Interview with Macie Schriner, Activist and Artist 8/27/08

Music Poetry Series, May 18 Henry Feinberg & Norene Cashen

MUSING
poetry and music café
Hosted by performance poet Ann Holdreith

This new and exciting venue brings together Detroit’s finest poets and musicians in creative collaboration.

Sunday, May 18
3 to 5 pm

Henry Feinberg
Versatile, creative composer and pianist,
classical to blues

Norene Cashen
beautiful, enigmatic, poetry with startling juxtapostions

OPEN MIC - POETS AND MUSICIANS WELCOME

Pure Concepts Center for Creative Expression
23023 Orchard Lake Rd, Bldg C
Farmington, 48336 (just north of Grand River on the west side)
Requested donation to cover expenses $3
248 583-7765

“The Third Sunday of Every Month”

Upcoming Features

June 15- Jere Stormer: charming, ecclectic mix of American roots music/Zilka Joseph: Indian roots poetry imbued with stunning, sensuous imagery
July 20 – Markita Moore: Progressive, jazz-tinged, soulful folk music Khalil: Incisive performance poet touching the core of dignity and love
August 17- Lauren Chasen(The Barefoot Poet): shades of vaudeville, cabaret, and 21st century poetry, vocals, movement

The Corpse Is Alive

Exquisite Corpse: A Journal of Letters and Life appears to be "alive" again. Find three poems here: http://www.corpse.org/content/view/103/1/

Interview with Alissa Ordabai, Writer & Rock Journalist 2/8/2008

Alissa Ordabai is a freelance music journalist living and working in London, UK. She prepared for her career by studying art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art, and later doing a post-graduate course in music and sound technology at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, also known as Paul McCartney's Fame School.

Having abandoned her one-time intention of becoming a copyright lawyer (despite graduating with a law degree from the University of London in 2006), she dedicates her time solely to writing. She travels extensively, one day interviewing an American band in New York City, the next day flying to Moscow for a rock magazine's staff meeting, and the next day returning to her hometown of London to catch an up-and-coming underground band at a local venue.

Classic rock is the main focus of her work right now, but she also enjoys writing about heavy metal and the unsigned UK rock scene. Her debut novel, Grapes from Thornbushes, is scheduled to be published in the summer of 2008.

Norene Cashen: Who was your first interview? When was it? What was it like?

Alissa Ordabai: The first interview I've done for the press was with an unsigned London band that at the time was touted as the next big thing. It was in September of 2006 and interviewing them turned out to be an odd experience. All they were prepared to give me were prefabricated catchphrases and rehearsed slogans about their general excellence and panty-melting appeal. I was very inexperienced at the time and didn’t know how to deal with someone who isn’t prepared to open up and be spontaneous. Looking back, I should have cut the interview short and walked out. A few weeks after the interview was published I read another interview given by this band to another magazine with entire paragraphs identical to those they have done with me. This band has actually taken time to memorise whole passages to quote to journalists. To me, it was a very cynical, very calculated but at the same time rather naive ploy, because eventually it backfired. You know that old saying about journalists, "Courting the press is like dining with a tiger. You may enjoy your meal, but the tiger always eats last."

Norene Cashen: What is a music journalist’s greatest contribution to the world at large?

Alissa Ordabai: Sometimes I really wonder if we are making any serious contribution at all. For those few who still do read the music press we should at least serve as consumer guides. Although these days even this basic function isn’t being carried out properly. All major music magazines are today influenced by the corporate business to such an extent that their opinions are if not completely ignored, then certainly taken with a pinch of salt. You'd hope that the independent music press, especially online mags, would offer a good alternative, but the majority of their writers are fans and hobbyists, and many are just as biased, either because being objective has never occurred to them, or simply because they favour musicians they know personally, people they go out drinking with. A lot of online music mags are simply fanzines masquerading as independent press.

That is not to say that music journalism can’t be an art form per se. Old masters like Chip Stern and Al Aronowitz have proven that it can be, and that a review can at times be just as good and just as artistically valid as the music. The problem with the new generation of music journalists is that they don’t read widely enough to know how to turn a piece of journalism into a work of art. Most of them don't even know this can be done at all because they have never read the classics. Forget Tolstoy and Faulkner, they've never read Lester Bangs. The end result is skillful but pedestrian writing at best, and at worst - hackwork by tone-deaf philistines who can't professionally explain or describe what they have heard, unfamiliar with the history, vocabulary and technology of music.


Norene Cashen: Who were some of your most memorable interviews?

Alissa Ordabai: There were two. One was with Aerosmith last year at the start of their first European tour in seven years. They were the first A-list band I got to interview and they blew me away not by graces and princely airs, but by their down-to-earth common sense, warmth and responsiveness. There was a lot of good sense and I'd say wisdom in how they listened to the questions, took time to think about them and then tried to answer them the best way possible.

The other interview I keep thinking back to was with Kerry King. He was just what you’d expect – a real tough cookie. A perfect gentleman, but someone who isn’t going to budge an inch unless he feels like it. The unusual thing about that interview was that we did it just after Slayer came off the stage after playing to a 20,000-strong crowd at a festival in Belgium last summer. He told me he's never done an interview after a show in his entire career. Always before. When the interview was over, I turned my Dictaphone off, and number 13 flashed on my screen. Apparently, he was the 13th person I interviewed with that machine. When I showed this to him, he said, “That’s how it should be. Thirteen is my number.”


Norene Cashen: Is there anything you learn or observe over and over again by interviewing rock stars?

Alissa Ordabai: Rock stars are so different. You’d never guess they are in the same “line of business”, so to say, if you were to put some of them in one room. You get visionaries, you get revolutionaries, you get technologists, anarchists, dandies, rednecks, aesthetes, rebels, mystics, anarchists... One thing I can tell you from my experience is that those who have really “made it” are all without exception relaxed, friendly people. I am yet to meet a crabby rock star. I guess success is the biggest mood enhancer there is.

Norene Cashen: What are your top ten personal favorite rock ‘n’ roll records of all time?

Alissa Ordabai: I was brought up on classic rock as a child, then in my early 20s I discovered blues, and in my late 20s - metal. My taste in music keeps developing, so I guess if you ask me this questions in two years time, this list would change. For now, though, here is my top 10.

Jimi Hendrix – Electric Ladyland
Metallica – Master of Puppets
Elvis Presley – Baby Let’s Play House
Led Zeppelin – Led Zeppelin IV
The Doors – The Doors
Janis Joplin - Pearl
Ratt - Invasion of Your Privacy
Jefferson Airplane – Surrealistic Pillow
Joe Satriani – Crystal Planet
The Rolling Stones – Aftermath


Norene Cashen: What do you wish you could help fans to understand about music, musicians, and the industry?

Alissa Ordabai: That's a difficult question because each person chooses to understand what they choose to understand, if you know what I mean. Sometimes I wish people, especially in Europe, realized that rock music can be as intelligent as classical music or jazz. But really complex, intelligent rock music hits the charts extremely rarely and, as a rule, remains relatively unknown.

The same is true about musicians. Commercial success or fame don't always reflect a person's worth as an artist. Like in any other artistic field, there are artists and there are craftsmen, there are musicians and there are players, there are chopsmen and there are people graced with a gift from above. And then there are those who are neither, but who still earn millions. To know which is which you have to educate yourself, and by that I don't mean getting a music degree, but at least spending a couple of years of listening to different genres of music. And, I guess, you have to have some talent too. You do need talent to understand certain things. It's nice when your writing inspires people to pick up a record they otherwise wouldn't buy, but I'm not going to bend over backwards to persuade a Bon Jovi fan to go out and buy a John McLaughlin CD. You can lead someone to water, but you can't make them drink it. Sadly, these days the record industry has a virtual monopoly on influencing the taste of the general public. It works through advertising, through radioplay, through coverage in the corporate media... And as we all know, what the industry promotes is not always worth listening to. Just like any other business, the record industry concerns itself solely with sales and with profit. And there is no compulsory link between sales and artistic merit. Occasionally they do coincide, but just as often as the do, they don't. That, I guess, is the main thing there to know about this business.


Norene Cashen: Do any music magazines strive to be honest and unbiased? Is that possible?

Alissa Ordabai: The music press has undergone huge changes within the last 20 years. You don’t open Rolling Stone or Kerrang these days to find out if the new release by an A-list act is worth buying. You open these highly esteemed magazines to find out when the album is coming out, which cities the tour will cover and which rock star is divorcing / courting / cheating on which Hollywood starlet. Glowing reviews are automatically given to all well-selling acts. Unsigned bands are barely mentioned. All major rock magazines these days are simply extensions of certain bands' PR agencies. They are there as a source of information, not critique.

The independent press, on the other hand, while making an earnest effort to put forward unbiased views, can, sadly, be just as partial, but in their own small-potatoes way. A lot of them are dedicated to one specific genre - say, glam metal, or punk, or whatever, so they pedal those bands, giving ten stars indiscriminately to all releases as long as they fit the genre, because people who write for those mags are fans, not journalists. Or sometimes you get one or two people running a mag about their local scene, they try to be objective at first, but then gradually they get to know the musicians they are writing about, and end up being buddies or whatever else with them, and finally turn their mag into a kind of PR agency for those bands, thus losing any credibility they may have had in the beginning.

That is not to say that there aren't any truly objective, truly independent magazines, there are some, but the majority are either so badly written they are unreadable, or they are so blatantly pedalling the acts on their favourites list that you simply don't trust their opinion. In that sense, there's little difference between independent mags and corporate publications, it's just that the latter have bigger budgets, better writers and better access.


Norene Cashen: Is there a real difference between music journalism from Europe and the US? If so, what is it?

Alissa Ordabai: First off, the quality of writing has traditionally been a great deal better in the US. The reason for this is the difference in the general attitude within the society towards rock music in the States and in Britain. In the States rock music is a part of the national culture, respected, loved and valued by all social classes enough to encourage serious writers to engage in it without being ridiculed by their colleagues. In Britain they still view rock music with suspicion, the general opinion is that it's the music for underachievers, and a promising young writer wanting to forge a serious career would rather write for an art magazine or a design magazine, or even a high-end fashion magazine, whatever, rather than for a rock publication.

Norene Cashen: I think I read that you were working on a book? Do you care to give details about it?

Alissa Ordabai: Well, it's a kind of book that is meant to be read only once, it is certainly not another "War and Peace" or "The Great Gatsby", haha! I'm very aware of that, but I'm still having enormous fun writing it. It's about a young musician struggling on the unsigned London rock scene, and in a wider sense it's about artistic striving, rivalry, snobbery and passions that go with creative ambition. It's also about how such values as loyalty, friendship, and love become compromised in the process of getting somewhere in the music business. In my line of work I observe these people every day. I interviewed them, I photographed them, I played music with them, I gave them shelter, I fed them, I encouraged them, I introduced them to record labels, I've had tiffs with them, I gave them advice, the only thing I've never done is sleeping or falling in love with any of them, haha! Which, looking back, I'm really pleased about, because if I had done, that would have tied me down to this scene. It's a fascinating, murky, crazy, poverty-stricken underbelly of show business where for most people their dreams will never come true, but I still felt that it deserved its own book. The novel's working title is "Grapes from Thornbushes". It is scheduled to be published in June, and I'm putting finishing touches to it as we speak.

Norene Cashen: You noted on your myspace page that you like vintage porn? What do you like about it, and what would you recommend to others?

Alissa Ordabai: Haha! The internet - the perfect medium for spreading rumours! Being a journalist I'm out and about quite a lot - I go to gigs, art shows, theatre performances, fashion shows, comedy clubs, strip joints (one of my best friends is a stripper), and I read dozens of magazines every month - music mags, fashion mags, architecture mags, gardening mags, art mags, porn mags, you name it. So I'm always naturally aware of all trends, what goes up and what goes down, so to speak. So back in December I posted this entry in my online blog about the trends I knew were on the up as well as going down in the UK. This wasn't about my personal preferences, rather a kind of digest of popular culture at that point in time. And yes, vintage porn, and specifically Vanessa de Rio are, apparently, on the up now. A box set of her films has recently been released, so now there is a resurgence of an interest in vintage porn, at least in the UK.

That is not to say that I'm not into porn. Of course I am! I'm a rock chick, my fiancé is a rock musician, and I've been spending all my time around rockers since I was 17 - first playing in bands, then writing about music. And so far I am yet to meet a rocker who isn't into porn. Porn, just like rock'n'roll, is liberating. It's about embracing the fact that we are all sexual creatures, not being ashamed of the fact that all humans are both god-like and animal-like. This is why I think Jimi Hendrix was the best musician rock has ever produced - he embraced both the cerebral and visceral aspects of our being and fused them in an awesome depiction of human nature, which was as truthful as it was beautiful. Wow, I've just reconsidered this last sentence... Aren't music writers pretentious pompous prats at times?

Interview with Peter Murphy, Novelist 1/26/2008

Peter Murphy is a writer and journalist based in Dublin. His first novel, John the Revelator, will be published by Faber & Faber/Harcourt Books in early 2009. Murphy is a senior writer for Dublin’s Hot Press magazine, and he’s contributed articles to Rolling Stone, Music Week, and other publications.

In 2000, Greil Marcus called Murphy’s “The Man Who Built the Old Weird America” article for Hot Press “amazing – sophisticated, clear, enormously gratifying, intense, complete, and full of references to stuff I’ve never heard and now must.” Murphy’s article, “Lost in Transmutation,” based on his interview with Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, appeared in Hot Press in 2004. It was the first interview Shields had granted in over a decade.

Murphy has been a guest panelist and consultant, lending his insights on various aspects of music and culture in the worlds of academia, entertainment, and journalism. His journalistic collaborations with the controversial author, J.T. LeRoy (a pseudonym for Laura Albert), led Albert to comment, “Peter spits, and it comes out a rainbow.”

He’s written liner notes for A Tribute to Killdozer (2006); Garbage’s best of collection, Absolute Garbage (2007); and the forthcoming remastered edition of the Anthology of American Folk Music.
Murphy’s comments on music, literature, culture, and the arts are regularly featured on RTE Television’s arts program, The View, and Phantom Radio’s arts and culture program, The Kiosk, in Dublin.

Norene Cashen: You have your first novel, John the Revelator, coming out on Harcourt/Faber & Faber in 2009. How long did it take you to write it, and what was the process like?

Peter Murphy: John the Revelator has its roots in a story I wrote in 2002/2003, a sort of rural noir tale called Scalder. That book died a natural death after the first draft, but it did have a character I wasn’t done with, and I decided to give him his own story. It was a bit like growing an embryo from the DNA swab of a cadaver.
J the R itself was about a four-year process all told, the first couple of which were spent groping around trying to find the narrative voice and the story. There are only a few fragments in the final draft that predate 2005. The process was pretty all consuming I have to say. Language makes you humble.

Norene Cashen: Where were you born, and what was your childhood like?

Peter Murphy: I grew up in a town called Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, in the south east of Ireland, pop 7000 or so. I call it the Deep South East. It was paradisiacal in summer, kind of creepy in winter. Good fodder for the imagination. I wandered around the fields a lot pretending I was a dinosaur hunter or a Martian colonist. My mother got rid of the television set when I was nine, so I spent all my time playing records or reading books and comics. I loved the old fleapit of a cinema. There was a late show every Saturday night. That’s where I saw Mad Max and Videodrome and Blade Runner and even a re-run of Easy Rider in the early 80s.

Norene Cashen: How is your own childhood reflected in this book?

Peter Murphy: It’s refracted rather than reflected, I’d say. The landscape was a big part of the book, the idea of psycho-geography, the importance of place as character. Nature was important too, and local mythology. I suppose part of the urge to tell the story was to set down my own subjective childhood distortion of reality. I love the way Terry Gilliam and Guillermo Del Toro and Tim Burton all have a hyper-stylised vision of the world in their films. It’s not real, but it’s real to them.

Norene Cashen: You’re a respected arts and culture journalist in Ireland. How has your experience as a journalist affected your desire to write fiction and your approach?

Peter Murphy: Well, saying you’re a respected journalist is a bit like saying you’re a respected grave-robber. Strangely enough, because a lot of my job meant I was busy covering current stuff, I didn’t really want to write some hip, of-the-moment novel full of pop culture references. I wanted to try and create a world that existed a little bit apart from reality. But journalism did expose me to an awful lot of stuff I would never have discovered otherwise. And it was a real privilege to interview people like Alan Moore and Nick Cave and William Gibson.

Norene Cashen: In your opinion, what are the five most important modern novels, and why?

Peter Murphy: Riddley Walker - Russell Hoban
It’s not an easy read, but it’s incredibly moving, and Riddley’s is one of the most powerful narrative voices I’ve ever come across. It’s set in the south-east of England hundreds of years after a nuclear holocaust, when society has devolved into medievalism, and the tribes try to piece together a mythology of their past (our present) through excavated fragments, bits of race memory, stories passed down in the oral tradition.

Blood Meridian – Cormac McCarthy
Some of the sentences feel like they’ve been chiseled out of rock. Nightmarish, hardcore stuff.

The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon – Tom Spanbauer
I came to this by way of JT LeRoy’s Sarah. It’s about a bisexual half-breed boy prostitute in the 19th century frontier West, a berdache on a vision quest for his father. The combination of traditional storytelling and characters that wouldn’t be out of place in a Gus van Sant film blew me away.

Jesus’ Son – Denis Johnson
It’s the perfect fusion of prose and poetry. You just can’t figure out how he does it. The opening ‘Car Crash While Hitchhiking’ section is stunning.

The Butcher Boy – Pat McCabe
Because it did for modern Irish fiction what Never Mind The Bollocks did for music.

Norene Cashen: You’ve spent a lot of time interviewing writers, musicians, public figures, and artists of all kinds. How do you feel about being the interviewee?

Peter Murphy: Really weird. But once I get going, you can’t shut me up.

Norene Cashen: You tend to write in the early morning hours. What is your mind like at that time of day, and why is it easier to write then?

Peter Murphy: Well, there really isn’t much else to do. Writing is a sort of meditation, and I think you need silence and solitude so you can hear and transcribe the sort of interior babble that starts up in your head when it’s going good. Some mornings nothing comes, but that’s okay so long as you show up for duty. Maybe there’s something about that hour of the morning when you’re still damp from the residue of the dream stuff: it’s a kind of liminal space.
I got into this habit in my 30s when I experienced what I call The Claw Of Death – you wake up in the small hours with this awful mortal fear that you haven’t achieved anything, and you’ll die an abject failure. Now I’m no good to anyone unless I’ve had a couple of hours to myself first thing. I get grumpy if I sleep late.

Norene Cashen: When did you first recognize your own writing ability? Who or what encouraged you to follow this path?

Peter Murphy: I remember I was about four or five years old, lying on my belly in the living room, scrawling random combinations of letters on a sheet of paper. My big brother John stood over me and said, ‘You’ve written a word. See? It says F-R-O-G.’

Norene Cashen: Is this the novel you thought you’d write at the outset, or did it take on a life of its own?

Peter Murphy: It’s not the book I thought I’d write at all. It migrated through a few incarnations. I fell in love with the title John The Revelator when I saw it on the sleeve of the Harry Smith Anthology, and the Blind Willie Johnson recording is unbelievable. Initially the book was about an apocalypse-bothered hermit telling his story in flashback, typical southern gothic archetype – a lot of long sentences and big words, no story. Then I helped put together a writer’s group with some friends of mine, Sean Murray, Jane Ruffino and Nadine O’Regan, and in the process of workshopping chapters, they all lit on the character of John’s mother. After that, the story seemed to take on its own momentum and made its own demands: simpler language, linear structure and a lot of the flavour of where I grew up. Which reminded me of Flannery O’ Connor’s stories and Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury and Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb.

Norene Cashen: How do you spend your time when you are not working on future books and journalism?

Peter Murphy: I spend time with my daughters. Attend to correspondence. Walk. Read. Watch films. Meet up with friends for a drink every couple of weekends. Simple stuff. I like the simple stuff.

Interview With Taurus Burns, Painter, 1/3/2008

Taurus Burns is a painter, profound thinker, and muralist. His work is a sort of dream series of people, souls, and the shadows they cast on the earth. He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan in 1974. He grew up in Kentucky, Germany, Virginia, and North Carolina, but returned to his birthplace in 1986. Taurus currently lives and creates in Detroit, where he attended art school.

Norene Cashen: The first time you recall creating a piece of visual art, what was it and when?

Taurus Burns: In an art class in 4th grade, the teacher asked us to draw a landscape that had a road that went off into the distance. So I drew a mountain on a horizon, with a road that went over hills as it went towards the mountains. I went a step further and added a fence that followed along the road, and made the posts smaller as the fence receded into the distance. The teacher was so impressed by that… she made a big whoop about it to the class. I had no idea I’d done anything special, but her response made me feel special. I think I had been making art before that, but it never seemed like a big deal until that moment.

Norene Cashen: Do you listen to music when you are painting? What do you listen to, and how does it affect your work?

Taurus Burns: Yes, I set a playlist with a broad range of music to listen to while I’m painting. I enjoy hearing different genres fade into each other… I like to think that this reflects the way I view the world, one group bleeding into and spicing up the next. I like music that comes out of the city, out of urban experiences. And sometimes I imagine the songs I’m listening to are soundtracks for what I’m painting.

Norene Cashen: You recently did a series of portraits, and some had a fantasy, surreal quality to them. Who are the subjects of those portraits?

Taurus Burns: When I started painting that series I had a desire to paint the portraits I was seeing while I was working at the Detroit Institute of Arts. During the day I’d take a mental snapshot of different faces in paintings that I liked, and then I’d go home and paint them that night. I started to include other people that I was seeing throughout the day… coworkers, strangers on the bus. Some times I would try to paint their likeness; other times I would try to imagine what they were feeling or project my feelings into their image and let that take precedence over likeness. After a while I started making faces that reflected what I was feeling that day. I also started to paint people that I admired… healers, authors of books I was reading. I went back and forth doing objective and subjective portraits, trying to get a sense of my self in relation to people in my world both near and far.

Norene Cashen: Whose writing about visual art has been most influential for you?

Taurus Burns: My default answer to that for years has been the Bay Area Painters. I fell in love with their paintings, their ideas about figurative art, and their mission to build bridges between paint and life. Honestly though, I feel a bit out of the loop on current visual art writing. The most influential book for me in the past 2 years isn’t specifically about visual art but about tapping into one’s creative process- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron. My favorite spot for visual art criticism/dialogue is a blog that I read frequently that comes out of New York City, PaintersNYC- definitely the best dialogue on art I’ve encountered.

Norene Cashen: You've lived in many places. Will you stay in Detroit, and why do you choose to be here now?

Taurus Burns: I never would have thought I’d be living in Detroit for this long. I used to think this was the most depressing city when I would come here for raves back in 1995-96. I moved to Detroit in 1998 to attend art school and when I graduated in 2002, I still had no love for Detroit. I thought I needed to go where all the young promising artists go, New York or LA. But, at that time I was struggling with my choice to be an artist. My daughter was born in 2001, and when I got out of school I felt the weight of responsibility challenging my artist dreams. At that time I was pretty naïve about the relationship between my art and my life. I thought being an artist meant living a bohemian, drug riddled, reckless lifestyle, and I found out the hard way that’s just not me.

So I’m still in Detroit, working off my debts and working on my karma. Sometimes I think my art would do better if I lived in a city that was more supportive of the arts. But I don’t dwell on those thoughts. If I was living in any other city I’d be doing the same thing I’m doing right now- painting as often as possible. And really I feel like I’m having a great experience as an artist in Detroit. I get a lot of love for my creative work and once in a while great opportunities present themselves that challenge my talent and artistic maturity. I like seeing Detroit find its legs and the art scene has gotten really interesting in recent years. I’ve met so many people in Detroit who I admire. I enjoy being a part of this community… Detroit has really grown on me.

Norene Cashen: Some thoughts about the renovations at the DIA?

Taurus Burns: My memories of the DIA before the renovation are hazy (what the hell was that rainbow tunnel?), but I do remember the layout of the art was a bit jarring, like I’d be looking at the Nut Gatherers and turn a corner and get hit over the head by Naim Joon Paik’s wall of televisions. So I think the art flows better from one section of the museum to the other. And personally I like all the didactics and extra information about the art; it enhances my understanding of the work. The DIA’s collection is really quite amazing.

Norene Cashen: We're mutual fans of each other's work. For you, what is the connection between poetry and painting?

Taurus Burns: Both affirm/reveal/validate the soul. Recently at one of your readings, you read the first lines from your poem titled "True."

There’s a war in my mouth
Between speech and silence

I felt like crying out Hallelujah! Instead I kept my mouth shut and smiled as I allowed myself to feel the warmth that came quivering through my torso.

Norene Cashen: Name five young visual artists in Detroit that we should all get out to see.

Taurus Burns: Nick Jones, Kathy Liesen, Mark Sengbush, Ben Kiehl, and yours truly.

Norene Cashen: Where can people see your work in the next few months?

Taurus Burns: Two shows in one night! The Gods must be crazy.
January 10- A group show- “Detroit Realism” at Marygrove College 4:30-6:30
AND
a Solo show at Sense Interior Design Studio in Ferndale 6:30-9:30. I’ll be at both, answering questions and giving out free smiles. Hope to see you there!

Norene Cashen: War, what's it good for?

Taurus Burns: I’ve been wondering just that since my Dad had me watch Apocalypse Now with him when I was ten. He believed he might have to go to war some day and wanted me to know what it might be like. After that I believed war was a lot like hell and wondered why anyone in their right mind would voluntarily choose to go there. As I’ve gotten older I’ve heard many reasons justifying war, but none of them have changed my opinion of it.

Interview With Jimmy Doom, Almighty Lumberjack of Death, 12/14/2007

Jimmy Doom was born in New York City, raised in Detroit, and never grew up. He attended an all-boys’ Catholic High School where he was cloistered with a bunch of swingin' dick dorks dreamin' of accounting careers. Jimmy often dreamed of being the next Joe Strummer. Instead, he ended up writing poetry, doing spoken word readings, watching an insane amount of sports, and playing disc golf like one of Jerry's Kids. He may be most well known as the raucous frontman for the punk band, The Almighty Lumberjacks of Death.


Norene Cashen: Tell me what's on that CD of yours and how folks can buy it.


Jimmy Doom: Love poems inspired by The Meatmen, tales of orgasmic greatness and woe, and drinking paeans inspired by the Sumatrans by way of Shane MacGowan. Available at www.interpunk.com, Gusoline Alley in Royal Oak, and Noir Leather in Royal Oak, right next to the herbal erectile dysfunction remedies.

Norene Cashen: Who's the smartest living performer in comedy today?

Jimmy Doom: Dennis Miller may be the smartest, if comedy fans relied on Wonderlic tests. Doug Stanhope is the most honest, which isn't always smart, but I respect honesty as much, if not more so than brains.

Norene Cashen: Any upcoming Jimmy Doom appearances?

Jimmy Doom: The only scheduled stuff right now is the first Sunday of January at Gusoline Alley and I'll get back to you on the exact date of a Flint Appearance the next weekend at the Corunna Road Bar. Great fucking venue (if you're me).

Norene Cashen: What does it mean to be punk rock right now?

Jimmy Doom: Apparently it means rearrange Blink 182 songs and make a buttload of money. What does it really mean, and has always meant? Try your ass off not to acquiesce to bullshit you don't believe in and create your own value system.If the Amish allow their kids a time of emancipation to decide if they wanna follow the flock or not, it can't be that difficult. If ya like the flock, stick with it. I don't wanna abandon my beer to carry your sorry bleeding ass out of the pit anyway. But I will, because that's part of my value system.

Norene Cashen: War, what's it good for?

Jimmy Doom: Profit. But we wouldn't feel that way if Hitler was still alive and painting.

Norene Cashen: Finish this sentence. If Joe Strummer were here...

Jimmy Doom: He'd still remember me going apeshit at the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductions, and he'd probably be slightly pissed at his wife for selling some songs to corporations. Did ya listen to Koka Kola, Mrs. Strummer?

Norene Cashen: If you were the Internet porn editor, what changes might you make?

Jimmy Doom: If I was THE editor, I'd be a busy, wealthy motherfucker. But what would I change? NO photoshop, no writing banal captions for models who didn't say that shit and probably wouldn't, and I'd let my intern edit the "hirsute women" stuff. Not my cup of hair.

Norene Cashen: The best book you read in 2007?

Jimmy Doom: Love in The Driest Season was great, though I had some misgivings about some of Neely Tucker's assertions. At the risk of being immediately hired by Hallmark, I spent much of the year rereading some of my old favorites to my girlfriend.


Norene Cashen: Spoken word and poetry... What's the difference?

Jimmy Doom: The difference between a singer and a vocalist/frontman. If you say you're a singer, you need to hit the notes, tell me why you hit the notes and why you hit them then. A vocalist is just the guy with the mic and the ego. A spoken word performer just talks and tries to get his point across and hopefully makes it interesting or entertaining.Any poetry from me, live, is usually coincidental. I made the mistake of referring to myself as a spoken word "artist" in an interview and got a poorly wrought diatribe from an acquaintance, explaining to me the meaning of art and comparing me to human excrement.I was gracious in my retort, with the exception of the words "bloated" and "whore." I try to refrain from referring to myself as a poet.

Norene Cashen: Why don't you do more journalism stuff?

Jimmy Doom: McDonald's pays better than some certain local publications, and I get such a feeling of being part of a team when I put on my uniform and drive-thru headset everyday. I'm not glossy and Tag-Heuer enough for other publications. Anyone in between can email me.

Bonus Question: Do you still have that scary hot tub in your backyard?

Jimmy Doom: The hot tub is gone, the backyard is still somewhat scary and on the market.