Jocko Weyland is a writer, an artist, a skateboarder, an observer, and even an anthropologist of sorts. His documents are experiences in raw form and he is very aware of how a product can create a myth or mislead an audience. Honesty in this day and age seems more akin to an 8-track tape than a responsibility, but Jocko thinks about what he is doing and keeps it simple and true. Today Your Love, Tomorrow the World is a two-person exhibition featuring photographs by Jocko Weyland and prints by Thurston Moore is now on view at KS Gallery in Manhattan.
BM: What are you working on?
Jocko Weyland: I have been writing this piece about all these bands getting back together and "What the fuck is up with that?" I didn’t really mean to, but now half of it is about Mission of Burma. I used them as an example because they played in 2002. They hadn’t played in twelve years and they got back together and played, and well, it was kinda great, but it was also sort of totally wrong. It was totally missing something. They were trying to recreate this thing cannot be recreated.
BM: The Dicks just did a reunion show at a memorial service for Randy Turner last week. It seemed less about an attempt to recreate something and more a gesture towards acknowledging a friend who has passed...In that the energy is there because the bands intent is directed towards something very close to them and way beyond a vanity call.
JW: The stuff I am talking about is like when Black Flag did that thing with (Mike) Vallely or the Dead Kennedys had the guy from Dr. Know singing.
BM: The Dead Kennedys did?
JW: Yeah, they played in Brooklyn a few years ago. It was like the three original dudes, East Bay Ray, Klaus, and DH Peligro and then this guy Brandon who had been on a TV show when he was a kid. You know it's like the Pixies, etc. It's like they are cover bands now covering themselves.
BM: I heard the Pixies shows were really good.
JW: I am sure they were, but the thing I was writing about…I have to get more specific about what I am trying to say. It’s still in the drafting stages… So here is a draft where I type it out and its super raw. I print it, then write over it and re-type that and then repeat it all until I am happy with it.
BM: Do you save those?
JW: No. Once I have finished the fourth or fifth draft I throw ‘em away.
BM: What is your reason for using the word "dead" in your working titles?
JW: It started from this friend of mine saying, "I don’t get all these 'dead guy' bands…" It is still loose, and the more I work through it I'll figure out what it's much more specifically about. It amazes me that the irony of it is lost on people. These bands would have hated themselves for doing this.
BM: It's common for people to evolve into what they despise.
JW: Yeah, this is a perfect example. These hardcore and punk bands were so much about being against bands who had been around for a long period of time and were artistically bankrupt, but now they’re exactly that. They’re just revival acts.
BM: Punk and hardcore used to make fun of the whole John Wayne/American cowboy image and now it is actually accepted and revered.
JW: Things evolve and distort and I am not arguing that it shouldn’t have changed. The point is that it couldn’t have stayed vibrant -- It was too a short period. And to try to pretend that the music has the same impact now as it did when it was new is just off the mark. I can understand that a lot of these people want to make some money and this is a way of connecting with their past. But at the same time they are taking away from what they did in the first place.
BM: Are the photos you shot of old punk and hardcore record covers in this show like revivalism?
JW: The photos are an homage to that period of time, but it is very specific to putting the photos in the context of their time and place. In the photos you see how much the records were handled and possibly how special they were. It is understood that it was a time that has passed and is now history at this point. I am trying to really highlight how new and exciting it all was. Different. It was art and music that was out of the ordinary, whereas these bands (that are getting back together) are not doing that. They are trying to re-create something that was...but is definitely not here now.
BM: What do you think about bands whose careers have not ended but continue to keep playing their old songs?
JW: At least they just keep going. Bands like The Cramps or The Ramones were not in fashion -- they just kept at it. Or like The-EX from Holland. I am being more specific in regard to these hardcore bands who had this implied attitude or philosophy that they were making music that was not stale, and they were against anything becoming institutionalized or entrenched. Doing what they are doing now (reviving themselves) is totally the definition of stale.
BM: Hardcore bands imposed an expiration date on themselves by having this philosophy.
JW: That’s one way of looking at it. I don’t want to get too harsh about it. I mean, they made this music and they can do whatever they want with it. It’s not so much about them getting back together, but more this whole sort of self-delusion of getting everybody involved and thinking it will be as good as it originally was. The songs might be as good as they were in and of themselves, and the actual experience can be good, but it is missing this huge element which was that at time there weren’t that many people into it and a show cost five dollars, not $45 or whatever. And there were people collectively involved in this brand new thing. At least for the first few years.
BM: When I think of "collective" in those terms, an element of awareness is implied, and some people who were involved in these scenes were completely unaware this kind of music was going on in other parts of the country.
JW: There was this idea of, “We’re into this because it’s not that.” It’s not this boring thing on the radio being force-fed to you. These pictures have to do with a time period when things weren’t so readily available. Now you can go, “Hmm…I wanna hear about this band and just I’ll log-on to the Internet and ta-dah!” That’s why those records are so important and why I photographed them in this fetish-like kind of way. Because to get those records when they were initially released was really difficult. This stuff just wasn’t easy for anyone to access no matter how hard they looked. I want to celebrate this thing and what it meant to me, as well as just what it was, but I am sort of down on what it has become. Disappointment fuels a lot of these images. I realize that it’s kinda ridiculous and I shouldn’t care that much about this and putting these people [and bands] up on a pedestal. In this, I kinda realize how isolated and idealistic I was. I thought these people were so much better than that.
BM: They presented this ideal!
JW: Yeah. I talk a lot about this in The Answer Is Never. The whole book is about that. A lot of the book is around first few years before I moved to California. I didn’t really have any contact with these people and I took them for their word. Through their records I thought that this was how they really were. In some cases that was true, but I ascribed these high moral grounds, which is ridiculous. But they were saying this shit and I took it at face value. Anarchist communes and the sort were really idealistic (laughs). But I think if I was in LA or Boston or New York I might have had a better idea about the facts.
BM: The product presents a myth.
JW: Yeah, and I was really isolated so the effect was even greater.
BM: Why did you choose to crop the images instead of simply showing the record covers as a piece of anthropology? Like how each page in your 'zine is a complete presentation of just what it is.
JW: Elk ‘zine is more of a like here’s this one thing on its own and I am putting in this conversation piece with other images in a certain order but I am not trying to transform it. I found this picture and I am presenting it how I found it. There have been a couple shows featuring record covers. This guy Bob Nickas did a show a long time ago in the back room at Andrea Rosen of all The Fall record covers and Carlo McCormick did this huge show at Exit Art like five years ago called The LP Show and it totally freaked me out ‘cause it was right around the time I got this idea to take these photos. That was a great show. It was like thousands of record covers. The main thing to remember is these are photographs of an object. The creases and wear and tear are visible. The lighting is not perfect.
BM: What was the first record you bought?
JW: My sister had Bowie, Eno and Lou Reed records. I had a Stranglers tape. The first record I bought was The Clash’s Black Market Clash record. That was the first one I bought with my own money. Then I bought the Sex Pistols “Never Mind…” and “Fresh Fruit...” by the Dead Kennedys. I bought the first "Rodney on the ROQ" compilation and all of the sudden I had 24 different bands that I had no idea even existed! This compilation I bought called, “Let Them Eat Jellybeans” had this great poster with a list of all these bands. I had already seen Black Flag in Action Now magazine and heard the Dead Kennedys but all the other groups like Flipper, etc. I had never heard. The record came with this poster along with it with huge list of bands who weren’t even on the record. I was like “Whoa, all this exists?” And it wasn’t just hardcore bands. The Necros were right next to 100 Flowers who were more of a garage-type band, next to Johanna Went, who was this insane performance artist.
BM: Where you ever in a band?
JW: When I Lived in Hawaii I was in a band called Scarred for Life. Then I moved to California and they continued and evolved into a metal band.
BM: Did you stop following music in the 90s after dropping all of your records at your aunt’s house?
JW: Yeah, for the most part. I mean, when I lived in LA for a bit and went to see L7 intermittently and saw Nirvana right around when Bleach came out, and TAD, but other than that I stopped going to shows. Part of it had to do with getting older and I had become immersed in other things and by that time I had seen so many bands that it became less exciting. The whole indie rock thing just passed me by. I got more interested in art and writing.
BM: Did you stop thinking about those records? Does that era of music now seem like a chapter in your life that has come to pass?
JW: Yeah. I started viewing it as, like I am sure a lot of people do, "Whoa, this thing was so important to me and I am not sure what to think about that." I talk about this in the thing I am writing on Mission of Burma…. At that time nobody fucking cared about them. After they broke up there was like a fifteen-year period where nobody, or very few people, talked about them.
BM: They were relatively obscure then.
JW: Yeah that’s the whole thing. The weird thing is when they made a come back and everybody was talking about how great they were. And it's like, “Wait a second,” because you obviously didn’t think that back then, or weren’t even aware of the band then.
BM: It’s normal within our culture to do this, but what about how the 80s are so praised now? So in fashion? And how it’s all lumped together?
JW: I think a lot of those people actually did not live through that. Because if you were someone who was informed by hardcore or punk music and grew up in that era; the 80s sucked. It was a whole different world.
BM: Was there more cultural dialogue going on?
JW: Yeah. I think the left was much stronger at that time, whereas now it is not as present in politics.
BM: Did it have to do with the current political climate?
JW: The 80s was a very politicized, period. Reagan was in office, everybody was freaking out, the world was going to end. People forget all of the shit that came with that. There were all these riots in England and Berlin when Regan was in office. That was a pretty big deal. There are theories that ‘avant garde’ art comes out of an oppressive political climate – when things are really bad and people have more extreme reactions to it.
BM: Was hardcore a reaction to politics or something else?
JW: Maybe viewing it without too much meaning. It was for me.
BM: Because punk was very much a political reaction.
JW: Yeah. It’s so confusing. There were The Ramones, who were not political, and they went to England and this is simplifying it, but, Johnny Rotten saw the Ramones and was like, "Hey, I can start band too…” The Sex Pistols had much more of a political element than The Ramones because there was a really bad economic situation in England. American hardcore was more about teenage boredom and WWhoa…Hey, Reagan sucks too!"
BM: It seems like the Reagan element came later.
JW: Well, you could say hardcore started a little earlier. Hardcore could have happened either way. I swear, Reagan was the best thing for it.
BM: What about Bush?
JW: You could argue that the time period now is just as bad, but the difference between now and then is that hardcore then was new. Bands getting back together now is not some explosion of radical new ways of self-expression. It is an entrenchment of old ways with all these bands that are incorporating hardcore music from the 80s. I am sure there are instances where something honest has come out of this revival, but for the most part it’s just the recycling of something that has already been done. It’s a cliché. I hope there is something cool coming out of all this music right now, but I don’t thing it’s comparable to that time period. You had all these people who took this completely non-musical approach to it. There was a real sense of freedom. In the Minutemen documentary, We Jam Econo, Mike Watt talks about not tuning their instruments a certain way as a political statement. That sums it up. What people were doing, either on the surface or underneath the surface, was a purposeful inversion of what was accepted. It was like they were trying to find ways to do the exact opposite of what was norm. You cannot say that about now. What people are doing now is not in opposition to anything and is much more of a messy huge kind of stew.
BM: What was your first show?
JW: Hüsker Dü, at the Roxy in Austin, Texas. They were a big letdown. Something about it didn’t feel right. It just sounded bad. There were like eight people there. It was a weeknight. I didn’t like the way they looked. Their drummer looked kinda dingy and gross…
BM: This is really discrediting...Telling me about these hardcore bands. Like, “Oh you guys gotta dress a certain way and look the part.”
JW: (laughs) Yeah I am just being honest. I can’t help it. But like a few days later I saw the Circle Jerks, Channel 3, The Big Boys which was amazing. Yeah, the funny thing is, I could appreciate them and at that age I was totally into not dressing this punk rock way. I just liked jeans and flannels, but Hüsker Dü were so slovenly it just freaked me out. I didn't mind the way the Circle Jerks or the Big Boys looked and they weren't slovenly. To repeat: Grant Hart was gross.
BM: Had you heard the Circle Jerks before seeing them?
JW: I had heard one or two songs. And I listened to an entire Big Boys record for a week straight before that. But that show was an entirely different thing.
BM: Was the myth dispelled after seeing them live?
JW: No, it actually lived up to expectations because they weren’t big rock stars. Everybody got onstage, and it wasn’t like they were special at all. Which was my idea of it. It totally lived up to expectations. They were great and it was this exciting intense experience. They were just these guys that played this music.
BM: Approaching these records from an art perspective after having studied art and so forth, how do you connect a subject academically that was initially presented to you in everyday terms?
JW: You could say that approach is doing it a disservice. With the photos, I am taking them way out of context by making art out of them. But I would say they were art to begin with, and I am sort of highlighting certain aspects of it and transforming it into an art of a different sort. It’s very much about celebrating their past. CDs -- for instance -- the packaging drove me crazy. I hated them and these album covers were so much more. A lot of this had to do with when I was writing The Answer is Never, where it all sort of loosened up to me like at first I thought like “That was then. The past, and its over,” sort of thing. But while I was working on this book I was looking at old magazines and looking back at some of the music, the topic just opened up like it was ok to talk about that stuff.
BM: Even though nostalgia was condemned by hardcore?
JW: Yeah, exactly…But realizing “Yeah…That shit was great! This art show and the book had a lot to do with Flipper. I couldn’t get them out of my head and I actually saw them in 1993. Coincidentally, it was the day Kurt Cobain killed himself. Flipper played at this place on Canal St. -- I remember seeing it in the Voice and debating whether or not to go.
BM: Cobain was way into Flipper.
JW: Yeah. The point is, I went to see them and it was great even though it was really depressing and kinda fucked up. The main guy, Will Shatter, had died years before -- and despite the band continuing to play shows years later without the singer -- they were still pretty amazing and the original energy was somehow intact.
Title picture: Jocko Weyland, “Dead Kennedys, Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables LP” 2005, C- Print. 11” x 14”