Learn How to Fight

[learnhowtofight]

Ten Headline Reactions 1.14.14

It comes and goes on a whim.

Good luck with that.

She’s got a shot at this thing.

Fuck that guy.

Especially for the victims, you prick.

Sounds like fun for them.

Pull the money from the banks.

Did that say nuclear?

How will I know if it’s raining now?!

Great. Now I’m hungry.

[learnhowtofight]

Resident Human Postcard Mailer #1 "Paraguay"

[learnhowtofight]

The year was 1999. Duos were all the rage in the Rock and Roll world. And it was a simpler time. A time when seemingly anyone with a half-baked idea and the equipment to back it up could get a crack at stage time. A time when Neil Yee always had a slot to fill on a 3 or 4 band lineup at his little basement-party-cave-clubhouse called the Gold Dollar in Detroit's Cass Corridor. A time when (for good or ill) he recorded nearly everything. A time when two bright, glimmery well-fed man-boys called the Fighting Pinheads could take to the stage and rock. For fun. This is what it sounded like.

[learnhowtofight]

Dinnertimeexquisitecorpse no.1

Participants: Chris, Nolan, Elliot

Macing awy's vezlda

When the old man got to work at the steel mill, he retired.

But she was a silly girl, who danced, painted and made the unicorns jump like frogs. And she talked like a hero.

Cookie is the best cat in a chocolate city and he has little chocolate drops come out of him.

As the old man walked down his driveway he realized he forgot his "life alert."

Once, there was a man with 40 hands who lived nearby.

[learnhowtofight]

042913.1 - Comment & Travel, Guardian UK, ca. 2009

“Comment & Travel – Guardian.co.uk, Sept. 2, 2009” Wonder or washout Is a referendum There really are some things that absolutely everyone should do their first time around. Is necessary We hired Vespas and took the dirt roads far North Is not an emotion I would normally feel It's not all east buys west Is not the only minister who has had to balance The main attraction is the gently rolling woodland Is in a greater ideological mess Beginning underwater, this journey takes in the remote island group Is easy – stop selecting! Some of us may have clocked on this morning with slightly heavier hearts than usual Is an anti-alcohol marketing campaign Little ones who want to paddle Is neither helpful nor entirely accurate

[learnhowtofight]

041813.3 - Greetings from Earth!

/Bon Voyager/

Balai home I don’t galwayon the honk I don’t

"Hi. How are you? Wish you peace, health and happiness.

"Hello everybody."

I don’t see Ramona bourgeault in your contacts.

"Heartfelt greetings to all."

I can’t delete text messages

Hello from the children of planet earth

What is your child’s name?

Hello hello children hello

"Hello? How are you?"

What you up. Hmmm let me think

"Welcome, creatures from beyond the outer world."

Is it to…

[learnhowtofight]

041813.2 - Unfinished But Promising

---never published this until now. because why not? Enjoy. Why not? --

Just Passing Through

By Chris Handyside

In one corner of this Corktown loft this Monday night, a campfire is being built. Log-by-log, with meticulous care, its construction is carefully crafted to maximize the enjoyment of those who will gather around. In yet another corner, a group of four folks have gathered with just their acoustic guitars and voices; perched on a stool, sitting intently on an old chair and lounging on a couch, three of the gathered are watching and following the lead of the lean, scruffy man in an army cap, hunched over his own six-string as their voices and chords weave together in the plaintive harmony to declare in a dreamy sing-song, “this world is not my home, this world is not my home. I’m just passing through.”

  It is gorgeous, quiet and simple. Meanwhile, the campfire construction, led by Detroit artist Davin Brainard hits a momentary snag until he has the brainwave to scallop the carboard tubes from which he is constructing it so that they can lean gently on one another while still allowing campers to take a log home with them should they choose. The quartet gathered in the other corner pay no mind as Warren Defever, the 39-year-old artist who wrote the song nearly 15 years ago – and recorded it not once, but (3) times on the 1996 album “Stars on ESP” by his band His Name is Alive --  nods quietly and adjourns the session.

The loft is in Defever’s home, workshop, recording studio and sonic laboratory – kitchen well-stocked with spirits, spinach and screenprint flyers; workshop overflowing with bits, bobs and parts of homemeade kalimbas and soldered electronic gear; a yoga platform placed strategically next to his home office; a collection of guitars and records ever at the ready should inspiration strike adjacent to a home mixing console. And the gathered are all preparing for their part singing around the cardboard campfire this Saturday night as His Name is Alive celebrates its 20th anniversary at the Majestic Theater with an evening-long retrospective that will attempt to encapsulate the utterly idiosyncratic, haunting and dreamy vision of pop, folk, gospel, R&B and rock ‘n’ roll that Defever has articulated over nearly 100 recordings these past two decades.

Thing is, this informal gathering of folks in Defever’s home, tuning into the artist to help him express the sounds in his head is, though 20 years on, pretty much exactly the same as it was when Defever was a Livonia-based wunderkind – a rockabilly-obsessed suburban misfit who cut his teeth in elementary school playing accordion polkas with his grandfather -- crafting sonic dreamscapes from in his childhood home and releasing them on the renowned and respected British imprint 4AD – home of the Cocteau Twins, the Pixies (and one other example).

Over those 100 recordings, His Name is Alive has traced an aesthetic arc that starting with 1990’s album, Livonia and landing most recently with HNIA’s upcoming self-release based on recordings of baby raccoons he rescued from the chimney of his childhood home in, yup, Livonia. In between, the scope of Defever’s wanderings have gained the kind of critical adulation, devoted following and subtle, powerful musical influence that is usually associated with artists much closer to the tip of the tongues of average music fans. But Defever has managed – to use an abused phrase – do it his way from day one and still make music that is spoken of in excited tones by fans as far-flung as Japan, Brazil, LA and Europe. He’s grown his reputation over the years as a producer for such bands as the, ahem, Stooges (who, oddly, rejected his song title “No Shirt”) Unrest, Outrageous Cherry, Nomo and, recently, Detroit standouts Legendary Creatures (and many, many others). And he’s kept the ideas fresh by collaborating with whoever seems interesting – but often with longtime pal Davin Brainard’s timeStereo (the two are also the driving force behind mid-‘90s noise pranksters Princess Dragonmom and started the “John Tesh is An Alien” meme as part of Mog Stunt Team). And even though Detroit may take His Name Is Alive for granted – and even though other names may burn brighter for brief periods of time –as a musical institution, it’s not at all a stretch to note that the past few generations of Detroit scenes have all been influenced – directly or indirectly – by Defever’s DIY-on-his-own-terms method. Defever attributes HNIA’s longevity to simply sticking with it. And sticking with it with a beguiling mix of humor and easrnestness.

“Somehow I’m still alive. I didn’t die. That’s the reason,” he laughs.

“His Name is Alive really started in 1987-88. And the people I was playing music with back then, none of them are still playing music. And a few of them are dead. And it’s weird, the people that worked in the music industry when I satarted are gone now. You look around and you realize that there’s no one else still doing it. An example is like John Brannon. He’s still alive and he’s still incredible. I just saw him last week. Other guys that were in hardcore bands in 1982, they died, turned metal or just gave up. He’s still going, he’s still incredible, his voice is still the loudest thing in the room, and it’s amazing!”

The common denominator, he says, is “low expectations. There’s no pressure on us. There’s no commercial success that we’ve had to maintain a certain level.”

However, when you’re barely out of your teens and you find that one of the most respected labels in the world is interested in your music, it can be an opportunity to learn the benefits of following your own inspiration. Such was the case when Defever submitted a tape to Ivo Watts-Russell of 4AD and was subsequently signed to the label. His Name is Alive became the beneficiary of the 4AD vision.

Keep in mind that as a member of Elvis Hitler, which had released a couple records on the Restless label, Defever had already been privy to the machinations of the record industry which he describes as “the worst, crooked, classic bad vibes situation.”

“One of the things about being on 4AD,” he says, “was there was visionaries who cared about quality and having great, original ideas. They didn’t want to send us out to play 200 shows a year. What they said was, ‘you’re not any good live, we’ve heard your tape. Keep trying.’ They were very supportive.”

But they did focus their efforts to support the band in other inspired ways, such as recruiting the likewise critically-acclaimed Brothers Quay to create a music video for His Name is Alive.

“They said ‘We want to spend 70,000 on a video.’ and I thought that was insane! We spent $1.50 on the record!” says Defever. “But it ended up being great and a great idea! The thing with 4AD was that the music was something that was important and it would effect people in a certain way. And if you do it right, then it will be successful. Not, to focus on marketing, have the perfect strategy and then you’ll be able to do what you want.”

Despite the critical acclaim, Defever’s always followed his own muse – to this very evening, in fact.

“There’s a new record I’m working on. It’s going to be the best record I’ve ever done. It’s recordings of baby raccoons,” he enthuses.

“Me and Davin rescued some raccoons from our fireplace. We heard this very strange sound. It was chirping mixed with a gnawing sound. But it started fading. Something’s in there and it’s dying. So, we put on hockey helmet, masks, gloves, garbage bags, hockey sticks, we didn’t know what was going to come out of there. A hunk of bats, a baby bear, there was no way of telling. But it was a couple of four day old raccoons, whose mother had left the chimney to go get food and probably got hit by a car on the way back. So we put ‘em in a cardboard box with a bunch of blankets, some lights and a speaker hooked up to an electronic drum machine doing a fake heartbeat. And within a half-hour, they started making these squeaking sounds and scooched over to the side of the box where the heartbeat was. And after a couple days they started jumping around like monkeys. We figured out they weren’t monkeys. And during the course of the days there had been several recordings where I experimented with different beats and rhythms. And they were basically singing these beautiful songs, these melodies, chirping. It’s incredible. It’s the best album. It starts off in this dark place and it goes to complete joy! Now that’s a record!”

On stage, Defever embodies the kind of aloof, cool detachment that leads one to think that he’s mulling over a million machinations at any given moment. But in-person and in conversation, he is a gracious host, with a wicked sense of humor that squeaks through at odd times between meditative quiet and direct, testing statements about his art.

One of the ways this makes itself manifest is through his repertory of female singers fronting His Name is Alive over the years. As usual, there’s a playful and practical explanation.

“If you’ve heard me sing…you know that it’s painful. It’s painful for me to do. And it turns out I can’t remember the words,” he says.

“When I sing it’s impossible to hold things in my head. In my perfect world, I’m going to do music that I can listen to when I go to sleep at night. It never quite works out but I just think that involves a lady singing.”

The group of women who have given voice to Defever’s musical idylls starts with fellow Livonian and original singer Karin Oliver and includes standouts such as Denise James, Karen Neal (Thrall, Queen Bee), the gospel-weaned Lovetta Pippin and the most recent vocalist, Andi FM. Each new singer seems to signal a phase shift for Defever, with the band’s stylistic and sonic palette morphing ever so slightly – from ethereal dream-pop to classic ‘60s FM psych, R&B-tinged excursions and more-punky avant-rock, respectively. The common denominator, though, is that all connect first and foremost with Defever as pals.

“Early on I saw things going in two ways. The band was split right down the middle. Angie had sort of a Midwestern twang and initially she sang the songs that were closer to my experience. If there was a song about your girlfriend going away to college and it’s called ‘Are You Coming Down This Weekend?’ She would sing that. And Karen would sing songs that were a little more from Shakespeare, a little more of a grand thing. But that quickly fell apart.”

Oliver was the main voice of His Name is Alive for many years. But that didn’t mean that Defever couldn’t employ six singers for an album like, “Mouth by Mouth” which has 6 singers on it.

“Nobody’s calling me saying ‘can I be the singer of your band?’ It didn’t even really depend on hearing them. Sometimes you just meet people and say ‘let’s sing.’ Playing music as a social thing with your friends. It would be rare that I would work with a stranger. I wouldn’t hire singers. There’s not really special guests. It’s more like un-special guests,” he says.

Defever met Pippen when he brought in a gospel choir for HNIA’s “Stars on ESP” album to sing on “This World is Not My Home.”

“She was just by far the best singer,” he recalls.

Defever and the director of the choir worked out a trade deal where the choir could record at his studio and he could emply the choir for backup parts for his songs.

But, says Defever, “He was a totally creep. Like ‘don’t speak diretly to the women.’ So, one time, he had gone to the bathroom and Lovetta came to me and said ‘Do you believe in UFOs?” and I was like ‘what?!?!’ So I snuck her books like ‘Does God Drive a UFO?’ and we just became friends,” he says.

So he skipped the rest of the choir and he and Pippin began their working relationship.

“Her dad was a preacher and she had been singing since she was really young and I think we both grew up with a mutual hatred of the audience,” says Defever of their common bond.

“I’ve seen her walk on stage, still wearing her walkman and a coat. Like she was outside waiting at the bus stop and she walked on stage. And the audience has a certain reaction like ‘Is she supposed to be here?’”

The latest singer to give voice to Defever’s songs was Andi FM, who ended up in the HNIA fold as part of a birthday present gone especially well.

“I was friends with her boyfriend Ian, from the Piranhas and it was my birthday and he said ‘I have a present for you! We’re going to come over to your house and sing songs for you!’ And I said ‘that sounds horrible!’

But the pair showed up anyway and sang Elvis and Patsy cline songs and Defever hired FM on the spot.

“The other thing is, I get in a weird space and there’s a certain degree of, even though the songs are coming from my standpoint, they’re still written for that singer. So, if Andrea’s going to do a song from ‘Someday My blues Will Cover the Earth’ [which featured Pippin on vocals], it gets rewritten.”

When it comes to revision and rewriting and reinventing, even when it comes to the band’s history, Defever has always played fast and loose with the truth, often inventing wistful backstories about submerged Civil War-era forts and fanciful mythologies just to throw scribes off the trail.

“I get tired of people looking at me like I’m crazy,” he says.

“So I’m like ‘here’s your story.’ The first time I did an interview with the British press, the album came out, I had the single of the week, whatever, people wanted to know ‘what is this music?’. They asked ‘what do you listen to?’ and I’m like, well, I when I grew up my grandpa taught me country, western, polkas and waltzes and since I was 5 years old I was playing the accordion, slide guitar and fiddle and I didn’t know what music was and so I heard rockabilly and got super excited. Like ‘this is what the kids dig. This is where the energy is. I love Gene Vincent, I love Eddie Cochran, I love the Sun Sessions. And the guy’s looking at me like I’m insane! Like ‘why is this guy lying to me?!’ This American 21-year-old boy lying to me about country music. The article came out and it was like ‘I love Brian Eno, the Cocteau Twins..’ and I’m like ‘oh, my god. That is the opposite of what I said.”

“And I realized at that point that journalism and music journalism are two very different things,” he sums up.

But if Defever’s being honest about the trajectory of His Name is Alive these past 20 years, his bending of the truth is as much a defense mechanism that belies the raw honesty of a music based on spirituality, unconscious meditations, dream-like poetics and haunted psyches.

“I think it’s fallen into place and it makes sense. If you’re going to analyze it, it follows a certain path, from the late-‘80s to now. It’s always been a very personal statement,” he says.

“The music has always been very internal. It’s all excerpts from my notebook, my diary, my dream diary. And that part I’m always a little bit uncomfortable talking about. So it’s always been that the music says it. Some people are going to get that and some people aren’t. And if you don’t, that’s fine. I can’t explain it.

The most honest and earnest thing I can say is that these songs are autobiographical. And if you want to know what’s going on with me, just listen to the songs. Which, if I read someone saying those words [in a story] I’d think ‘that sounds awful, I’m not interested in that.”

His Name is Alive’s DIY on your own terms approach effects every aspect of its remarkable career. Simply, there are no “typical” His Name is Alive Shows, because Defever has constructed live events to counter hard lessons learned from the road when he (along with his older brother John) was a teenage axe-slinger in Detroit psychobilly standouts Elvis Hitler.

In fact, HNIA didn’t even play Detroit properly until 1990 and didn’t play again until, by Defever’s memory, 1996.

And that first big show was an accidental revelation.

“The album had been out for a while,” recalls Defever.

“So, there’s some mystery about the band. I remember looking at my watch and being like ‘OK, we’ve played 9 out of 10 songs and we’ve only played 20 minutes’. I thought this was going to take an hour. And we did a super jam. It was the ultimate jam. It turned out that’s what I really like doing. It’s not what people expected. And sometimes I’d go over and play the drums for a while and I don’t know if it was good. I don’t know if it’s ever good. I LOVE it. It’s the thing that I really want to do.”

“This [Detroit] was my private space. I didn’t want people to wonder ‘is that song about me?’. I also didn’t want people making fun of my pretty poems. But we played all over the world.”

But very early on, Defever knew that they weren’t just going to play because someone asked.

“The conditions have to be right for me to do what I want to do. I’m not going to do 200 shows a year. I’m not going to play Cincinnati on a Tuesday night just because we need to get to New York by Friday. I want each show to be a special event. I need to be comfortable.”

“I toured a lot as a teenager with the band Elvis Hitler. And we did do 200 shows a year and it was insane. Like ‘why are we playing Oklahoma so much?’”

“I just remember that each day on tour, there would be a psychic attack. You didn’t know which direction it would come from. It could be that the bar owner hated your band, the sound man might physically trying to attack you, it could be your own brother trying to stab you with the cymbal stand during the concert, there could be an angry drunk person in the audience. There might be a cinder block in the road 15 minutes before you got to the club and have a total blowout. You might show up late for an early show. I learned early on that you really need to do a good show. You need to stack things in your favor.”

“Maybe this is the reason that I’m still alive. Maybe this is why I’m not burned out. Because I’ve said ‘no’ to a few shows.”

Early on we got so many letters from weirdos, guys in prison, pickpockets, crazy people, that I didn’t develop a relationship with what I thought of as our audience. So every record we do, I do in a vacuum. Is there an audience? I don’t know. Do I mind if we lose that audience? No. In fact, it would be great if we lost that audience and found a better audience. An audience that wasn’t trying to kill me.

Most musicians -- not just people I know -- they die, they quit,” reckons Defever.

“I don’t want to die until either I’m Neil Young’s age. I think I’ll be ready to die when the generation of monsters we’re raising that don’t have music and art programs are in charge.”

[learnhowtofight]

041813.1

I’m not your boss. But the day is long. She went to the door smiling. For what, I do now. Rain coated door handle. Along the waterfront. I figure they lost it. Deep in the grass. Bright like the day/instant. Buried in current endless. Taken by the hair. I yelled in my head. Swept at my bangs. Knelt, bowed, silent/smirking. Fish scales and seaweed on the pilings. Deadlines can be ignored. If she wanted to say. More about the seaweed then. A good life to like. 

[learnhowtofight]

040513.4 - Rant @ the ranter

http://michigancitizen.com/opening-day-open-your-mind-before-you-open-your-mouth/

 This piece is EXACTLY the kind of horse shit, hack/johnny-come-never writing that keeps Detroit and the metro area mired in a backwater provincialism that makes even lowly, bland Chicago look attractive to aspiring brain drainers and anyone with a hope of pushing buttons, boundaries and expanding debate. Firing off “I feel” missives peppered with straw men, never-happened anecdotal provocations and god damned personal narrative storytelling 101 claptrap (see also NPR). Stop acting like you’ve never been there before and work out some shit in draft form before you hit “send.’ Lord knows I’m guilty of that as much, if not more than others. But fuckin’-a. At least I’m learning from my mistakes. It took me a long-ass time to get from a 5,000 word rambling, purple-prosed feature about Tom Waits’ The Black Rider (my first piece about music) to even thinking about stepping out in front of real readers with an opinion that meant shit to anyone but myself.

Back to the topic at hand: Phreddy buries the fuckin’ lead. Opening Day sucks. True. Fine. It’s sports. Sporting events are attended by, obsessed over and underwritten by people within a financial power structure that means they have disposable income and don’t think much about where they pee when they’re drunk. Yes. True. The people who come down for opening day of Tiger’s season are assholes. They are sports fans. Duh. As someone who’s been sober for nearly three years, believe me, there’s nothing that makes you doubt the purpose of humanity more than a drunken, privileged idiot pissing in your garden. Especially when he thinks you should thank him for the water he’s providing your plants.

But the human point of this – and it’s a valid one, and one that he almost pulls off at the end – is a re-framing of the idea of “opening day” as “Opening Day.” Opening as an active verb. The day you become more open to the possibilities the city offers. That urban life presents. To the energy and oft-random discoveries. To the organic engagement at street level of street life in all its weirdness.

I’m not asking for rah-rah pabulum. I’ve been there and done that – again too often, more often than most. But if you’re going to step with the criticism. Step with the motherfucking criticism. Get deeper. Get pushy. 

[learnhowtofight]

040513.3

Five songs. Five Questions. No answers.

1.     What goes on in your mind?

2.     Do you realize that everyone you know someday will die?

3.     How low can a punk get?

4.     Who made who?

5.     How soon is now?

[learnhowtofight]

There’s always an operator at “0”.

Resumer.

Purchaser.

Head stuck in this song. Never any more worse/better than it was in 1992. Driving Detroit freeways. Preparing for something. Practicing for no one. Ready for anything.

[learnhowtofight]

040513

from sarah bernhardt:

spectacle merchant, "vision specialist" and petty criminal,

as a courtesan and was known by the name

changed her first name and added an "h"

created false birth records, in which she

a law student, accountant, naval cadet or naval officer.

began attending

asked to resign after slapping another

became the mistress of Henri

acquired her famous coffin,

secured a contract