It has been fourteen years since I last saw Chemlab. Many things have happened in that time. The first attempt at this magazine = FAIL!! Sometime earlier this year it seemed as if things lined themselves up for me, so that I could revive The Reclusive Effigy, this time as a webzine. On a chance, I headed down to The Howling Wolf at the very last minute hoping to bring things full circle from 14 years past. I found Jared, he remembered me, and granted me permission to interview him once more. The tapes from the last interview are currently in "the" state of lost.On our way to a less noisy spot to do the interview, the bartender asks Jared what his music is like. Jared tells her that it's like Iggy Pop and the Stooges in a knife fight with Marilyn Manson in an enclosed telephone booth.
The Reclusive Effigy: So in 1997, which is about a year after I last saw you, I think...
Jared Louche: Yeah, seems about right, Gwar, tour time, 1996.
TRE: You disbanded in 1997, for quite a while?
JL: Yeah, well we fell apart from extreme enjoyment of the pleasures of life, which kept us from being able to focus on anything, except continuing our ability to enjoy the fine pleasures of life. It’s hard to hold a band, and a record label, and a management company together when you’re a hard-core junkie, and crack head and alcoholic and pill popper.
TRE: That seems to be a common story these days. More people are talking about it.
JL: Yeah, predictable pile of horseshit. Well, that’s because there’s a certain amount of cool cache to being wasted and fucked up out of your head. Which, like most people, the people who act that way did the same thing that I did. They learned all the wrong lessons from the right people. If you want to go off and be a drug addict and play music or paint or make films or work on Wall Street, which I did as well. That’s great, but don’t glorify it. I glorified it for a while, quite a while, and unfortunately to a certain extent made a chunk of my career, and my “street cred,” and cool cache and other ridiculous horseshit like that from being the elegantly wasted junkie blah blah archetype. And because I was highly functioning I made it look romantic and cool and somehow interesting to be that person and yet still make the band fly and the record label fly. And of course they all flew, right into the wall. But you know they looked good for awhile and I made it look good which is terrible. I made it seem attractive and the price that I pay for that is knowing that I killed two of my very best friends in the world. Caused a handful of serious breakups, my first marriage imploded. All kinds of things, the record label went to shit, because I was completely untrustworthy after a while and I would have kicked me down a flight of stairs as well. So, yeah the band fell apart and I can say that it was partially due to a major label who had been courting us suddenly becoming interested in electronica because Underworld’s second record, “The Second Toughest in the Infants,” exploded right around that time and Chemical Brothers did as well. And all of a sudden everything was all about electronica. And the labels that were looking at us were “hmmm . . . machine rock, well it’s electronic, but it needs the ‘A’ at the end.” Then they got all confused. But to be fair they are only record label exes. Those types of people, like rock-n-roll it is not a bastion of mentives. They got confused and they didn’t really know what to do. That means they stopped looking at us. It didn’t help that our keyboard player used to hit on record label representatives if they were women. So, we did a lot of dumb stuff. But honestly all three of us being hard core junkies, that was the main problem, and we paid the price. And pretty much since 1997 despite my having come back and recording more material I’m not even in the same place that I was in 1997. I am far behind that. The market has shrunk, and I am in a position of shrink. I guess I’m lucky to be able to come out and tour at all, and lose less money than I used to.
TRE: Then you re-formed in 2004 and put out an album.
JL: Re-formed is a bit of a misnomer. It was me and different musicians. The record in 2004 is . . . imperfect, wildly. The people that I was working with just didn’t facilitate it happening well, pleasantly, constructively. But I’m looking forward to the next one.
TRE: So there is a next one?
JL: Oh Yeah. I don’t know that I’ll ever tour again, but I’ll at least release another record and then we’ll see what happens from there. It also has just always taken so long to get things recorded. God I’m so tired of that I’m 50 I really don’t want to take years and years to record things it just drives me nuts and I’m not quite sure how to get around it, it’s very frustrating. So, yes there’s another record coming out and that was not a re-forming.
TRE: Is this going to be a more inspirational experience for you, than last time?
JL: Oh yes, much more, much more, it pushes beyond all of the predictable industrial whatever we’re calling it this week labels. And none of that makes any sense to me anyway.
TRE: I know how many people say they hate to label.
JL: Really? I think they love to label. There are so many little splinters that have all got their own proud little label. It’s kind of comical. It’s just fucking music. It’s rock-n-roll. Really it’s just not anything earth shatteringly grave or earth shatteringly important. It doesn’t really need a name. If it needs a name then let it just continue to be the same one that I’ve used forever and a day , which to a certain extent I suppose is appropriate, it’s “machine rock” combines the machinery and the rock-n-roll. Really it’s rock-n-roll with a bunch of ridiculous pretentions to it, which is what I bring because that’s what I do.
TRE: When you did tour a little more often, back in the day, who was your favorite band to tour with?
JL: I don’t know I think probably Nine Inch Nails in ’91. That was a great tour. It was a lot of fun. A lot of people, a lot of exposure for us. I think I really enjoyed it because I didn’t know a goddamn thing. (…) But that was a real pleasure and I like performing I don’t care whether it’s on a big stage or a small stage for five people or 5,000 people. I really couldn’t care less. I give the same caliber show regardless. Because I get to things really. I mean the five people that are there, they all paid to see a show, didn’t they? So they should get a show. I can’t stand musicians who moan about “there are only five people here.” Well fuck you. If there weren’t those five people here you’d be in a big empty room and it would be called rehearsal and it would suck. So why don’t you shut up and give us a show. And the other thing is for me, once the music starts I’m done, I’m not even here. I’m really not me. I don’t do any drugs, I don’t drink, I don’t do anything anymore. The older I get and the more time I spend being on stage the more the process forces me into this state of real disassociation. And before I go on stage, it’s like I start to enter into like a trance state or state of possession. It sounds silly, but I don’t give a fuck. I find it very hard to communicate. It’s incredibly tough for me to string words together and ideas together into some sort of a coherent sentence. If I need something I have to stand there and hit the person on the shoulder over and over to try and get the words to come out. Most of the time people are pretty good about being able to translate what it is but if I was really there in my head at the time I would feel like an idiot, but I’m not so, I only get to look back on it and try to remember what was going on. So I come in and out a lot, but because it is really mythical and incantatory, I get to channel this ageless energy it doesn’t matter if there’s nobody here. The music just moves me, I love it. I’m really passionate about it. And not (mockingly) “oh I’m so passionate about my music”. I just get fucked up. You just put me on the stage and turn the music up loud and I’m wrecked. I’m more high than when I was speed-balling or shooting dope in my dick or Quaaludes and stilettos falling out of my ass at 5:30 in the morning. That . . . that blows my brain. It’s great. It’s fucking fantastic.
TRE: Is there anything out there today that just musically turns you on, turns it on for you artistically? Creatively?
JL: Loads of things. All the time. I was really pleased a couple of days ago we were in somewhere. (laughs) We were in somewhere. God, am I like a bad punch line for a shitty joke about dumb ass musicians on tour. (said with a kind of hick accent) ”Yeah, a couple of days ago we were in . . . somewhere.” Damn, I’m this great walking cliché. . . uh Raleigh, North Carolina, playing at The Brewery, which is like a roadhouse. It’s really funny. I like playing roadhouses they are nice and hot and sweaty, people right up in your face, and I do dearly enjoy that. I spend a certain amount of time off the stage. It’s funny we were at Edmonton, just an illustration of the fact that I do disappear. And I come in and out. I was out in the middle of the dance floor, no microphone, no nothing. I was lying face down on the dance floor, my face in a puddle of something, and then sort of the mush in my head cleared, and I realized I had been actively licking this puddle of whatever it was that I had had my face in. What that has to do with anything, is absolutely nothing. But we were in Raleigh I was really pleased. I found a copy of Leonard Cohen’s a record called “Recent Songs,” which has just got some beautiful songs on it. “The Smokey Life” which I just adore. I did a cover of a Leonard Cohen song on that record, that cover girl record. I also did a Chemlab song in straight jazz which really fucked people up and convinced them I had not only lost my mind but that I really was shit after all and that I had just been having them on for years. It was great I had a jazz quartet come in and I had them learn a series of songs, The Stooges “Search and Destroy” and a couple of other things and a Tom Waits song which we didn’t do. And I had them learn the Chemlab song “Suicide Jack” you know “Buh don don don, doot doot do do do dun.” They came back two days later and said well, yeah everything’s fine and we’d like to run through it all with you and just woodshed it some but there’s one that we can’t figure out, you know the one with all the “boop boop booop boop shhhhh rahhh boop boop boop.” What the hell are we supposed to do with that? Really? O.K. and the guy had a stand up bass which is good and I said give me a walking 12 bar line. You mean doon doon doon doon ? Yep, give me a walking line like that. And we’ll just build it from around that. But it doesn’t sound anything like the song. Yes, you’re right. It doesn’t. Did it really take you two days to figure that out? Yeah, it doesn’t sound anything like the song. Why in the world do you think I would hire a fucking jazz quartet to come in and do a version of a Chemlab song and have you try and reproduce machine rock. Are you high? So they didn’t quite get it, but they played it anyway. And it sounds, it sounds great, it sounds as if you had a quartet doing a very odd off-kilter version of “Riders on the Storm,” maybe. But, yeah that was pretty funny so I did a Leonard Cohen on there. He’s always very inspirational. Loads of things are. I’ve listened to lots of jazz and blues. I’ve been enjoying Mingus so much recently “Fables of Faubus.” He just had such a fantastically modern sound. And so quintessentially urban even when he was doing old, like Baptist church howling preaching blues. It still has this really richly gritty urban feel to it and the time signatures and changes were all so futurist in a way. Talk about an underdog figure, Mingus is. His music definitely kept him on the edge of falling off the edge all the time. Pretty dark. So yeah I’ve been listening to one of my favorites of his it’s Mingus “Ah Um.” Fantastic title. How can you not love a guy who names his album Mingus “Ah Um?” Fuck you if you don’t like it. That’s just too amazingly cool.
TRE: I personally love that kind of attitude. Pisses off a lot of people, I’m not that same person I’ve changed.
JL: I was never, I mean when I became “The Jared” of Jared of Chemlab I didn’t spend my time listening to Marilyn Manson and Skinny Puppy and Ministry and Front 242. I mean I know all that stuff but it isn’t the stuff that I find motivational. It isn’t the stuff that I find I am passionately inspired by to go and write music. It’s the music between the notes that’s interesting to me. The things that are inspirational are not the things within the genre that I get lumped. Which is fine, I don’t give a fuck and it makes me sound pretentious to say that so much of what has been inspiring me creatively, sonically, lyrically for this Prude record which is a side project that we are doing called “The Dark Age of Consent”. It’s paintings of Francis Bacon. Not music at all, just some of these fantastic triptychs, some of the photographs that he used that were all over the floor of his studio and he just walked all over them and then would finally pick up one of his black and whites and do a painting from it including all the fold lines and the scratch lines and the blobs of ink that had fallen all over them and I just find that stuff incredibly motivational, such muscular rich primal energy to it. And it’s not like I go put on a Front 242 record and think oh man we should write a song like this, how dumb is that? But I’ve never been like that. I just couldn’t care less about what people’s expectations are. Their expectations are their mistake. I think I’m pretty easy to read. And if you read any interviews with me you know that I’m not just Mr. Machine Rock. I’m 50 for fuck’s sake. For better or for worse I have a really broad palate and I like pretty much every kind of music except modern country. Because it’s just corporate, it’s as corporate as New York City has now become. You know, sit me down with a handful of tracks by Woody Guthrie I’d fly all afternoon. Or Little Red Hen, what’s her name? Martha (Malvina Reynolds) something, she was a big revolutionary figure and she came on Pete Seeger’s “Rainbow (Quest)”T.V. program in the early 60’s and he’d just have all sorts of wandering minstrels coming through and they just would play on his T.V. show. She was great, she was just a hoot. And she did a song called “Hole in my Head” I’m sure I’ll mess up the lyrics but it was just her and her guitar. She was in her late 40’s when she started playing music and became really famous in her late 50’s and carried on to her late 70’s when she died. Oh, how does it go? It was about the idea of corporate mentality wanting to fill you up with stuff (singing) ”It will keep killing me, they’ve got something for me, something special to give to me, lot’s of pretty candy wrappers, keeps out sex and revolution. Well there’s no hole in my head. Too bad , buh bad-uh bah . . .”
TRE: So, you're working on a new album?
JL: Yup, called “Machine God Down.”
TRE: Do you have a certain direction that you want to take it?
JL: I always have ideas about where I’d like it to go. It doesn’t always go there, Oxidizer certainly didn’t. It’s to a certain extent about when society reaches technical critical mass and implodes to tribal approaches to society. “The Death of the Machine God.” Technology will always be here but I don’t think it’s going to be here in the ways that we’ve envisioned it. And I don’t think society’s going to be here in the ways that we’ve envisioned it I think it’s going to become intensely tribal and be a lot of battles and civil wars, and I think we’re going to become very tribal. (…) So anyway yeah I’m doing a new record, and it’s going to be light and airy and kind of breezy and fun, filled with lots of gleeful fun like all the other Chemlab records. And it will sound a little bit like Burn Out and a little bit like East Side Militia and a lot of bit like nothing else, and some of the future and some of the past and all of it rolled together in a great big barb wiry bundle of splintered broken glass and metal shards and teeth and other stuff like that. There you go, thank you, goodnight. And if that sets up a bunch of preconceptions for what you think it should sound like then flush all of it and stop doing that.
TRE: No preconceptions here, I’ll hear it when it comes.
JL: Yeah, I mean really that’s where it’s at, or otherwise people think it’s going to be something that it isn’t.
TRE: Are there any artists out there that you haven’t worked with that you would like to work with, not necessarily on a tour but in the studio.
JL: Sure, Flood. Great producer, love to work with him. I think that would be fantastic. I spent a couple of hours talking to him one night in ‘93 I would like to say, but others who have better memories than I do would probably refute that. But it was somewhere around then we spent a couple of hours after our show in L.A. and we all went back to Trent’s (Reznor’s) house when he was in the Tate house. And Flood spent maybe two, three, or maybe four hours standing in the kitchen in the same place the whole time just talking about music. That would be great, I’d definitely enjoy that. There are a handful of people I’d love to do stuff with but it doesn’t really make sense in Chemlab world. There are other projects, bands, things, that I’d love to do as well that would fit better . . . a couple of horn players, I’d really like to incorporate Daniel (Danny) Ray, whose dad played in a lot of big bands and a lot of jazz bands. Daniel Ray is a sax player and he plays for the New York Dolls and a bunch of other people. He’s a really well-known New York saxophone player. He’s a friend of mine well, a friend of my guitarist. And he was going to come down to the show and play with us, play for a couple of songs for the fuck of it. Which I thought would have been great because I’ve always been interested in the idea of incorporating horns just even just a 2 piece horn section sax and trumpet and incorporate them into the live show as well as the recording. The new stuff is going to have some horns woven into it. We did horns early on. But they was some samples from some of the soundtrack Breakfast at Tiffany’s. So I’d like to see more of that certainly. There are specific people that I can think of, but I have a couple of horn players in mind but I think it would be fantastic to have horns bolted in, because they can give such great punch, put them through some distortion boxes and they would DESTROY, but you could pop that stuff off and have a sax run nice and clean through the beginning of something, like “Vera Blue,” it would be great, be a heartbreaker. Kick ass. And I’d definitely be up for that.
This was a very interesting interview; some things were cut out due to relevance to "music". Call it my sense of "keeping it real" but I found a lot of it to be quite interesting/ entertaining and am posting an "unedited" copy of this here Chemlab Unfiltered. Included in the unedited version, are thoughts in relation to a post-apocalyptic world and how to be prepared for it. We also tackle the "word" "Angel-Dustrial" After the interview; there was of course a great show. Review of said show, and participating bands (included Chemlab, 16 Volt, Left Side Down, and Suicide Assyst) will be coming to you soon. It was a many varied theme on Industrial music, so be on the lookout. Questions or comments, good or bad, put them out there.
