Phawker

BY TONY CARO Do you ever lay awake at night and wonder if there are aliens out there? Or if there are lizard people living in the center of the Earth? Comedian and conspiracy theorist Sam Tripoli doesn’t, because he has no doubt in his mind that there are. In his podcast, Tinfoil Hat, Sam Tripoli and Eddie Bravo talk conspiracy theories, ranging from the undoubtedly insane to the serious and most likely true theories that demand your concern. Frequently a regular on the Joe Rogan Show, Sam makes talking conspiracy hilarious, but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t shy away from saying what he really thinks, even if the truth isn’t what people want to hear. Based in Los Angeles, Sam Tripoli and Eddie Bravo will be in town on October 12th performing at Punch Line Philly for an hour of standup, and to answer the audience’s burning questions about what is actually true in an age of sweeping censorship. We were able to get him on the phone to tell us about his upcoming show, and to drop his signature truth bombs on us.

DISCUSSED: Alex Jones, InfoWars, censorship, the truth behind the Moon landing, the JFK assassination, Roswell, and the flat Earth. The Armenian Genocide, geopolitics, the two party system of the U.S. government, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI, the Lifelog Project, Facebook, and the growing lack of privacy in modern times.

PHAWKER: For the benefit of our readers please explain what the Tinfoil Hat podcast is all about and, again for the benefit of those who may not know, why it’s called Tinfoil Hat.

SAM TRIPOLI: It’s a comedy/standup/conspiracy extravaganza. We have two of the funniest conspiracy theorists, myself, and Eddie Bravo, and we do like an hour of regular standup, and then we take questions from the crowd. He’s always done Joe Rogan and I have my Tinfoil Hat podcast. People love that and ask questions and it goes really well. People love this show. It’s been really well received. The name Tinfoil Hat is basically NWA. I just took the phrase that people use to make fun of conspiracy theorists and tried to turn it into a positive. My goal is that one day when you Google “tinfoil hat,” my podcast is the first thing that comes up.

PHAWKER: Again, for the benefit of readers that may not know, please explain the Tinfoil Hat a reference to?

SAM TRIPOLI: The whole belief was that the government was sending out like a radio wave to cook your brain so you’d put on a tinfoil hat on to stop the waves from getting in. Which is hilarious because that’s now what 5G is.

PHAWKER: So then what is the live touring comedy version of that? What can people expect?

SAM TRIPOLI: People can expect an hour of crush, some really funny standup, and then some fun Q&A, man. I mean it’s just like, we answer all the— It’s a great show. If you love conspiracy, or if you’re interested in a different kind of comedy this is the show for you. Sometimes when you get political in shows you lose the crowd, but you can’t do it in this show. People are there to hear us drop some truth bombs.

PHAWKER: Totally. For sure.

SAM TRIPOLI: We always welcome all the CIA and the NSA and the FBI, there’s always at the show. We love and welcome them to the show

PHAWKER: Do you know that they’re at your show?

SAM TRIPOLI: No, but I’m sure that they are. I’m sure they’re lizard people there. Yeah, lizard people are everywhere. They’re bisexual. They like to get weird.

PHAWKER: Given your Armenian heritage, is there anything you would like to say about the Armenian Genocide, the concerted effort to deny and cover it up and what is going on in present day Turkey, i.e. Erdogan.
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We have a pair of tix to see old school ballers Ja Rule plus Method Man and Redman at North Seventh (formerly Electric Factory) on Friday and to win them all you have to do is like us. Really, really like us. More accurately, you need to follow us on Twitter and send us an email at phawker66@gmail.com telling us you have done so or already were along with a screen shot of the top of our Twitter page that clearly displays your FOLLOWING status. Put the word R.U.L.E. in the subject line and include your full name as it appears on your photo ID along with a mobile number for confirmation. The 54th reader to email us with Good luck and godspeed!

JA RULE + METHOD MAN & REDMAN @ NORTH SEVENTH FRI. OCTOBER 12Th

Low plays Underground Arts on November 10th.

FRESH AIR: The New York Times just reported that in 2016 Rick Gates, then-deputy campaign manager for Donald Trump, requested proposals from an Israeli company to create fake online identities and use social media manipulation to help defeat Trump’s rivals for the Republican nomination in the primary and Hillary Clinton in the general election. The proposals were apparently never acted on, but we know that Russian operatives made effective use of Facebook and Twitter in seeking to influence the 2016 presidential campaign. Our country is hardly the only one in which political opinions have been manipulated by millions of fake social media accounts promoting messages that are slanted or even made up. Our guests today, P.W. Singer and Emerson Brooking, say that social media has also been weaponized in ways that most of us remain unaware of, like fueling popular uprisings and affecting the course of military campaigns. For instance, when the Israeli army moved into Gaza in 2012, the operation was supported by a viral marketing campaign. P.W. Singer is a strategist at New America, a consultant for the U.S. military and intelligence community and the author of several books. Emerson T. Brooking writes about conflict and social media and was recently a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. FRESH AIR’S Dave Davies spoke to them about their new book, “Like War: The Weaponization Of Social Media.” MORE

Death Cab For Cutie are the consolation prize for people like you and me. We may not get to be Ken or Barbie, the quarterback or the homecoming queen, or for that matter CEO or Taylor Swift, but we do get some damn pretty music to help us lick our wounds and accept our status as the runner-up in our own lives. Ordinarily, we’d leave it at that and move on with the low expectations business of being beta. But we have it on good authority that EVERYONE in this country who isn’t an a**hole could use some cheering up right about now which is why we are offering a pair of free tickets to see DCFC at the Tower Theater tomorrow night (Wed. October 10th). Those tix will go to the 47th Phawker reader to email us at Phawker66@gmail.com with the correct answer to the following DCFC trivial question: What is the origin of the Death Cab’s curious name? Hint: it is the name of a song by another band. What is the name of that band? Put the words WE HAVE THE FACTS AND WE ARE VOTING HELLS NO! in the subject line and include your full name as it appears on your photo ID along with a mobile number for confirmation. NOTE: To qualify to win, you must be signed up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! Good luck and godspeed!

DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE @ THE TOWER THEATER WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 10TH

FRESH AIR: Musician and writer Leonard Cohen died in 2016, leaving behind many unpublished poems and lyrics. His son Adam Cohen discusses The Flame, a collection of some of Leonard’s final works. MORE

PREVIOUSLY: Everybody knows that 2016 was a cruel and unusual year. Intolerably cruel. Everybody knows that war is over and everybody knows the good guys lost. So I am only half-kidding when I ask: How can we possibly be expected to endure the abominable presidency of Donald Trump without David Bowie, Prince or Princess Leia? But I’m dead serious when I say we can’t do this without Leonard Cohen, who died at the ripe old age of 82 on the day before the election. As ever, his timing was impeccable. It goes without saying that he’d seen the future, baby, and it is spray-tanned murder. A few weeks prior to his departure, he’d released You Want It Darker, one part deathbed confessional, one part last will and testament, one part love letter to all he can’t leave behind.

This collection of prayers for the doomed is arguably the most perfect album-length statement in his sacred canon. Like all prime Cohen, it is marked by astonishing verbal acuity and a high-def philosophical clarity that coalesces into a kind of metaphysical calligraphy carved in stone by the Old Testament prophet gravitas of his voice, that patented sepulchral purr that has been getting liberal arts majors laid since at least 1967. He’s never sounded more certain or fearless, or closer to death, so near you can almost hear the Grim Reaper’s Vader-like breath on the back of his leathery neck as he croaks out lines like “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game,” “It’s au revoir,” and “I’m ready, Lord.”

Invariably spare and fleeting and surprisingly luminous, the music on You Want It Darker — a midnight jazz lowing in the moonlight, a monastic noir for the ears, and a quick stroll down Boogie Street for old time’s sake — is relentlessly faultless in arrangement, tonality and execution. The recording, overseen by his son Adam, ensures that everything is writ timeless and crystalline as befits the eternal verities he’s been tasked with preserving. History will rank the title track and “Treaty” next to “Bird On A Wire” and “Hallelujah,” a hundred floors above us in the Tower Of Song.

Because the thing about Leonard Cohen is that he was always right, always — even when he turned out to be wrong about, say, Rebecca DeMornay or trusting his manager with his money or his decade-long Zen hermitage atop Mt. Baldy. Because the incontrovertible koanic fact of the matter is that the way to always be right is always admit when you are wrong, acknowledge that was then but this is now. Or as he sings on “It Seemed The Better Way,” it “sounded like the truth, but it’s not the truth today.” Because today nothing is true, and when nothing is true everything is permitted. That is the crack in the center of everything, where the Putin gets in.

Look, nobody should be surprised that The Rapture came and only took Leonard Cohen but that doesn’t make it any less sad and lonesome. While I can’t blame an 82-year-old man with a splintering spine for getting on with the dirty business of dying, I can’t help but feel left behind on an abandoned ship in a darkening sea, still tending the flame of “a million candles burning for the help that never came.” – JONATHAN VALANIA

Venom was one of Marvel’s most popular characters in the ‘90s. Built like a WWF Superstar, he looked cool in his black Spider-Man-esque onesie. And like any “good” 90’s comic Venom was extreme. He would straight up murder his enemies and eat them. But the comic struggled to figure out if Venom and his alter ego Eddie Brock was a hero or a villain or in between. So too does Sony’s Venom, the studio’s first attempt at a Spider-Man Shared Universe. But with no Spider-Man. And while that can work, it just doesn’t. Tom Hardy plays an Eddie Brock as a down on his luck reporter who investigates a company too big for anyone to bring down and in the process he discovers the black oil like organism that is Venom. And that is where the fun begins. And it is fun. The film is 90 minutes of Tom Hardy arguing with himself about the morality of cannibalism, how to best prevent an alien invasion, and whether he is a loser. The action scenes flow into each other beautifully and the use of Venom’s powers is fresh. Instead of Spider-Man’s web-slinging abilities, Venom has super-strong telescoping black tendrils that can stretch out hundreds of feet to, say, grab onto a building in mid fall or rip off a car door to use as a shield. And if all you want to see is an anti-hero killing people for reasons the plot barely explain then this is the film for you. But be forewarned, the film just stumbles through its plot. The only apparent reason Michelle Williams’ Anne Weying appears to be in the film just so the “hero” can have a big damn kiss before going to fight the villain. Throughout the entire movie the Venom wants to take over the world to just change his mind at the last minute because the plot demands it. And that is honesty what I expected from a Venom movie without Spider-Man. When he isn’t being a villain to Spidey, Venom doesn’t know if he’s a good or a bad guy. As T.S. Eliot said, it is better to be truly evil than neither good nor evil. But then, nobody reads anymore. – RICHARD SUPLEE

Photo by JOSH PELTA-HELLER

I will remain forever in awe of Liz Phair’s ability to seamlessly slip the word “fucked” into a dreamy, cloudy-brained pop anthem like “Why Can’t I?” My preoccupation with the song began at the age of ten. It was marked explicit in iTunes and therefore deemed too adult for the music library of my silver iPod Nano. I spent an embarrassing amount of time poring over the song, humming, singing, intently listening each time it came on the radio, searching for the goddamn expletive. The charm of “Why Can’t I?” persisted with the years to come. It wholly encompasses the wholly encompassing early stages of infatuation, the floating feeling of hope and intrigue so potent it inhibits breathing, rational thought.

Phair’s Exile in Guyville preceded the release of “Why Can’t I?” but sheds the latter’s predilection for “stupid old shit, like letters and sodas.” Maybe not so much sheds it as counters it with the cynicism that infects most relationships in one’s mid-twenties. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the critically acclaimed album’s release. Exile’s exhumation comes at a felicitous time, when the music industry is experiencing the long-awaited downfall of guyville; guyville being the male-dominated music industry and more than that: the discouraging and supercilious opinions of close-minded boyfriends, male friends, even men one meets in passing. Matador Records, who is responsible for the re-release of Exile, has been churning out records from the likes of Snail Mail, Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus in a concentrated effort to usher in a new era of female and queer-centric indie rock.

Diverse and rightfully disgruntled voices such as Phair have been around for years, as has the desire to hear them out. This proves true as I watch fans from fifteen to fifty crowd the floor and balcony of Union Transfer for Liz Phair and Speedy Ortiz’s sold out show. Speedy Ortiz, a locally sourced Philly band, for lack of a more sophisticated term, rocks in the way I always wanted to as a preteen. Their songs buzz with the same unpretentious grit as early Liz Phair, grounded in lyrics that are angsty but not eye-roll inducing. The first song off their most recent album, “Buck Me Off,” contrasts the gross and gloomy, grime and vampires, with sunrises. It feels like the manic episode under a padded blanket the song itself details.

Phair comes out under purplish stage lights to a properly warmed up audience and opens with “Supernova.” The opening chords, wonky and charged with two decade’s  worth of verve, are just as enthralling as the first time I heard them. Phair’s set is a motley of her greatest hits with an emphasis on Exile. She jumps into “Johnny Feelgood,” just as bop-ily entrancing as the diamond thumb-nailed figure she conjures up in the song. It is a “strangely feelgood” song, detailing the exhilaration of being jerked around by an asshole with a convertible.

It’s the tracks from Exile that I find myself most adrenalized by, holding my piss and standing tall on my toes to experience in full. “Never Said” is the first of which, the simple lyrics conveying a youthful, almost mocking sentiment: it doesn’t really matter what you think she’s saying or if you believe it, so long as she’s being heard. It’s an unapologetic anthem for those not taken seriously, those not represented, a sentiment that rings true with younger fans tired of being perceived as naive as well as adults who’ve long awaited inclusivity. “Help Me Mary” more straightforwardly embodies this struggle of trying to be heard in an industry, a world, that would much rather egg and bully and mollify the uninhibited female voice. It’s angry but collected, a call upon a universal female figure (Mary) saddled with burdens bestowed by men. Phair asks that her frustration be channeled into productivity, fame. I contentedly hold my pee and listen.

Phair closes with “Why Can’t I?” but returns for an encore featuring “Fuck and Run” and “Divorce Song,” all undeniably Good Songs, but the latter two echoing with less fluff and more emotional gravel. Both of which served as my initial introduction to Exile in Guyville, about a year ago. I am no longer ten and imbued with less of a float-y, impenetrably hopeful feeling when I am taken with someone. Being taken with anyone feels debasing. Twenty six year old Phair’s lyrics navigate the conflicting feelings of craving something pure and saccharine and the realization that the sweet and mushy coexist with a sorry, repulsive feeling of dependency and disappointment. She asks “Whatever happened to a boyfriend / the kind of guy who tries to win you over?” bemoaning the loss of the idealized love she was conditioned to expect. This false notion is isolating. The solution: fuck and run. “Divorce Song” is similarly heavy though catchy. It paints a less than perfect portrait of a relationship via separate hotel rooms and lost lighters. However, Phair admits, counting back from ten, stepping back from immediate emotion that the subject “has never been a waste of [her] time / It’s never been a drag” and maybe that makes all of this vaguely worthwhile. She’s not sure, and neither am I. I just know that it makes for a good encore and perennial quandary both mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, and lone audience members holding pee, like myself, can understand. – KEELY MCAVENEY

 

A STAR IS BORN (Directed by Bradley Cooper, 135 minutes, USA, 2018)

BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been hard to ignore the buzz surrounding the latest incarnation of A Star is Born, which marks not only Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, but also the first starring role in a feature film for Lady Gaga. The pop icon had a rather successful transition from music to television taking home an Emmy for her work on American Horror Story, and this time she’s here to prove she can do it all and Cooper helps her get the ball across the goal line. His directing style oftentimes feels like he’s channelling early Cameron Crowe, with a deftness and confidence no audience has a right to expect from a first-time director, and the resulting film is the most heartbreaking romance you will see on screen all year.

With a Jim Morrison swagger and a rugged growl, Cooper conjures up a convincing Jackson Maine, a famous singer-songwriter in diminished capacity, struggling with both tinnitus and addiction. Cooper does all his own singing, and It took me a few minutes to to get adjusted to him dropping his voice a few octaves to pull off some of the soulful ballads. When we first meet Jackson it’s clear he’s been spiraling downward for some time now. Having drained all the booze in his limo, he stops at a drag bar for a refill. It’s here he happens upon Ally doing cabaret and somehow her voice shines a light through his darkness. There’s a charming matter of factness to the way he takes the young woman under his wing after that performance. The film is very careful with how it plays with the shifting power dynamics of their burgeoning relationship to assure you that they do actually care for one another and it’s not simply one attempting to take advantage of the other.

Ally quits her job to go on tour with Jackson, igniting a whirlwind romance with the singer while making a name for herself performing their collaborations on stage. In due time Ally lands a record contract, and her star rises as his begins to fade. His professional jealousy takes its toll on their relationship and hastens his race to the bottom of the bottle. While the story is an all-too familiar one, it’s the chemistry between Cooper and Gaga, along with the music they co-wrote, that takes it to new heights of emotional realism. There’s an intimacy between Cooper and Gaga — unforced and actual-seeming — that you simply can’t fake on screen.

A Star is Born is a tour de force directorial debut that channels Cooper’s off-screen struggles with addiction and sobriety that vibes deeply personal and painfully honest. It’s arguably the most revealing and vulnerable he has allowed himself to be on screen, resulting in his most nuanced and courageous performance to date. Gaga is a fierce delight with a mezzo-soprano that rattles the theater. Together they turn in what could well be the most electrifying performances of their careers in this gut-wrenching take on the agonies and ecstasies of stardom shot through with raw energy and gut-punch emotion that will wash over you song after song.

Source: Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office

This morning Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krassner announced the arrest of 57 individuals tied to the Alameda Drug Trafficking Organization (DTO) responsible for selling fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, crack cocaine and other substances in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, specifically within the four block radius of Kip and Cambria streets. The District Attorney’s office estimates that the Alameda DTO generated over $5 million in annual revenue and upwards of $10,000 per day in illegal drugs sales in that four-block radius of Kensington. In the past year, the Philadelphia Police Department made over 700 arrests and received over 300 hospital cases directly related to the drug trade in that same four-block radius.

In January of 2018, the Philadelphia Police Department and the DA’s office began their investigation of Alameda DTO, targeting leadership and key suppliers driven by financial gain as opposed to rolling up end users “driven by addiction.” “We should not be focusing on the tip of one tentacle, we should be going for the entire octopus,” Krassner said, echoing one of the key tenets of his drug war strategy. In recent months, the investigation has rolled up ringleaders Jeremiah Figueroa (AKA “Chino), German Alameda (AKA “June”, and Orlando Moran (AKA “O/Oskie”). All three have been charged with nearly 689 criminal counts, including running a corrupt organization, possession with intent to deliver heroin/fentanyl, and possession of illegal firearms. – HENRY SAVAGE

Illustration via GOLD HAND GIRLS

THE NEW YORKER: I still own the copy of “The Virgin Suicides” that I first read in high school, the evidence of my teen-age self on its pages: water-rippled from many hours in the bath, stained with juice from the tangerines I used to eat in great quantities. It’s a book I’ve read many times now, but I still remember that original encounter, how it felt like a flare from my own secret world, all the inchoate longings and obsessions of being a teen-ager somehow rendered into book form. Even the five Lisbon sisters seemed like some mirror of me and my four younger sisters—I knew the peculiarity of a household filled with girls, the feverish swapping of clothes, the rituals and ablutions, experiencing adolescence like some long-standing illness from which we all suffered. The world of “The Virgin Suicides” was gothic and mundane, just like the world of teen-agers, with our desire to catalogue and make meaning out of any sign or symbol, even the mildest of occurrences taking on great portent. It was exhausting to live that way, believing in the significance of every feeling, tracking every minor emotional shift. But still: sometimes I miss it.

“On the morning the last Lisbon daughter took her turn at suicide—it was Mary this time, and sleeping pills, like Therese—the two paramedics arrived at the house knowing exactly where the knife drawer was, and the gas oven, and the beam in the basement from which it was possible to tie a rope.” From the very first line, the reader understands the Lisbon girls—“daughters”—will all die. The paramedics can easily navigate this last attempt because what should be shocking—a young girl’s suicide—has become, in the strange logic of the Lisbon family, routine. Even the narration is measured, calm, relaying the suicide method with a simple aside. There is no crime for the reader to try to solve, no whodunnit. We know what happens. We know who dies, and how, and by what methods. By giving us this information immediately, with such cool distance, Eugenides directs our attention to different questions, to a different scale of novelistic inquiry. Even when all the unknowns become known, every detail accounted for, every witness interrogated, how much can we ever truly understand our own lives?

In one of the great feats of voice, “The Virgin Suicides” is narrated by a Greek chorus of unnamed men, looking back on their adolescence and the suicides of five girls in their Michigan suburb. The narrators are both elegiac and mordant, dipping in and out of lives, moments, acting as the collective consciousness of an entire neighborhood. The men have never quite moved on—despite their now “thinning hair and soft bellies,” they remain arrested as boys, circling around the lingering mystery of what motivated the girls’ deaths. With procedural effort, they’ve exhaustively catalogued relics from that time (“Exhibits #1 through #97”), conducted interviews with the most minor of neighborhood players, imagined themselves into the heads of the five Lisbon sisters—tried, essentially, to fully animate the past. The book retroactively constructs the eighteen months between the first daughter’s suicide and the last, while the middle-aged narrators obsessively probe a mystery that might never be revealed, the clues only half-legible. MORE

BY KYLE WEINSTEIN Wolf Eyes is not just a noise band. Wolf Eyes is a trip metal band. Wolf Eyes is a psychojazz band. Wolf Eyes is a constantly shifting musical phenomenon with roughly 300 recordings. Wolf Eyes is one part founding member, Nate Young, one part long-time member and meme lord Johnny Olson. Young manipulates his voice with an array of electronics and Olson plays sax, wind synth, and homemade monstrosities of noise. Aside from being a multi-instrumentalist, Johnny Olson is an avid record collector, family man, and runs a highly successful Instagram meme page called inzane_johnny.

Fittingly based out of the industrial hub that is Detroit, Wolf Eyes [pictured, below right] began in 1996 as the solo project of Young, and has had a few members come and go, existing mostly as a trio since 2000. The band founded Trip Metal Fest in 2016, which takes place every Memorial Day weekend in Motor City, hosting a diverse lineup of experimental and noise artists. The festival’s name hails from a 2013 Wolf Eyes meme, which was the first instance of the notion of “trip metal” being introduced to the public. Trip Metal Fest, by the way, is always free.

Ars Nova Workshop will be holding The October Revolution of Jazz and Contemporary Music at various locations in Philly from October 4th through the 7th. On Saturday October 6th, Wolf Eyes will be performing with Sun Ra Arkestra maestro (and fellow wind synthist), Marshall Allen, at FringeArts as a part of the festival. I was so excited to hear this that I just had to give Inzane Johnny Olson a call. DISCUSSED: Marshall Allen, tripping, Sun Ra Arkestra, awkward collaborations, memes, the definition of art, noise and trip metal.

PHAWKER: How did Wolf Eyes decide to hook up and collaborate with Marshall Allen?

JOHNNY OLSON: It was all the promoter at the fest’s idea. They facilitated it. We’ve worked with Marshall before with Hieroglyphic Being when he was playing with Danny Thompson, too, in Detroit at the Trip Metal Fest. Yeah, that’s pretty much it; there’s no romantic story about it at all, you know? [Laughs]

PHAWKER: So, for adventurous listeners who are trying to get into Sun Ra, where would you recommend they start and why?

JOHNNY OLSON: When I was in middle school, the first one I got at a record store for a dollar was Discipline 27-II. Either that or “Sun Song,” I think. But, I would definitely start with the Discipline one because that definitely has some weirder elements, but if your mom checked it out, she wouldn’t instantaneously put it out.

PHAWKER: Oh yeah, I know how that is.

JOHNNY OLSON: Yeah. [laughs]

PHAWKER: What are some of the weirder elements in that album that resonate with you?

JOHNNY OLSON: Well, I remember him saying that every single electronic effect that you hear was already done back in the 1900s and stuff like that in the early times, you know – the echo, the call and response, distortion, and all that stuff. His call and response with June Tyson and stuff like that. You can hear that, but it’s all acoustic. And it’s got a really good message about not taking yourself so seriously, and it’s just really listenable and weird and welcoming. And Side 2’s got some of the weirder stuff on it, not as weird as The Magic City, but it’s definitely a solid brick.

PHAWKER: Okay, cool. So tell me about psychojazz, trip metal, and how they’ve manifested in your discography over the years.

JOHNNY OLSON: Well, we were on acid at a gig at our clubhouse in Detroit – the Mug Warehouse – and one of our friends saw it and was just like, “Aw man, it’s like trip metal,” so that kind of took over from there. And we’ve always been into casually redefining stuff and making our own genres and just twisting stuff around, because it’s better to just define parameters yourself rather than have them handed to you. So, it started to catch on, and it just kind of took off, and then we decided to keep changing it. I think two or three years ago on New Years’, Nate came up with the term “psychojazz,” so we just kept moving that. Aesthetically not a lot has changed, but people make subtle differences between the two on their own, so it’s kind of hands-off and it’s interesting to see how it grows and separates. So, it’s mainly just empowering yourself to define what’s around you rather than taking what’s there, because it’s just more empowering, I think it just changes stuff. You know, someone, at one point, was probably just goofing off and said “rock” and “jazz” and this and that, so you know, it all starts somewhere, so you might as well just see if it clicks. [laughs].
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