Bert McCracken/The Used

The Used: Fuck You Cakes and French Movies
by JP [jp@slugmag.com]

Say what you will about Orem’s The Used, but I have a small place in my heart for the first local band I ever interviewed on air and the first rock band to really “make it big” outside this small bubble. Bert McCracken has also been known to call my work line when he’s in town and really, really drunk to talk about his life as a rockstar in Venice Beach, Calif. The last time we spoke, it was to reminisce about Asian massage parlors on Pico and Bundy (no shit). This time it was a bit more professional as Bert got away from the music and started dishing on his life outside of rock and roll.


“They’re called ‘Fuck you cakes,’” McCracken says, explaining a culinary creation he’s been working on lately. “It’s like this little kind of chocolate souffle that I’ve kind of perfected over the years.” That was just one of the many foods McCracken was crafting for a barbeque to celebrate getting home from Germany a few days ago. The rest of the meal, including some beer-battered shrimp and a pork butt he’s been roasting for tacos, shows McCracken’s recent fascination with food going in further directions. “There’s tons of chefs that I would love to cook with for sure. I’m really obsessed with new up and coming chefs––even old school established chefs. Mario Batali––I’d love to hang out with that dude in the kitchen all day. He’s one of the Iron Chefs. He’s a badass.” For somebody who has already met one of the kings of rock (remember that little TV show called The Osbournes featuring Ozzy as the Doddering Old Fool character?), it is apparently time for McCracken to work with luminaries from different disciplines.


I’ve never really asked McCracken about his take on that show and MTV in general. “Fuck MTV. I wish MTV would play music,” McCracken says in response. “I really have no regrets about my past or the way they tried to present me on the show. I met a girl who was cool and it became this really big blown-out-of-proportion thing. What can you do? They’ll do whatever they want to do,” McCracken says. As somebody who first watched that show solely to see MTV make McCracken fall on his face, I was surprised by his response. “We all have things in our past that aren’t the raddest things. I’m still good friends with her, she’s a really cool girl.” McCracken also adds that he thinks it was “pretty punk rock” the way his character was depicted on screen.


There does seem to be a disconnect between his on-stage character and the off-stage/screen representation, which McCracken acknowledges with a word about names. “All my friends call me Rob, my wife calls me Rob. I was in a punk band called I’m With Stupid. It was with a kid named Robby and he gave me the nickname Bert. I like it. It’s kinda the ‘crazy guy’ who’s on stage––not the guy who’s making ‘fuck you cakes’ in his kitchen.”

McCracken always waxes nostalgic about his time in Utah, if you can ask him about it during a moment of lucidity. He has this to say about why he left such a beautiful place: “I kept getting arrested in Utah. I figured instead of paying 15 grand for a lawyer for every time I got fucking busted, I’d come out here and not have to talk to any cops.” It seems to be working: No shocking headlines have followed McCracken since he moved to California, which you wouldn’t think coming from a guy who kept getting busted for “just driving around drunk with our guns and doing cocaine.” Utah County pigs just didn’t appreciate that, apparently.


If you’re curious about what McCracken thinks about this little publication he still has fond memories, “I remember almost the very first interview we ever did was with SLUG. We did a little photo shoot up in Salt Lake City. And all the banging punk records––like I heard about The Bronx first from SLUG and they’re fucking sick––one of my favorite bands.”


When he’s not reading SLUG, C.S. Lewis or the latest Chuck Palahniuk––“His new book Pygmy is off the hook”––McCracken is doing something else you might not think he enjoys. “I’m obsessed wtih foreign film. One of my favorite movies is this French movie called Irreversible. I saw it in a theater and half the theater walked out,” McCracken says––due to the 20 minute rape scene which McCracken actually used as a selling point for the film. He is also interested in, and already is, making his own cinematic work. “I guarantee within five years me and Quinn [Allman of The Used] will have made a movie.” That’s not the only project he’s envisioning though, “The Used is in pre-production for a short horror movie with Alec Gillis, who did all the special effects for Alien and Predator. It’s about a small concept we came up with,” McCracken says. A concept involving a bus gassing and a creepy basement where organs are harvested.


The Used will be coming back home very soon, and McCracken’s final words are meant for you, dear Used fan. “Some of the most hardcore Used fans are in Utah and I’d like to send all of the love in my heart. We’ll see you in Salt Lake in October.”


On Saturday, Sept. 5 The Used will do an in-store Graywhale in Orem at 1 p.m. and another at the Taylorsville location at 4 p.m. The band will play at The Great Saltair on October 10th.
Original Article Location: right here

Spinnerette's Brody Dalle: Changing in a Big Way
by JP [jp@slugmag.com]

Spinnerette’s first album opens with erraticly grunged-up guitar and the unmistakable voice of frontwoman Brody Dalle letting you know she’s just a “girl out looking for love.” Before you react with your preconceived notions about what that might mean––which a lot of people might do based on Dalle’s much-publicized makeout sesh with current husband Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age while she was still married to Rancid’s Tim Armstrong––she’s a lot more settled down than her lyrics and image might suggest.


A typical day with Dalle usually begins with the most unremarkable of homemaking tasks: preparing breakfast for her daughter, Camille, and a spot of tea for herself, “which is really Australian of me––still sticking to my roots,” Dalle says. Her day might then include talking shit and buying music for her daughter at Amoeba, her sister in tow, picking up a Go-Go’s record most recently––“I told my sister what dirty slutbags those girls are.” Dalle’s day usually concludes with some sort of exercise routine and might finish with a two-hour long hike in the hills around the Los Angeles area, “I’m a valley girl,” she hints as to where she might have been wandering. Quite a laid-back routine from the former leader of The Distillers and a lady sporting some fabulously ghetto tats––a “Fuck You” etched on her arm, for one.


When Dalle isn’t doing matronly things, she’s paying due diligence as a rockstar, performing with her band on The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien recently and filming music videos in the auteur Liam Lynch’s basement. Speaking of the video Lynch made for “Ghetto Love,” Dalle says, “It’s one take. I went over to his house––he’s also a valley girl. He had his camera and a green screen in his house cuz he’s always making crazy-ass movies and videos. He made this beauty light for me, handmade on a lazy susan. It was amazing. I was really impressed. He’s so creative. He’s a fucking genius.” Carousing with the comfortable and crazily creative must be a nice lifestyle for her, and Dalle concurs, “It’s great being friends, but if you can also do things together, it’s even better.”


The Australian-born singer, who still keeps her citizenship in case she needs to leave the US if “shit is getting nuts,” is working on being a bit more creative herself by dabbling in the videographic arts. “I want to make a documentary. I want to interview all the great women [of punk], like Patty Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Blondie, Tobi from Bikini Kill. I’d interview Courtney [Love]. I want to interview female musicians and female comedians because I think their plight has some kind of connectors there.” Dalle says. She’s apparently been in this creative frame for a while, starting with an interview she did with Janeane Garofalo in New York a few years ago. Asked if she used a cinematographer for the shots, or if she will, Dalle says, “I don’t think it’s too much brainwork––you set it up and let it run. I got this video camera in Japan and I still don’t know if I’m fucking using it right, you know. I think it’s one ‘On/Off’ button to me. The rest is all Chinese to me—or Japanese, in this case.” Dalle says of her proficiency with these sorts of things, “The guys used to call me ‘T.G.’: Technical genius. If things broke on the [tour] bus, I’d fix them.”

Dalle has always been DIY and fiercely independent, it seems, and that extends to her music as well. In fact, it’s best not to compare her work with her husband’s projects. “By no means am I going out of my way to sound like my husband’s band. That’s ludicrous and why the fuck would I do that, you know?” Dalle says, “It’s the sound of it. Those guys [Spinnerette/QOTSTA guitarist Alain Johannes and Homme] work in the studio together, so maybe they picked up some of the same techniques. And our latest song, “Baptized by Fire,” sounds nothing like Queens of the Stone Age. Nor does fucking “Spectral Suspension” or “Sex Bomb.” Maybe the dirtier grungier shit you could put in the same pocket, but it’s not the same. It’s not the same at all.”


Speaking of dissimilar things, Dalle is OK with bucking current trends in the industry. She is quite content being a harder-edged rocker and says, “You know, it’s better than being a folk singer anyday.” Continuing comments on the biz, she says, “It’s about time for some fucking rock n’ roll to come back. Everyone’s so complacent about music now. I think there’s about to be a whole bunch of stuff that we’ve been missing for quite some time. That’s the point––when something goes away, it’s like a necessity for the hole to be filled. All the record companies saying ‘You can’t sell rock’ is bullshit. It’s about to change,” Dalle says: “It’s about to change in a big, big way.” Dalle is one helping to change the scene while putting all your preconceived notions about her on their ear. “I liked when people gave a fuck. People are like, ‘Hey, chill out,’ and I’m like ‘No.’ I don’t like to stand by and let shit happen.”


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Last Tuesday was one of the best nights in recent memory to enjoy some supreme vocalizing. Paul Jacobsen and the Madison Arms, Oh My God and Cotton Jones all sang their souls out to a warm crowd at Salt Lake City Utah’s Kilby Court.


Paul Jacobsen & The Madison Arms


Jacobsen played some great tracks from his latest self titled album on Groundloop Records . Jacobsen’s voice perfectly meshed with those of his backing band, including producer Scott Wiley. The Madison Arms reached their tentacles of harmony into even the coldest heart on this nippy fall night and made me happily welcome great concerts from these groups yet to come.
Chicago’s Oh My God

Chicago’s Oh My God blew it the fuck up. This was their second time coming to Utah and it went much better than their last go round. Whatever venue they were at their last tour had an MC who referred to them as “Oh My Gosh.” I would hope he was joking but lead singer Billy O’Neil was being serious when he recounted the tale. The Oh My God crew had much better reception this time to a slightly miffed, but overall welcoming, Salt Lake City audience.


Oh My Gosh

O’Neil’s vocals are a great match for the energetic, hard–to–experimental music this group is known for. 10 years together and several albums later brings their latest release The Night Undoes The Work of The Day out September 29th on Split Red Records. This band is pretty hard to describe, listen to some of their myspace tracks to hear what I mean. I haven’t seen a stage show this lively at Kilby since I saw Electric Eel Shock (the Japanese metal band) in the early 2000s—one of my all time favorite performances at Kilby.
Oh My God Setlist

Cotton Jones played a great set coming off their set at Mammoth Fest last week. Michal Nau’s voice along with some great harmonizing friends did a really stellar job of recalling the South in our ears. Songs about West Virginia (right next to my home state of Virginia) like one Cotton Jones played Tuesday, always touch my partly southern heart and Nau’s and Whitney McGraw’s vocals conjured alt-country with real feeling not that trite bullshit we’re mostly tired of hearing by now.


Cotton Jones

Nau speaks it and lives it through his words—he appeared to have just finished up at the lumber mill and happened to mosey on into Kilby for a random set. A very unpretentious guy and gal playing genuinely earnest music made for a great nightcap. McGraw is very cute, so that doesn’t hurt either.


As a side note: O’Neil slipped me his latest solo work called Brave Last Days and it is really good stuff. The album deals with themes ranging from the death of a close friend of O’Neil’s to some really uplifting stuff like track two’s “Can’t Knock Me Down.” It will be available November 21st on the website.