Episode 756 - Paul Major & Jesper Eklow (Endless Boogie)
Guest:Alright, let's do this.
Marc:How are you?
Marc:What the fuckers?
Marc:What the fuck buddies?
Marc:What the fucking ears?
Marc:What the fuck dumpsters?
Marc:What's happening?
Marc:How you doing?
Marc:It's Mark Maron.
Marc:This is my show WTF.
Marc:Welcome to it.
Marc:Interesting show today.
Marc:Interesting because it's a an outsider show.
Marc:Outsiders.
Marc:Yes, the dudes from Endless Boogie are here, Paul Major and Jesper Eklow.
Marc:But Paul Major is not just a guy in a band.
Marc:He's a guy that sort of defined the weird vinyl pursuit of the grails that are...
Marc:Small runs of usually independently produced records from the 60s and 70s.
Marc:As a long intro, but I'd been hearing about this guy.
Marc:I sort of knew him.
Marc:I'd seen pictures of him.
Marc:I came upon Endless Boogie.
Marc:I'll tell you about that in a minute.
Marc:But they're on the show today.
Marc:It was a surprise to have...
Marc:to have Jesper in as well, but it worked out pretty good.
Marc:But there's other things going on.
Marc:I'm playing Carnegie Hall tomorrow night.
Marc:I'm recording this on Tuesday because I got to shoot.
Marc:It's just very busy.
Marc:I'm feeling good about Carnegie, but I'm feeling a slight bleak cloud over me because my little baby, my little LaFonda cat,
Marc:is sick and i don't know if she's gonna make it and i can't stand it but i don't know what to do the last time i talked to you guys i'd recorded that on a couple days early too but i had them had them both at the vet buster's got no balls that went fine he seems okay doesn't seem much different maybe a little maybe he's a little a little more chill but not much
Marc:Monkey felt sick to me.
Marc:Fonda was sick.
Marc:I brought her in.
Marc:But she was the first one with the sickness.
Marc:And Monkey seemed sick.
Marc:I brought him in.
Marc:So I go pick up Monkey and they give him antibiotics.
Marc:He's okay.
Marc:But Fonda's not okay.
Marc:Fonda, you know, it was a big ordeal.
Marc:Fucking sad, man.
Marc:12-year-old cat.
Marc:You know, you hear about these cats that live forever.
Marc:These 16-year-old, 19-year-old, 22-year-old cats.
Marc:And I don't know what's going to happen.
Marc:I got to go to New York tomorrow.
Marc:And I don't know if she's going to make it until when I'm back.
Marc:And, you know, Sarah's going to drop by and I've got someone at the house who's going to feed the cats as well.
Marc:And, you know, but I guess this is the way it is.
Marc:But, you know, even if you sit there and you kind of process it and accept it, you know, you live with these things.
Marc:These cats are the longest relationships I've had in my life.
Marc:Really.
Marc:Twelve years.
Marc:And she's just fucking sick and there's nothing I can do.
Marc:I thought I was going to have to put her down today, but this guy gave me some hope, and I guess you don't put a cat down if they still are kind of eating and doesn't seem like she's in pain.
Marc:She just seems out of it.
Marc:So that's sort of hanging over me.
Marc:And even with Little Buster, there's part of me that's like that evil little fuck.
Marc:He put the bad mojo on the cats.
Marc:He fucking...
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:So now I'm looking at him like some sort of evil seed, and I'm glad Monkey's okay, but how long's he got?
Marc:I guess, you know, I'm okay.
Marc:But, you know, I feel like I've done everything I could for this cat.
Marc:And now it's just a waiting game and I got to go to New York with my cat, you know, sort of deathly ill and do Carnegie Hall.
Marc:Look, I know it's not my girlfriend or my brother, my parents or whatever, but in terms of being close to something, I've been with this female thing for a long time.
Marc:It's an odd little cat.
Marc:And I just hope she pulls through.
Marc:Hope she pulls through.
Marc:But I'm not optimistic, but maybe I should be.
Marc:Maybe I should put my brain in a good place.
Marc:And maybe she'll pull out of it.
Marc:I don't mean to be bleak, you guys.
Marc:Carnegie Hall, I'm kind of nervous about that.
Marc:I was kind of full of dread and anxiety.
Marc:But it's like, let's just make it exciting.
Marc:I'm excited.
Marc:I've looked at my set.
Marc:I've got a lot of good stuff I want to do.
Marc:It should be exciting.
Marc:I have no sense of the hall, but I know it's this place.
Marc:There's part of me that's like thinking like, I'm not a virtuoso.
Marc:Even that joke, this sort of like, you know, how do you get to Carnegie Hall?
Marc:Practice, practice, practice.
Marc:I'm like, ah, did I practice enough?
Marc:How about persistence, persistence, persistence and talent?
Marc:What about that?
Marc:I got a little of that.
Marc:Got a little of both of those.
Marc:I practiced.
Marc:I'm excited and I'm excited.
Marc:You know, we basically sold the place out.
Marc:There's some single tickets left in the in the big in the high seats.
Marc:Got some friends coming.
Marc:But I think I'm just going to hang low before the show.
Marc:I might do a set over there at Housing Works Bookstore in Soho Thursday night.
Marc:They're raising money for AIDS charity.
Marc:I think I'm going to go on that show with Garofalo and Laurie Kilmartin.
Marc:I think Andy Blitz is going to be there.
Marc:And my buddy Nate Bargetsy.
Marc:Do a little short warm-up.
Marc:in a bookstore for the Carnegie Hall Show.
Marc:There's some dates coming up I'd like to tell you about because I'm excited.
Marc:I'm going to be heading to Nashville and Chicago soon.
Marc:I think those are the ones that are the closest to where we are at now.
Marc:I'll be in Nashville on November 19th at the James K. Polk Theater.
Marc:I'll be at the Vic Theater in Chicago December 3rd.
Marc:And then we move into January.
Marc:But those are the two gigs after Carnegie before the end of the year.
Marc:Nice winter gigs in Nashville and in Chicago.
Marc:Going to be chilly.
Marc:But so we me and Brendan McDonald, the wizard behind the curtain of WTF, my producer and business partner, were down at the Now Hear This podcast festival.
Marc:And it was a pretty good time.
Marc:We did something we never really did before live.
Marc:We did a podcast that you'll be able to hear in time where the two of us talked about WTF.
Marc:And Brendan put a lot of prep into it.
Marc:And I did what I do, which might be the opposite of that.
Marc:But the way I look at it, either you kind of like put hands on prep in or you do something at enough times in your life where you're prepped down to the core for anything.
Marc:So I went with that attitude.
Marc:I'm prepped because I live it.
Marc:He was prepped because he got it all down and structured it.
Marc:But the trick was he didn't tell me what he was going to bring up.
Marc:There are all these emails, some outtakes, some stories.
Marc:So I told him not to show any of it to me or tell me anything.
Marc:There was bits and pieces of podcasts.
Marc:And it turned out to be pretty fun.
Marc:I like thinking on my feet, reacting.
Marc:Things came up, did a nice hour and a half show.
Marc:We'll be playing that podcast for you soon.
Marc:But it was fun, man.
Marc:And I think me and Brendan are going to be a team on the road.
Marc:I think that's going to happen.
Marc:We're not going to do birthday parties or bar mitzvahs, but it was sort of this, you know, I've done a few of those sort of keynote things or presentation type things myself, and they're okay, but doing it with Brendan would be great.
Marc:You know why?
Marc:Because he prepped.
Marc:He got structure and everything, and I just have to lean into it.
Marc:That's all I got to do.
Marc:I got choked up.
Marc:But then you don't want it to become a shtick.
Marc:You know, like, hey, Mark, you going to cry at the end of that one?
Marc:Got choked up because I was happy for us.
Marc:I was happy for him.
Marc:And as you know, I get choked up often.
Marc:I'm trying to keep it together with the cat situation.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So Paul Major and Jesper Eklow.
Marc:The band Endless Boogie, I'd gotten a bunch of records at some point.
Marc:I go through a lot of records and I got this one record, Endless Boogie.
Marc:It had nothing on the cover.
Marc:It had this weird profile of a mountain that looked like a thing, a guy.
Marc:And I put it on and I'm like, what is this, man?
Marc:It's just a moving groove.
Marc:deep rock kind of blues boogie groove and i was like this is real and then it turned out to be this band endless boogie and i talked to my buddy matt sweeney who happens to be involved with an endless boogie occasionally just like matt sweeney is involved with fucking everything cool and hot and hip and music it's like this zeleg of uh art music
Marc:But so he told me about Paul Major, who I was curious about anyways, because my buddy Dan, Dan Cook down at Gimme Gimme Records knows about Paul Major because Paul Major back in the day had this newsletter that was very important and very specific to record nerds about his finds.
Marc:He just spent a lifetime searching for these small releases, rock records primarily in the 60s and 70s.
Marc:And he he he he he invented
Marc:this niche of vinyl collecting.
Marc:And since then, he's become sort of a mythic person, and he's defined this genre of collecting.
Marc:And now there's a lot of labels reissuing some of the records that he unearthed and are impossible to find because there's a limited number of them.
Marc:So I was kind of curious about that because I've been kind of in the vinyl rabbit hole myself.
Marc:And Jesper's in the band, but apparently...
Marc:when paul used to live down the village i believe it was back in the day he was a sort of wizard of vinyl and and music and there were dudes used to hang out like you know steve malcolm was involved in one of the early on with endless boogie and they used to hang out and play records at his place and look to his wisdom of music and weird off the grid type of sounds man and
Marc:And Jesper was one of the dudes and they decided to start this band because Paul always wanted to be in a band and he'd been in bands.
Marc:And that's where Endless Boogie came from.
Marc:But they got a new album coming out early next year called Vibe Killer.
Marc:You can check them out at Endless Boogie on Facebook or go to noquarter.net.
Marc:That's the label.
Marc:And so this is sort of interesting off the beaten path.
Marc:episode of this show this type of interview i hope you enjoy it this is me paul major and jesper eclo it's a very weird thing like i didn't really know exactly who you were and here's what happened
Marc:I get sent records a few years ago.
Marc:I get sent a lot of records by just people, and a lot of them stink.
Marc:And I put on, I didn't know what it was, but I put it because the cover's menacing and it's nondescript.
Marc:And I put on Endless Boogie, Long Island.
Marc:And I go through a lot of records, man.
Marc:And I'm just listening to this thinking like, what the fuck is this?
Marc:And then all of a sudden I'm like, holy shit, this is real.
Marc:This is deep.
Marc:Where the fuck is this from?
Marc:So then I got to go track you down and figure out what you're about.
Marc:And then I find a picture of you with holding a Morgan record.
Marc:There's not a lot of pictures of you, but you're holding that Morgan record.
Marc:And I'm like, that's something that Dan Cook sold me over at Gimme Gimme.
Marc:And then I just started doing the vinyl thing a few years ago.
Marc:And then I started researching a little bit of what you do.
Marc:And I'm like,
Marc:it's this guy's fault he's he's the guy that that made us want these records you are sort of responsible aren't you i certainly had my hand in it yeah it wasn't intentional but uh i am to blame for a lot of this
Marc:Yeah, because like now I'm starting to learn more about these like these records that were, you know, these small releases or sort of artist release records that are now being reissued because vinyl is all of a sudden this shit.
Marc:And now I'm learning about bands that no one has ever heard of.
Marc:What was the, like, let's go back, you know, to where this starts.
Marc:Because I love, you know, I love Endless Boogie.
Marc:I just got the, I got the second record.
Marc:So I've got Full, what is it?
Guest:Full Househead.
Marc:Full Househead.
Marc:And I've got Long Island.
Marc:I don't have the new one.
Marc:When's that coming out?
Guest:It's still going to be a little while.
Guest:We got a lot of it done.
Guest:I broke my arm.
Guest:That pushed us back.
Guest:How'd you break your arm, man?
Guest:Carrying an amplifier and not paying attention to where I was putting my feet.
Guest:Injured in battle.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:The rock and roll battle.
Marc:So where did the reputation which was earned of finding these records, I mean, where does that start?
Marc:The one thing I learned from your lead is that
Marc:how mindfucked we are by mainstream music.
Marc:And that like, you know, listening to some of the stuff that's been reissued that you have discovered in certain ways or brought to the public's attention like Morgan is like, I start to realize like there's so much great fucking music out there that's just lost forever.
Marc:Is that what compelled you initially?
Guest:Or it seemed to be lost forever, of course.
Guest:Now, speaking of Morgan, as a kid, when I had that album when I was a little kid, it was blowing my mind in isolation in Louisville, Kentucky, saying, I want to be part of this world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The only way I'm getting it is through these sort of records, like a lifeline to the...
Guest:It is kind of a mind blower to me that you can look on YouTube and see that like 250, 300,000 people have listened to Love off that album.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When I was a kid in Kentucky, and of course, maybe 200 people by the time I'm dead will have been into this record.
Guest:But it started for me really at the end of 1966 when I was 12 years old.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was a math nerd and this and that.
Guest:Totally oblivious to music, even though I'm sure I must have heard Satisfaction on the radio and some stuff before.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And then towards the end of 1966 in Louisville, Kentucky, I heard Psychotic Reaction on the radio.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And it was like all bets are off.
Guest:Everything's up for grabs.
Guest:It's like life.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:changes you know the fuzz guitars the you know no equation for this yeah so yeah it's like the next day I'm mulling lines to get enough change together to go wander off down the uh sort of hippie district of Louisville Kentucky Hartstown Road right look for all the used uh through all the used records and you know ones that have that like Morgan wow you know it was before I had any access to pot or
Guest:lsd or stuff and i'm looking at the track saying this is that long one maybe this is one of those tracks that's like like tripping yeah yeah yeah right right that was something you heard about from the from the magazines or whatever yeah i get some tip yeah tips from the magazines there was a magazine i guess uh available to me uh right before i tuned into other rock magazines there was this one hit parader that was very i remember that and didn't that have is that the one did that have some lyrics right yeah yeah yeah
Guest:Yeah, they would have the lyrics to all the hits.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they would have some good interviews, and they sort of got on to the underground thing in a mainstream way.
Guest:And in the back, they would always review five albums.
Guest:And some of those issues at the time when it came out, there'd be a review of 50-Foot Hose or something amazing like that.
Marc:I don't even know what you're talking about now.
Marc:Well, whose record was that?
Guest:That was the name of a band?
Guest:It was the name of a band from San Francisco that mixed sort of underground rock with experimental music, lots of...
Guest:made by himself the leader of the band yeah electronic instruments and oscillators and right right things like that so it was like a science fiction adventure or something right and so you just started like you by just by looking at the the portal that the cover enabled you it was is you're mostly reacting to psychedelic artwork initially
Guest:Yeah, psychedelic artwork or anything that just looks strange or anything that looked like, oh, it's coming from that angle of the twilight zone.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And when did you finally try drugs?
Guest:That would have been towards the end of high school.
Guest:I was isolated.
Guest:Then finally I met up with a couple of friends that were into that.
Guest:Then we'd play music and that.
Guest:I remember the first time I ever smoked pot was when I had my first job when I was 16 at a pizza place.
Guest:My father set it up for me.
Guest:The job, not the pot.
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I remember then when I'm working there the very first day, I'm the busboy in this place, which turned out to be a crazy place.
Guest:As it turns out, walking out the first day and the guy's in the back in the kitchen rolling a joint.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:My mother is sitting outside in the car waiting to pick me up.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm there like, you know, I want to get in on this.
Guest:And she's waiting outside.
Guest:And they're like.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you did it and then got in the car with your mom.
Guest:Got in the car.
Guest:Can you tell?
Guest:Can they tell?
Marc:Can she tell?
Marc:And that's the only thing you experienced at first high is like, can they tell?
Marc:You know, you don't even put yourself in a position where you could enjoy it.
Guest:Well, yeah, it's true.
Guest:It's all like that.
Guest:Except I knew when I got to the house, the first thing I wanted to do was go up to my bedroom and start looking at my album covers.
Guest:Did that work?
Marc:It worked.
Marc:Yeah, I bet.
Marc:So when did you start playing guitar?
Guest:When I was 13, it would be my parents to be real nice because I was obsessed with it.
Guest:Then they bought me a plastic toy guitar for Christmas.
Guest:At 13?
Guest:Maybe, I don't know.
Guest:Not like a K. Not too big.
Guest:A little long, a little shorter than that?
Guest:Yeah, probably a two-third size of plastic.
Guest:I instantly took my crayons out and put psychedelic designs on it.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:I started playing along, and then I realized it's nylon strings.
Guest:It's not getting the sound.
Guest:And then I realized if I tape a pencil under the bridge, it would make the strings buzz on the toy guitar.
Guest:So it would go... You needed the buzz.
Marc:Got to get that toy guitar buzzing.
Marc:So when did you start... What was the process of life where you started...
Marc:kind of amassing these records and then like where did you how did your musical journey start so you're stuck in louisville so you when did your mind blow and you had to get out or how long of a process was that it was a while uh for several years i was pretty isolated just buying all these obscure records and uh not knowing anything just because you wanted to listen to yeah just because i wanted to listen to them and you know what are some of the other names you know like uh bands like silver apples and uh
Guest:Then Ultra Obscure and Louisville, Kentucky, The Velvet Underground and the Detroit bands, the MC5, the Stooges and so forth.
Marc:But those were relatively mainstream releases, right?
Guest:Yeah, they were around.
Guest:Not a lot, but they were around.
Guest:The private pressings and the homemade records sort of came up.
Guest:A little later.
Marc:But this is sort of like the punk thing, because when I talk to guys who started in punk, the only way to get those records was to have somebody send them over to you, or like there was a network of people that would move these records around.
Marc:But I guess when you're in a town like Louisville and there's a local record store, they wouldn't necessarily carry the Velvet Underground or the Stones.
Guest:No.
Guest:When it first came out, there'd be a few places.
Guest:And I first got White Light, White Heat was in a Kmart in the cutout bins, the 33 cents each deletions, which seemed to hit those bins not long after the records came out.
Marc:Well, that was the amazing thing about being in an area that isn't hip, is that all the hip shit just gets trashed.
Marc:Same with clothes and shit.
Marc:If you want to get a good deal at Nordstrom Rack on an overcoat, go buy it in Arizona.
Guest:It was a good time, definitely, because when I did start going to use record stores and look, and I always knew the first place to look is where everybody put all the stuff they thought was garbage, the cheap stuff, because that's where all this good stuff's going to be.
Guest:The Frank Zappo record will be on the wall for a lot of money, and then the local band, Fraction or...
Guest:or one of the heavy local psychedelic bands and be like who wants that you know they're locals they didn't get anywhere you know here so you you started buying like uh you know kentucky rock bands yeah yeah i stumbled across a few of those there weren't that many yes by the time i left but there were a few local ones a band called crystal was one of them and yeah
Guest:I started buying those, and I was just packing them away and living in St.
Guest:Louis for a while, was buying some more there.
Guest:You moved to St.
Guest:Louis from Louisville?
Guest:Yeah, from Louisville.
Guest:What would compel you?
Guest:Well, college.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Are you still keeping up your grades and doing the math?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That didn't last too long once I got to college.
Guest:I did keep my grades up.
Guest:I did good at all that, but it switched to music pretty quickly.
Guest:I met another friend then.
Guest:In St.
Guest:Louis?
Guest:Was into the same stuff, and we started, I guess, what we call a pre-punk band now in St.
Guest:Louis in the mid-'70s called the Moldy Dogs.
Guest:Did you release any records?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:Just made tapes and played kind of strange local shows and so forth.
Guest:We started as a duo acoustic guitar and I would play fuzz guitar and we would do a Gimme Danger or do I'm Waiting for the Man and things like that and then started writing our own songs and play around town at like pizza joints and places like that.
Guest:Did people come?
Guest:yeah yeah not a whole lot but we did connect within the other in the st louis area the other couple of pockets of people that were also into that kind of stuff through that and enough people did come to one place i remember called the pastrami joint we used to play at enough barefoot teenage or started showing up each time we play there that they say you can't play here anymore you know these people come in they don't buy any uh any pastrami they just come in and like clutter the place up with no shoes and their stinky feet
Marc:So you were like 13 or 14 during the late 60s, right?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And then so now in the 70s, you're like, you know, later teens.
Guest:Actually, yeah, I was born in 1954.
Guest:So 13 and 67.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Turned 13.
Marc:So you were like, you know, you were prime headspace for that whole fucking mindfuck.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The timing couldn't have been better to, you know, hear that song and hear fuzz guitars for the first time.
Marc:Right, so it was like, I can't imagine what that would be like to hear that shit for reals for the first time without any context.
Guest:Right, when it's happening, it did seem like it was something leaking from this amazing, mysterious other world.
Guest:San Francisco?
Guest:It's like you could feel the vibration of that.
Guest:Yeah, I would be looking at Life Magazine at the pictures in there, and I think there's a famous picture in there where there's a picture of a guy sitting in the corner who believes he's an orange.
Guest:And I'm thinking, I want to understand, like, you know, I want to be an orange, too.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Jesper.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Where'd you meet Paul?
Guest:Oh, I met Paul maybe early 90s.
Guest:I moved to New York from Sweden.
Guest:And he'd already been legendary in the record collecting circuit.
Guest:Were you a record collector?
Guest:Yeah, I worked in a record store.
Guest:Yeah, I was into strange music.
Guest:But Paul used to publish this catalog every now and then.
Guest:This is how Paul made all his money since he last quit his...
Guest:last day job in 1980 or whatever.
Guest:He used to mass all his records and make these incredible catalogs that have the best descriptions you've ever read of any records.
Guest:And most, you know, 99% of the records you read about, you'd never heard of before.
Marc:So that was, so you go from, and then you guys, and you play guitar as well.
Guest:yeah the thing was like we really loved hanging out with paul because we go up to his magical apartment on the upper west side and he would just play the weirdest music you ever heard and like those were like you know that room he had was like kind of like a cathedral to us you know where was that in new york yeah upper west side near right by columbia university basically
Marc:So you were like one of those guys where guys who you let into the inner circle would come to your house, and they'd be like, oh, this is Paul's house.
Marc:This is where it all happened.
Guest:Yeah, no, it felt like you were allowed into a magical universe, and it was an honor to be there.
Guest:You built a magical universe.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:But it was a very small one, but it was so special.
Guest:And we really loved those moments.
Guest:And the way the band started, I guess, we just tried to get to hang out with Paul more and get him out of the house because he was just sitting up there.
Marc:Let's move up to that.
Marc:So from St.
Marc:Louis, you're doing music there.
Marc:And then where do you go next?
Guest:That was January 1977.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I remember we had the first St.
Guest:Louis punk rock festival.
Guest:Who was there?
Guest:Who came?
Guest:About 300 or 400 people turned out, and it was local bands, the Moldy Dogs, a 14-year-old girl group called The Welders who were crazily into the Ramones as soon as the first album came out.
Guest:And a group called The Cigarette Butts, I guess, that was another punk group.
Guest:of st louis so it's january 77 and uh a blizzard hits right the night of the show and everything's good and then we said well we got to go to la or new york and while the blizzard was raging outside it seemed like la was the smart place you know beaches and getting warm and it was a little before the punk scene had started happening in la i guess but at that very beginning we spent
Guest:half a year i guess basically and then decided oh we should went to new york we went back to st louis wait so you went to l.a yeah yeah and you just hit the wall quicker no we went around with our demo to record companies and stuff stuff like that who was in the band with you extremely no uh no interest uh a guy named wolf roxon just uh yeah two of us that came came out uh the other guys in the band stayed in st louis at the time when we just came out figured oh we're gonna we'll come out and you know was it a short trip you planned to move
Guest:Sort of, yeah, planned to move.
Guest:But after being here for a while, we realized we should have went to New York.
Guest:Oh, why?
Guest:Because it just wasn't happening out here?
Guest:The expanse of it?
Guest:It was before it was happening.
Guest:The germs hadn't formed yet and so forth.
Guest:Early bands.
Guest:And there were just a few shows happening.
Guest:The Weirdos and some bands were playing in that.
Guest:But it was just like when the ball was getting rolling.
Guest:Right, right.
Marc:There wasn't a scene yet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And in New York, there had been a scene for a while.
Guest:Right.
Marc:Since what, 73?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And early on, I guess extending all the way back.
Guest:Like it blew my mind, I saw a poster for Suicide playing a show in 1971.
Guest:So it goes way back.
Guest:Which has the line, punk music by Suicide on it.
Marc:is that where that came from i don't know but they were one of the very first bands to use it in that context because like i talked to mike watt they all consider themselves punk rock and it was just whatever didn't fit in that was what that was you know whatever you you were inventing in that moment when did you go to new york did you find that was uh fall of 77 okay so we drove up we had a house to use free in new jersey for a little bit so we went there and uh how's that work
Guest:Were you working?
Marc:How were you making money at that point?
Guest:Well, one of the amazing things is when we were in L.A., we had an apartment.
Guest:I mean, a dinky little apartment on Sunset and Vine, but it was $125 a month split between two guys.
Guest:So it's like we need $60-odd a month.
Guest:You can pull that.
Guest:And New York, when I got there, there was an apartment.
Guest:near the corner of bleaker mcdougall that was 198 dollars a month get the fuck out of here so we had to each come up with 99 dollars i'm in new york people saying yeah new york it's gonna eat you up you got a stroke i'm thinking fuck i don't really need a job right or whatever you know so pretty soon on i guess it was mostly time to do the bands and you know be a wild kid and all that stuff in the city and uh
Guest:So you didn't have jobs?
Guest:I did work in a Village Oldies legendary store in New York that was on the corner of Bleecker and Sullivan Street as a day sort of job thing for a couple of years, really.
Guest:But it was more of a hangout place.
Marc:I kind of remember that place.
Guest:yeah it's it's it had started uh i do remember that place because i used to go there my grandmother lived in jersey and i'd go visit her and go into the city and walk around i remember bleaker bob's right so was it before that a little actually it was the guy that ran village oldies was named altromers and originally him and bleaker bob were partners and had a shop further to the west on no further to the east on bleaker street coming off the 60s and that and then they sort of fell out or whatever and each had their own store and bleaker bob's and
Marc:broadway out then he decided since bleaker bob's bleaker bob i'm gonna be broadway out oh that was it and i remember bleaker bob when i first went in there all the 45s on the wall were like like beatles and shit and then like i remember going back there years later it was all punk rock it just shifted focus completely and in the back they had all those great t-shirts and shit right and posters and stuff am i remembering it properly yeah yeah yeah and it did happen when the those waves of punk started happening at the end of 76 and 77
Guest:Then those shops grabbed onto those things.
Guest:All of a sudden, the Paraguay singles were available and all these kind of things from around the country.
Marc:And the Beatles started to move a little off.
Marc:A little off, yeah.
Marc:So when you were working in Village Oldies, what was the scene?
Marc:Who was coming in?
Marc:What was the deal?
Guest:It was kind of... It was a crazy scene.
Guest:The store was... Half of it was a record store and half of it was a head shop store run by junkies.
Guest:So it was...
Guest:really crazy my first exposure to lots of junkie insanity going on and uh and that was still like that was still like big cbgb's time yeah yeah it was still all pretty vital right still vital happening there i guess mainly cbgb's and max's right and a few other places to play uh sort of between the two was one called great gildersleeve that was more like when tom petty was in town before he got famous he would play there it was like the old school rock and roll bar but some of the regular rock started leaking in there but uh
Guest:at that point uh it was really centered around those places they were still happening i felt like oh i'm here a little late because uh a lot of the bands were off gone or that but the scene it did you felt like you were a little late yeah like okay now the ramones and bands like that they're never playing there much anymore because they're out touring and stuff yeah enough success but there was a second wave so i remember one of the first bills he played on at max's was with a band called red transistor which is a guy named von elmo who's an intensely
Guest:crazy way out there person maybe one of the biggest walls of sound ever heard and i remember walking in there and my band at the time uh my partner in the band was wanting to go power pop and i'm hearing all this incredible crazy noise that's flashing me back to those first fuzz guitars right like i feel like a kid like i you know i got a bunch of records in there and i had no idea about anything like i was going down this list of like i just got turned on to that growers of mushrooms record i didn't know nothing about them
Marc:How the fuck?
Marc:But that's probably mainstream to you, right?
Guest:Sort of, yeah.
Guest:Leafound.
Guest:Leafound, yeah.
Guest:I guess it was.
Guest:Help Yourself is another one.
Guest:It was actually on a real label, some of those records.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Are you anti-real label?
Guest:No, I didn't make much of a distinction until I started getting some private pressings and started thinking, well, these are less filtered than even the crazier real ones.
Marc:So when did that realization happen?
Marc:When you were at Village Oldies?
Guest:a little before actually it was in new jersey i guess when we were there just before we came to the city yeah we had a little recording studio on the basement of the house and one day in the mail comes a package with three copies of a homemade record kenneth higney attic demonstration how'd you get it i mean he saw a little ad we had for the studio in the basement of the house and he said well mom here i'm promoting myself here's three copies of my album you know i hope you can you know you wanted to record
Guest:No, he just wanted us to help him.
Guest:He was just firing them off to people to try to further his recording career.
Guest:And he was basically trying to make sort of demos for country artists or something, doing something kind of straight, but it came out completely...
Guest:I don't want to say deranged, not condescending.
Guest:It came out brilliantly wrong, like a work of genius.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And you were able to identify that.
Guest:Yeah, I did it, and I sort of linked it to some other things I had, and then I became more aware, oh, okay, yeah, people make their own records, and it's a good bet a lot of these people who made their own records are going to come up with something that's unlike anything you ever heard before.
Guest:So it was like that leaking in a window of another dimension right inside this person's head and their life
Guest:And where some of the things that they think are the things that went wrong are the things that make it brilliant because nobody edited all the good stuff out.
Guest:No know-it-all or guy with an angle.
Guest:So that got me going on the private pressings.
Guest:I really shifted gears from the punk and the psychedelic.
Guest:and a lot of things into checking out every homemade record.
Marc:And some of those can be almost loungy, not necessarily genre-based, just there's an honesty to it.
Guest:Yeah, there's an honesty.
Guest:And there are lounge ones that they still satisfy, like, okay, it's some broken-down lounge act, you know, the whatever's live at the Rooster Tail Lounge or something.
Guest:And something will happen on that record that is also, like, got their own personality, or something will go crazy.
Guest:They'll have an idea to do some song some weird way, and it'll just be outrageous.
Marc:So what were some of the other names that you were picking up then?
Marc:So what's his name, the guy's name?
Marc:Kenneth Higney.
Marc:Did you go seek these guys out and develop relationships with them?
Guest:Yeah, a little later I did.
Guest:When I got to New York and realized, okay, I can wander from one record store, buy some records, take them over to another store and double the price and pay my rent kind of quick.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And spend all my time looking for records.
Right.
Marc:And what were you doing to know about what these records are worth?
Marc:It was just your sensibility?
Guest:There was nothing there.
Guest:Yeah, just my sensibility or something.
Guest:Hearing these are special to me.
Guest:And I was aware at that point, oh, there's a thing called record collecting besides the Beatles and Elvis or something.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And a whole other world out there.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I started running into and getting correspondence with people.
Guest:into a similar thing in cities all around the world, I guess, after I started putting little ads in collector magazines.
Guest:What was the ad just sort of like?
Guest:Just interesting records that I had found and gotten copies.
Guest:And a little later, I started tracking the bands down to see if they had copies in the attic somewhere or something.
Guest:So a little network developed around the world.
Guest:It was very secretive and mysterious.
Marc:This is before he started seeing the reviews, right?
Guest:Yeah, I didn't see them until maybe 1986 or 7 or so.
Guest:You've been going several years.
Guest:You developed this secret society.
Guest:Sort of, yeah.
Guest:Around the world, there were certain guys in different countries, like South America.
Guest:That's how I got turned on all South American things and stuff that you wouldn't even hardly ever run across in U.S.
Guest:record stores, and certainly not in the Midwest at the time.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I would...
Guest:be in touch with people and they say, what do you want from the U.S.?
Guest:You know, what kind of stuff you want?
Guest:I'll send you a box.
Guest:And since I don't know anything about your music, you know what I'm into.
Guest:Send me the stuff you think is the stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, and I would get these boxes of records from around the world and this sort of, you know, network of people in every local location filtering their local records.
Marc:Like what, like the Netherlands, South America, Germany?
Guest:Yeah, South America, Germany.
Guest:Yeah, and places like that.
Guest:And I would be trading the U.S.
Guest:ones and...
Guest:and sending them uh were you like on fire with it like obsessed because yeah yeah i was yeah i was completely on fire with it i couldn't i i became a complete addict to the thrill of discovery sort of like back in those days since everything was so unknown it was like every day or two some record would come my way that would just fry my brain i think it seemed endless you know but nowadays i guess it's
Marc:from that sort of vintage especially nowadays it's sort of like oh a couple records will come along in a year that deserve to be up with all all those and also at that time though in the 70s and i imagine some of the stuff you were drawing from was probably a decade old as well so you're drawing all the way back to the mid 60s probably with some of the stuff that was coming through right yeah yeah
Marc:So like that was the time where everything was changing anyway.
Marc:So there was shit that never existed ever anywhere before.
Marc:It's a little harder to find that now.
Guest:To find stuff that like this never existed before this thing.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Yeah, like to name a band now that's doing something that seems unprecedented as a tall order.
Guest:It is, because like what the hell, it's all been tapped in a way.
Marc:So like when you were getting South American records and that kind of stuff, I mean, what was that stuff?
Guest:It was pretty amazing.
Guest:When the first box came, I remember it was about 40 or 50 albums, and it was a box wrapped with cloth around it and a big green inspected by U.S.
Guest:Customs sticker on it, wondering what kind of stuff was in there.
Guest:I pulled it out, and the album covers looked crazy.
Guest:And it was like a...
Guest:It was hard rock and things like that, but it seemed to have a little bit more of an unhinged, wild sort of... Yeah, yeah.
Marc:And with maybe a little Latin texture to it?
Marc:A little beat or anything?
Marc:Did it seem of its place?
Guest:Yeah, it seemed of its place.
Guest:You could see who these bands were tuning into.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:Hendrix and so forth.
Guest:Yeah, it had their own local flavor.
Marc:so when did you know that you had like you know you were dealing with uh like a living like you were dealing with like you know like when did it sort of expand into where you probably had to buy a new apartment or a storage bin fairly soon after the first couple years in new york uh-huh uh i started realizing oh i should put all my time into into this and uh
Guest:So that'd be like maybe 1981 or two.
Guest:And it was a pretty easy process, wasn't it?
Guest:This kind of unfolded organically, right?
Guest:Yeah, it sort of did, yeah.
Guest:I remember the very first time that got me going thinking, oh, I should get out of this crazy store I'm in.
Guest:That was just Village Oldies?
Guest:You never worked at Weaker Bob's?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:He tried to get me to work for him because somehow people thought I was responsible back then or something.
Guest:But...
Guest:But they probably also saw you had this weird talent for picking records, right?
Guest:Well, I don't think that had quite developed like where it translated into the store or something like that.
Guest:It was more meeting the people.
Guest:And what sparked it, two German guys came in to the store.
Guest:Village Oldies.
Guest:Yeah, Village Oldies.
Guest:And they were buying some of the records like Chocolate Watch Bands or whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:type records from the store.
Guest:I got that record.
Guest:They were saying, can you tell me where else?
Guest:They reissued that, right?
Marc:They just reissued it not long ago.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:Chocolate Watch Band, there's two records, right?
Marc:Three.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:So these German guys?
Guest:They came in and then they were saying, can you tell us where else can we go to get more records like this?
Guest:And I thought, oh, you know, you should come over to my apartment, you know.
Exactly.
Guest:So I did a deal, you know, they left a stack about that high record saying, you know, just send them to us when you get a chance, you know, total trust and the whole deal.
Guest:And they bought them?
Guest:Bought a bunch of them.
Guest:And then I started going into it and realizing, okay, I should advertise in the record collector magazines.
Marc:Oh, right.
Marc:But at that time, were those magazines mostly geared towards like 78s and like really old shit?
Guest:No, there was, yeah, lots of the 60s stuff was going by then.
Guest:Is that how you determined what you would price shit at?
Yeah.
Guest:It would be sort of instinct.
Guest:Yeah, if something was around, I'd get an idea of what's going for then.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I guess a lot of the things would just be how much it got me off, you know, affected it.
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:And is it, you know, are there a zillion copies of this out there?
Marc:Am I going to be able to get this drug back?
Yeah.
Guest:always could back then was another good thing too it could be talked out of records that i only took me a long time to get it or something because back then before the internet and so forth with all the best records in the cheapest section of the stores it seemed like unending supply you know i go back to kentucky once a year
Guest:and hit all the hippie head shops and used stores.
Guest:And the records that I passed up from a year before because I ran out of money would still be sitting in the stores a year later.
Guest:Because no one of them.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Marc:It's exciting.
Marc:I wish we lived in that world.
Marc:I wish I knew enough back then to do that.
Marc:Now, when you're at Village Oldies, like, we're...
Marc:Were there any of those sort of punk dudes around that were coming in sort of trying to use you as a resource to kind of break their brain open?
Marc:Who was around then?
Marc:Were some of the junkie punks still around?
Marc:Yeah, the junkie punks were around.
Guest:A lot of the British bands were coming over.
Marc:Verlaine and Thunders and Richard Hell, were they there?
Marc:Yeah, they were around.
Guest:Did you know those bands?
Guest:I didn't connect with them through record connecting.
Guest:It was more that I had a band called The Sorcerer, sort of a hard rock influenced by Hawkwind and Motorhead type band.
Marc:Hawkwind, are you responsible for me knowing about Hawkwind?
Marc:No, no, no.
Marc:Because that's recent for me.
Marc:I just got turned on to the Groundhogs just within the last two years.
Marc:How the fuck did I not know about that?
Guest:This is great, though.
Guest:It's really good to have amazing stuff still ahead of you in life.
Marc:There's so much, dude.
Marc:Yeah, it's awesome.
Marc:This is beautiful.
Marc:Were you always a record nerd?
Guest:Kind of, but I mean, like, you know, I grew up later, you know, since I was born in the late 60s, but it was before the internet, so you just had to know older people that would turn you on to stuff.
Guest:Need the older brother, the guide.
Guest:Yeah, just like, I mean, all my friends were older because, like, they had some wisdom to give you, you know, because before you could just type it into Google, you know.
Guest:They're necessary.
Guest:Like, you were shocked to learn that Velvet Underground had more than two albums, you know, because you'd only ever seen two.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's like, oh, shit, there's a third one?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:It's like, oh, my God.
Marc:And even in the 70s, I knew a guy who worked at a record store next door to where I work at a bagel place, and the record store was R&B-driven.
Marc:But this guy was like an art rock guy.
Marc:He turned me on to the Residence, to Eno, to Fred Frith, to Robert Fripp, to all that shit.
Marc:And I would have never known that if it wasn't that.
Marc:And it blows your mind.
Guest:Yeah, I used to love Fred Frith and Residence, too.
Guest:And I think from knowing that kind of stuff, that's how I got into other...
Guest:weird stuff you know and at least one thing leads to another and like finally you end up with this magical catalog that paul used to put out which is just it was just such a mind blower to read because everything's mysterious and the descriptions were incredible like what do you remember first seeing in that catalog i just mean this is bands you never heard of but i mean he would have like unforgettable lines like this band has that going behind the bar and take a leak type vibe and you knew you just had to hear it you know
Guest:so did the sorcerers ever make a record no no i just played some shows around the city at the time and it was a wild enough time or something there was no organization to even right get that far and right the only time somebody wanted to pump some money into the band uh we made the wrong idea of deciding well we'll put on a big show right instead of making a record which would have been the smart thing were you on bills with like the heartbreakers and those guys
Guest:Not with Heartbreakers, but some other ones of the time, like the Corpse Grinders, I remember being on a bill with, which had Arthur Cain.
Guest:And then we used to rehearse at a place called Sunset, as I remember.
Guest:It was a Heartbreakers sort of clubhouse place.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:So you see them around there.
Guest:A lot of nodding off.
Guest:Yeah, there was a lot of nodding off.
Guest:There were some jams with Johnny and stuff.
Guest:I remember three times over a period of a couple weeks bumping into him.
Guest:He said, what's the name of your band again?
Guest:What's the name of your band again?
Guest:Nice guy, right?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:I hear all kinds of stories or something, but the impression I got, I said, well, this guy doesn't seem like...
Guest:dangerous or something oh yeah i think he was a hustler but he was like because i watched a doc about on him and he seemed like a pretty sweet guy somewhere in there but that sound yeah good fucking sound i'm getting my punk rock credentials on now because i am sort of meeting some people like that yeah then one night uh he's like you know you want to do something with me yeah yeah yeah oh i'm getting invited to
Guest:Shoot some dope.
Guest:Shoot some dope at Johnny Thunders.
Guest:But fortunately, I had a lifelong fear of needles.
Guest:Oh, you are fortunate.
Guest:Because when I was three years old, I got bit by a dog that ran away.
Guest:So I'd have these humongous rabies shots in my belly.
Guest:So there was like no needles going in, which has worked out good.
Guest:Because when I went back to New York and those circles of friends from there, after about six or seven years,
Marc:most of them were dead yeah no no you dodged a bullet buddy you know why that's a relationship you don't want to have to fucking start good for you god damn it man that that drug wiped out all those fucking guys fucking insane yeah so all right so when did you left new york though
Marc:That was later.
Marc:Yeah, I left New York, moved to New Hampshire.
Marc:Where were you putting all these records, dude?
Marc:They were all in the apartment, but when did you have to get another space?
Guest:They were in the apartment, but by the time I had left, there was still plenty of room.
Guest:But also, a great thing about Paulus, he's a tastemaker, and he's never really been a collector.
Guest:It's more like every single record that you covet has been through his fingers.
Guest:but it comes to him then he sends it out again like what's some records that changed your life that you wouldn't have known about except well like that morgan album for example which i heard you know it's a good one to mention because it came out on a major label but it's still you know one of the best and unsung albums right right and and like uh it has an intriguing story and paul actually get he tracked him down and interviewed him
Guest:And is he still around?
Guest:Yeah, I don't know where.
Guest:Like, this is going back some ways.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, as far as I know.
Marc:What about that one that's really rare that Dan was telling me about?
Marc:The Dark?
Marc:Is it called The Dark?
Guest:The Dark, yeah.
Marc:What's the story on that thing, man?
Guest:That was in the early, I guess about 83, 84, 85.
Guest:I would...
Guest:spend a couple weeks or three weeks each summer in England.
Guest:And, of course, I'd be looking around for all the records.
Guest:I'd see these interesting records.
Guest:Like, if I would have seen that Leaf Hound record, say, oh, that's on a real label.
Guest:I'm going to buy this one they made themselves first, unless I have enough money for both.
Guest:So I walked into a...
Guest:collector shop you know with uh all the stuff on the walls is like this is the italy only version of uh the cover picture of a searcher's album or whatever he's trying to you know hire me on this look look at this stuff yeah yeah i look through and i pull out a few private pressings including the dark which was in the bin for 10 pounds nothing i was looking at it thinking uh you know this looks like one of those records and and uh
Guest:I had been walking around, so I'd already spent, I only had 30 pounds left.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I found another album that I knew I had to buy for 20 pounds, because I knew it was worth a couple hundred bucks.
Guest:Which one was that?
Guest:It was, I think, a group called The Black Orchids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Nothing that significant.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it was like, oh, okay, I can't pass that up or something.
Guest:And I took a little stack of the private pressings and said, yeah, can you play these for me?
Guest:And...
Guest:you know put aside some of them and i'll come back and get them or whatever and he put the dark on and i'm going oh no he's going to do that thing like whoops that was a mistake that did not belong in the bins or whatever right but instead he says you really like this shit
Guest:okay yeah yeah kind of maybe yeah maybe i'll give it a try played it cool yeah yeah sort of played it cool and i was real excited yeah and did you know about that record no no no i was just looking at it isn't that worth totally unknown thousands of dollars yeah yeah many yeah they only made 99 copies as it turns out and they were a british band and they were british band yeah and uh
Guest:It was one of those homemade private pressings.
Marc:And I got the reissue of that because of you.
Marc:That someone realized it was worth something because you found that thing.
Marc:So what are some other bands like that that you sort of salvaged and changed their lives?
Marc:I mean, I imagine that because of him...
Marc:uh re reading the the newsletter and other people reading the newsletter that these bands who some of them like weren't even bands anymore almost like the old blues guys they're they're working at a restaurant and all of a sudden they get word that like their album's on fire again who were some of those bands would be bands like fraction would be one yeah a band called the new dawn it's there's uh lots of marcus from the house of tracks uh
Guest:A good number of them.
Guest:Sometimes when I would find them, after we got past the, you're one of my friends playing a practical joke on me, you don't really want the record.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:After I got past that and the paranoia or the craziness of this guy Raven, Back to Ohio Blues album, which is one of the craziest hard rock records ever, I remember calling him up and
Guest:The phone goes and it's just, goodbye, and it slams down.
Guest:So I just kept calling back.
Guest:He wouldn't even answer his phone.
Guest:Finally, he got his girlfriend on the phone.
Guest:So yeah, he's kind of out of it or whatever.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:He thought you were a bill collector.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Or this.
Guest:Were these guys able to make money when they were reissued and that kind of stuff?
Guest:Sometimes, yeah.
Guest:But for the most part, back in that day, there would be bootleg reissues out of Europe or here or there.
Guest:And there were some labels like Rockadelic and some other ones that started up that did track them down and try to work a deal.
Marc:Well, what do you think?
Marc:What kind of person like, you know, when you deal with people like that, and it sounds like a lot of the records were, you know, bordering on some of them were maybe not necessarily stable people, but had enough belief in their art to try to get a record made.
Marc:Who are the people that make their own records generally?
Guest:I'd say they come from all stripes.
Guest:There's definitely the angle of the guy that's trying to really break into the mainstream music business and comes up with his totally bizarre take on life.
Guest:And they intrigue me the most.
Guest:But I'd say one of the best and most important discoveries in my life, besides the Kenneth Higney album, there's a guy named Peter Grudzian from New York.
Guest:Grudzian?
Guest:Grudzian, yeah.
Guest:who made an album called The Unicorn.
Guest:And he was a guy who had started in the late 50s with a Johnny Cash-type rockabilly-type trio.
Guest:And he was trying to break into country music.
Guest:And he was a Twilight Zone-type figure.
Guest:So when his record comes out, it's got early country on it and stuff.
Guest:But it also has mixed in choral tapes and music concrete and crazy, crazy words from another world.
Guest:So it sounded like...
Guest:Somebody had said, when I turned him on to, I said, this is the hillbilly from the Twilight Zone or something.
Guest:So I made this incredible record that's totally homemade, pretty much plays everything in isolation he's making.
Guest:And it's not just a record where you think, oh, wow, that's cool or interesting.
Guest:It's a deep work of art that addresses life, death, sex, everything, like in his own sort of, you know, his own fragmented take on it.
Guest:But it's real and soulful.
Guest:And is that record available?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There have been a number of reissues of that.
Marc:What's his name?
Guest:David Gray.
Guest:Peter.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then G-R-U-D-Z-I-E-N.
Guest:Oh, yeah?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:I got to get that one.
Guest:Certainly.
Guest:It was a shattering, one of those shattering experiences to me, what you were talking about with these people.
Guest:This is like...
Guest:By that time, I was through the gates of coming out of, like, do I need to hear another version of Gloria with a, you know, snarly garage broker?
Guest:Or do I want to enter this new world, which seemed like, well, you know, I'm one of the first guys in the door here.
Guest:It's a candy store.
Marc:Yeah, but also you were, you got, it affected you emotionally and mentally.
Marc:It wasn't like a business necessarily.
Marc:You were craving the experience of having your mind blown by music and you had worn out the shit that everybody knows.
Marc:And that's what I learned from you when I first got hip to you when I started.
Marc:Because I know, I get a lot of these records now, dude.
Marc:A lot of people send me their records.
Marc:And there's a couple of records that I've held onto because of that.
Marc:Because like, I don't know what it is.
Marc:One of them was this, I have to find it.
Marc:It was this woman who just played guitar and I think her boyfriend sent me this record that he produced.
Marc:And the cover picture, she looks so sad.
Marc:And it so clearly looked like somebody said, we're doing a record cover.
Marc:Almost like she was being yelled at.
Marc:And I listened to the record.
Marc:It was just heartbreaking.
Marc:And it wasn't that complicated.
Marc:But you could feel it.
Marc:Maybe I'll find it for you if I can figure out what it is.
Marc:So, well, there is hope for that.
Marc:Because I know you probably get asked that a lot.
Marc:Like, well, can this still happen?
Marc:Of course it still can happen.
Marc:Because I think probably more than ever, people are making their own records.
Marc:Don't you think?
Guest:There are more bands than ever.
Guest:There are more records being released than ever, and it's easier to do.
Guest:Back in the day, somebody had to be really driven to actually get a record made and recorded, because it was not in their hands unless they built their own little home studio in a lot of places.
Guest:I think the thing now is...
Guest:there is so much of everything coming out and so many things you know zillions of things people will be posting on the internet right it's like the needle in the haystack you know there are these things that are happening right now they're going to be really interesting but it might take 10 or 20 years before the right ears come across them and single them out because there's just so much there is so okay so now you guys so you're you moved to new hampshire
Marc:And what goes on up there?
Guest:That's when I really got going with the catalogs.
Guest:I was basically in isolation for... The catalogs that Jesper saw.
Guest:So I would be basically doing all that.
Marc:And how many records were you amassing up there?
Guest:At that point, I had a room full of them and then an attic with...
Guest:like the stuff that wouldn't fit in the room so not you know a humongous amount but but a lot of obscure records a good select uh yeah a large pile of select what was the most expensive record you ever moved that would be the dark it would be some money i got like uh 7 500 for that and that was a long time ago and
Guest:Who bought it?
Guest:A friend from New York who was a fanatic for British bands.
Guest:He'd heard it.
Marc:Are there still dudes that'll pay that for a record?
Guest:Yeah, certain ones.
Guest:This band Stonewall, which is one of the best hard rock records ever that was put out.
Guest:on a label tiger lily that was the label that was owned by morris levy of uh uh genovese family connections oh really so forth yeah he owned roulette records the famous roulette records and so yeah he was a legendary shady figure and he had this label called tiger lily that was a tax loss label where he would put out demos people had sent to roulette and put put out records without them
Guest:Yeah, sometimes without them knowing it.
Guest:And they never tried to sell them.
Guest:They would just manufacture a small amount and dump them.
Guest:Yeah, where most of them went, you don't know.
Guest:And this one Stonewall, which I had found way back in the 80s, somebody had sent it to me.
Guest:I thought it was incredible.
Guest:And I didn't know the story then, you know, that...
Guest:I think to this date, you could still count on your hand how many copies have turned up.
Guest:A copy of that sold for over $14,000 last year.
Guest:So there are certain records.
Marc:And this was on the East Coast.
Marc:Were they all found regionally?
Marc:Because if they weren't shipped,
Guest:No, they were just scattered.
Guest:The first one I had was found in Los Angeles and sent to me.
Guest:No shit.
Guest:The one that sold for $14,000, maybe the fourth or fifth known copy in the world, was found in New Hampshire in a barn.
Guest:Really?
Guest:It's weird because some of those records could have just been crated up and dumped.
Guest:And then somebody's got fined them.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:There was a legend going around that somewhere there's a warehouse on Long Island.
Guest:They got a wall of Tiger Lily label albums, all the big ones and that.
Guest:But that was somebody's imagination.
Guest:Nobody ever walked into that Holy Grail scene.
Marc:Record collector mythology.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So what's your stock like now?
Guest:Do you still have a lot of records?
Guest:no i channel them you know through so uh the whole time so it's and once when the internet did get going the whole thing the source thing dried up yeah even in all the other countries got hip to their own records right and then basically you know the the demand exceeded the supply or something so now it's really hard to find one and with the internet you're not gonna
Guest:If somebody has it, even if they're not into it, they're going to see, oh, whoa, that's a $1,000 record, whether it really is or not.
Guest:They'll take that information there.
Guest:So you don't walk into a record store and go to the cheapest section to find the best stuff anymore.
Marc:Because everyone knows what they have.
Marc:All they got to do is go online and look on eBay or Discogs and see what it's going for.
Marc:Sad.
Marc:Are you sad about that?
Guest:Yeah, it's a double-edged sword.
Guest:I'm glad that I got in when it was all wide open and free or something, a lot of fun.
Marc:And now because of you, thousands and thousands of people can experience and hear music they've never heard before.
Guest:Yeah, I like that.
Guest:It seems like another alternate universe or something.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:With Morgan thinking now, hundreds of thousands of people are really into Morgan.
Guest:Yeah, it's great.
Guest:Something I've noticed when young kids and sometimes bands we're playing with and other people and we start talking, that kind of stuff, they have, when they're exposed to the good shit, they tend to have an innate ability to detect it.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I think part of it sort of being like...
Marc:like the stooges and velvet underground and black sabbath and bands like that teens now are still into the spans and they're not really listening to genesis much anymore thank god or emerson lake and palm or things like that you know i've never listened to that there you just named two bands that i could never process i i just don't know why but it's really like out of it's almost like mystical what you just did because i can't i just never could and i can get hold the most shit but i can't get hold of genesis they're incredible bands compared to paul simon's graceland
Marc:okay yeah yeah you gotta be positive about things what do you if we don't like qualify if it's graceland i don't know it's just it's just sinister disturbing music all right so now we like you you you get you you come back from new hampshire new york right and you where do you live now where you live up near columbia university still yeah the same place that he went to as a youngster
Marc:And so you were corresponding with Paul.
Guest:Yeah, we have some mutual friends.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:We'll go there.
Guest:We would go up to his apartment and hang out and be blown.
Guest:And you just moved to New York?
Guest:Yeah, I moved, yeah, early 90s.
Guest:How old were you?
Guest:I was like 23 or something like that.
Guest:So this was like this mystical wizard in a way.
Guest:Yeah, but I was used to having older people that were guiding through this maze because there was not even books on this stuff.
Guest:people had to know and the only way for me to find out is to have people teach you but you were a collector when you met him well a little bit I mean not extreme I've never had money or anything but I mean the universe is so intriguing and Paul was the person that kind of unlocked the whole thing you know
Guest:And so how did the music start?
Guest:Well, we just kind of realized we're all into the same stuff.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Paul had this, he's kind of a recluse.
Guest:He just sits up there and drinks beer and listens to all these records.
Guest:And we just wanted him to get out of the house and come hang out.
Guest:So we started this kind of ritual where like, let's get together every two, stay at seven.
Guest:We have a rehearsal space, drink some beer, and maybe we'll make some noise, you know?
Guest:And had you been playing at the time, much?
Guest:No, not much since leaving New York and coming back.
Guest:I was still heavy doing the record.
Guest:So like eight years, nine years?
Guest:But I hadn't played.
Guest:I'd pick up the guitar once in a while, but I hadn't played and never thought I'd be playing in a band again or something.
Marc:So that was the original dream for you?
Guest:Yeah, as a kid.
Guest:Yeah, it was.
Guest:As soon as that happened, it was a real...
Guest:But this band that we started, Endless Boogie, was almost like a joke or something.
Guest:It was just for us.
Guest:No, no, I get it.
Guest:You just wanted to jam.
Guest:We'd sit in our garage, and we'd jam, and we'd hang out, whatever.
Guest:And we did that long.
Guest:And also, there was no delusions or illusions of Granger.
Guest:We never wanted to play any shows.
Guest:We just wanted to hang out.
Guest:And the music we played, I loved Kraut Rock, but I also love Canned Heat.
Guest:So can we pretend that Canned Heat were a Kraut Rock band?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That kind of vibe, you know?
Marc:That is sort of what it sounds like.
Guest:And like, you know, what you can't do with skill, you do with volume, you know?
Marc:But also commitment to a groove.
Marc:I mean, lately, that's one thing that I've been respecting more than anything else.
Marc:Because even when I was listening to Full House Head,
Marc:You know, when I when I was listening to Endless Boogie out of nowhere, it was it was exactly the experience that you were having with these other records because it came to me.
Marc:I didn't know what it was.
Marc:I had no context for it.
Marc:And it was just and I started listening to it.
Marc:And I was I lock into the groove immediately because I do like Can Heat.
Marc:I do like John Lee Hooker.
Marc:I like Kraut Rock as well.
Marc:But but that the thing was, is that the groove held up.
Marc:Like, it's hard to do long-ass songs, you know, that don't move around that much and have it be, you know, satisfying.
Marc:And that was happening.
Guest:I guess in that regard, it's kind of an art rock project, too, because you kind of want that repetition and that becomes something else once we lock into that groove, you know?
Guest:I mean, sometimes it takes us six minutes to get there, but once we do, we'll stay there, you know?
Guest:Yeah, for how long?
Guest:Well, it depends on.
Guest:I mean, sometimes we play shows that we just played one song.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:If it's happening, we just keep going with it.
Guest:You can kind of feel if you're in it, like it clicks.
Guest:Then you just get, why leave it?
Guest:It's awesome.
Guest:You want to be there.
Guest:You're there, and then all of a sudden you want to poke around and see where else you can go.
Marc:Yeah, but not go crazy or get too ego about it.
Marc:yeah yeah yeah yeah try to keep it locked into that into that place but but it does honor a certain like you know i know the name of the band is endless boogie and obviously can't heat we're huge john lee hooker fans like that that hooker and heat records one of the best records ever it's one just when he says like i don't know how you're keeping up with me you know that moment with the harmonica players he must listen to everything i ever made because i don't know how you're keeping up with me
Marc:So like what was there?
Marc:Are you because it doesn't strike me as like it doesn't read as psych rock per se.
Marc:It's definitely.
Marc:No, no, it's definitely a blues driven operation.
Guest:I was never really interested.
Guest:I was never into stoner rock or whatever.
Guest:Like where sometimes we get put in that pocket.
Guest:But I always hated metal guitar sound.
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:even the metal band that i liked i was like i wish they had like more just normal guitar sounds like it's cool right i mean i love the slayer it's like to me a free jazz band and they were incredible i thought yeah yeah yeah back in the late 80s or whatever but i just wish they sounded a little different right right like it seems to me that that what's most important is the groove right yeah for sure i mean even you know i think the most important thing is the thing that you do and not what you do it with agreed there's a lot of people who are like oh we're
Guest:Recorded in the same studio as Led Zeppelin.
Guest:Therefore, we are as good or something or like Led Zeppelin is in our music.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:Like those people go to Berlin to record in the Hero Studio.
Marc:Yeah, exactly.
Marc:Who did that U2 for Octoon Baby?
Marc:Yeah, we just sucked up all that Bowie juice and we made this thing.
Marc:Take it in.
Guest:But lyrics and stuff, I mean, you sing mostly, right?
Guest:Yeah, a lot of it comes from stream of consciousness or something.
Guest:And we're doing the jams and something will sort of start and we'll do it again.
Guest:And, you know, don't sit down and like much and try to...
Marc:You write the song.
Guest:Make a statement.
Guest:It's just like, okay.
Guest:I think Sterling Morrison once said, because they used to ask, you know, every time they would interview Sterling Morrison, they would ask about lyrics, Lou Reed's lyrics, and he just got, you know, he didn't like that so much.
Guest:He's like, if you want poetry, read the fucking New York Times.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So what are the different configurations of the band?
Marc:How'd you find a bass player and a drummer?
Marc:Who were those guys?
Guest:Well, the band started, there was me and Paul and Sky Johan Kugelberg, who is actually right now putting together a book on Paul, where most of these catalog descriptions will be in.
Guest:Oh, really?
Marc:A collection of the catalog?
Guest:It'll be like a coffee table book on Paul Major and why he's important.
Marc:Oh, it's great.
Guest:And why we all need to listen to him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because he's a man with no ego, so we need to help him out.
Marc:You need to, you're the ego fortification.
Guest:And me and Johan had this idea.
Guest:We need to start jamming.
Guest:And we kind of, we wanted like a kind of a crude rock and roll band.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:We worked in the music business, which was full of indie rock.
Guest:We thought it was really annoying.
Marc:You were in the music business?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I worked for Matador Records.
Guest:Oh, that was a big, big label for the indie rock thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we were kind of.
Guest:Were you A&R guy?
Guest:No, I did like production and international licensing and stuff like that.
Marc:Who are the big Matador bands?
Marc:I can't... Well, there's Pavement.
Marc:Oh.
Marc:There was a Liz Phair.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Marc:You know, those were like... I've had Malkmus in here.
Guest:Yeah, he was good.
Guest:He turns out to be a pretty good guy.
Guest:Oh, he's genius.
Guest:He's also a brilliant guitar player.
Guest:And you guys work with him?
Guest:yeah we know him well he's actually the reason why we ever played live because paben had ended we were friends or whatever and he would like come hang out sometimes when we rehearsed and he was doing his first solo album it was like 2001 and he's playing his first new york show and he's like okay i want you guys to open yeah so we're like no but we don't really play live shows right well no but you're gonna open it's like okay
Guest:And that was the first time we ever played.
Guest:And then we decided we'll play any time someone asks us to play.
Marc:That was the deal?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And however stupid the situation would be, we would say yes.
Guest:Luckily these days, we can actually say no to some things now, but we still have the same idea.
Guest:We don't really plan many tours or anything.
Guest:People contact us, hey, do you want to come to Australia, where we just were.
Guest:I hear you've got a big following in Australia.
Guest:Yeah, we channel a lot of the early 70s Australian rock heroes, like Lobby Lloyd and The Colored Balls.
Marc:Oh, The Colored Balls.
Guest:They reissued that.
Guest:Dan turned me on to that.
Marc:That's a good record.
Guest:We've been fans of his genius for many years, and it's one of the reasons why the band started.
Guest:Really?
Guest:How so?
Guest:Because we were just obsessing over those records and no one else had heard of them outside Australia.
Guest:It's true, like no one.
Guest:And no one cared because they were a little too rock, not psychedelic or whatever.
Guest:But I kind of like the heavy rock angle.
Guest:Yeah, I got one record of theirs, I think.
Marc:Yeah, Ball Power.
Marc:Yeah, Ball Power.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Yeah, we used to play that, that's what Mama said, like in 1996.
Guest:We tried to figure it out, but we couldn't, we weren't good enough.
Guest:You don't do any covers?
Guest:Well, we do sometimes.
Guest:Which ones?
Guest:Well, we do Mama, Billy Thorpe.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:The Aztecs is one.
Guest:We do do some covers.
Guest:We do Rolling and Tumbling.
Guest:You do?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So, like, when you play now, what do you draw?
Marc:Like, do people know you now?
Marc:Is it, like, last night, how'd it go?
Guest:People, yeah, in Australia, it was good.
Guest:It's not, like, huge numbers of people.
Guest:We played it.
Guest:But you got a crowd.
Guest:A couple of festivals have a crowd and familiar faces turning up and diehard rock fans like that.
Yeah.
Guest:We have a little bit of a vibe over there, too, because we've been championing Australian rock over here.
Guest:In fact, back in the old days of my catalogs, I had put a Color Balls ball power in there a couple times because I was in touch with guys swapping records here.
Guest:At two of our shows, independent of each other, two guys came up and said to me, oh, thank you for turning me on to Color Balls.
Guest:It's like, oh, they got turned on to Color Balls by me halfway around the world or something.
Guest:So we've been championing.
Guest:that.
Guest:What's the new record going to be called?
Guest:I think it's going to be called Vibe Killer.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because it might be.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:We're not playing.
Guest:It might be.
Guest:Working title is Vibe Killer.
Guest:We'll see what happens.
Guest:We aren't trying to make it a Vibe Killer or not.
Guest:Whatever happens.
Guest:In case it is the one that brings everybody down and said oh fuck.
Guest:Did I really like these guys?
Guest:Wait a minute.
Marc:Well, I like you, man.
Marc:And I was happy to talk to you.
Marc:And I like the spirit of it all.
Marc:And I hope I didn't seem like too much of an idiot.
Marc:Jesper Eklo.
Marc:That's me.
Marc:Thank God.
Marc:Well, thank you.
Marc:I wanted to make sure I got it.
Marc:I didn't mean to be insulting.
Marc:And Paul Major, it's an honor to meet you.
Marc:And thanks for coming by.
Marc:Likewise.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:Now set forth.
Marc:Go forth and try to find Freaky Rare Vinyl.
Marc:It's time.
Marc:It's time.
Marc:Go to WTFPod.com for all your WTFPod needs.
Marc:Check my tour dates.
Marc:Do that shit.
Marc:I'll play guitar.
Marc:I kind of like that thing I was doing the other day.
Marc:Maybe I'll do more of that just for a second.
Guest:Thank you.
.
.
.
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:I hope La Fonda will too.