pop sensation.
http://www.myspace.com/benhouge
see this film. make this the next film on your netflix. don’t watch another film before watching this one. prepare to laugh, cry, sing along and stand in line for their next show. see this film and feel good about films.see this film. make this the next film on your netflix. don’t watch another film before watching this one. prepare to laugh, cry, sing along and stand in line for their next show. see this film and feel good about films.
[repeat X 10]
mmmm sausages! British chef Jamie Oliver just won the TED prize...