Auto Erotic Asphixiation, Glastonbury, Mocha Frappuchino A La Comode, And Ehter-Huffing Hippies: The Ttotals Interview In Its Totality...Or, Carlito's Way Or The Highway, Derrida Does Number Two!

Marty and Brian are the Ttotal package...

Look, I'm well aware that I am ramming Nashville down your readerly throats. But Ttotals is different. This duo from Music City make some of the best drone-rock and ambient headspace music anywhere in the country. AND! More people need to know about them! PLUS! They love Carlito's Way and question the authenticity and substance of the Black Eyed Peas. This is a band that brings a torrent of  No Wave fury! Imagine the Velvet Underground mixing drugs with Spaceman 3 and then jamming the morning after. So kick back and relax, get a nice glass of sweet tea and learn a little something about a band that is both entertaining and committed to "peeling faces off" with their brand of "country".


WDS- So, for those that don’t know of Ttotals, give a bit of a background on how this band got off the ground? You know the “stats”…

Brian- Marty and myself played in the Heathern Haints together. We were a sort of a lo-fi, ghost rider and ether-huffing trio. Our hippie little brother, Tim, left the “Haints” in late ‘09 for his family back in Virginia. When Tim left we were sort of stuck and had to find a way to keep a band going. We had a few unfinished songs lying around. And eventually some of those became the 4 songs on the 12”.

Marty- Tim was, and is, a dirty little hippie. When we were a trio I played a Casio through a bunch of guitar effects pedals. I never huffed ether intentionally.

WDS- Why the choice to keep it a duo with guitar and drums as opposed to bringing in a bass player? What does that bring to the band’s sound?

Marty- My dad played bass expertly in a ton of bands for years, and then he started playing guitar, with marginal results. I’ve always said that his difficulties with the guitar prove that counting to six is much harder than counting to four.

Brian- Yeah, we did try to find a bass player early on, but no one seemed to be a good fit or be into what we were trying to do. We felt like we could accomplish more as a duo than by adding more members. So, at that point we had been playing, like, 3 years together. And who wants to come in and try to mix it up with two dudes that know how to play and be smartasses with each other.

WDS- Ttotals doesn’t sound like anybody I’ve heard come out of Nashville. You are definitely not in the country scene and really don’t share too much in common with the more “garage-y” bands I’ve heard on Infinity Cat (i.e: JEFF the Brotherhood, Natural Child, Pujol…etc.). How would you describe the band’s sound and what scene or bands to you guys feel you connect with?

Brian- Well, we are a little bit older than a lot of those guys. And we tend to lean a bit toward being lone guns. Not to say we don’t get along with any of them, but we run in a different crowd. We would totally play with any of the Infinity Cat roster. We feel we could play with just about anyone and do. It is not about being part of any one scene. It is about doing and making things happen and having a bigger picture mind set. We play the “Outer Blues”. Take that as a description.

Marty- How dare you. I thought we were playing country?

WDS- When I hear Ttotals and the one time I saw you play in SF at the Hemlock Tavern, I was reminded of early SST bands. Particularly, early Sonic Youth, SWANS, and some of the more “arty” No Wave bands out of NYC in the early 80’s. Who were some of your musical influences? What bands would people be surprised to know you enjoy listening to?

Brian- We dropped the ball on getting with you right after our Hemlock show. Marty and I grew up listening to all those great SST bands: Husker Du, Black Flag and the like. It is a part of our history, for me particularly Sonic Youth, and comes out naturally. We are both into bands like Dead C and Pussy Galore. We are of course way into English bands like Spacemen 3 and Comet Gain. We also can’t forget about The Strapping Fieldhands as well. Oh, and The Oblivions. We pretty much, I feel, wear our influences on our sleeves. But I hope we make it our own. Speaking of SST Have you ever read “Rock and the Pop Narcotic” by former SST guy Joe Carducci? If any of you all have not read it. You need to get it. Very much I think a recommended read.

Marty- Did you know originally Coil was supposed to do the soundtrack for Hellraiser?  Pretty cool, huh?

WDS- How do you get that HEAVY sound on record? Could you talk about how the record was recorded and what you use on stage to bring the DRONE to life in front of an audience?

Sun Ra...

Brian- Early on we used a secret weapon called “the Peav”. This was a guitar tuned in a drone chord (it was more of a baritone strung guitar tuned to an open unison tuning) and plugged into different effect pedals and set to feedback and drone the entire show. It was an unyielding beast and would make people cry. We wanted something to take up space sonically in the songs. Now Marty has samples that he manipulates with effects and a foot-controller. We recorded the 12” over at Battle Tapes, which is run by our friend Jeremy Ferguson. I started to use 2 different guitar amps around this time as well. One is a clean guitar signal. Just plugged straight into the amp. The other amp is my dirty signal. All sorts of effects and fuzz go through there. So, we have all those guitar tones and a more controllable, sustainable drone. So, yeah, that is pretty much how we get our sound. We also used this huge bass cabinet for the clean guitar parts on the recording. Which gives nice bottom end to everything. At first, we were out to prove something. Just speaking for myself. I had to get comfortable with being a duo, so we kind of set out to rip people apart and peel some skulls back. Which we were all like, “We play Rock music! Don’t like it, tough.” Now, I’m really more into seeing what all we can do as a duo making music and not just here is the Rock. We can definitely Rock.

Marty- While we were making the record I kept getting calls from this guy I know who was trying to get off rock cocaine, and he had this penchant for “rescuing” prostitutes.  Total Taxi Driver situation, minus the mohawk and murder. I told him he should focus on getting himself well first, but he just couldn’t help himself. It made me sad, but what are you gonna do? Anyway, compression and EQ were a big part of that pounding sound.  We also re-mixed pretty dramatically for vinyl.

WDS- I know you have some Summer tours planned, mostly on the East Coast, what are the challenges touring bands face out there on the road (besides the high price of gas)? Any good road stories?

Brian- We do have our “DooDoobucks” we stop at while we are on the road. That is what we call a Starbucks to take shit in. You know, because they are usually cleaner than a gas station and also stocked with toilet paper. Everyone has always been nice and very accommodating to us. We’ve been extremely lucky. I do have a story from back in the day before I got hooked-up with Marty. A very nice guy let my old band crash at his place for a night. He woke us up, dressed only in his tighty-whiteys, in the wee hours of the morning to videotape him masturbating with a plastic shopping bag over his head. I’m not kidding. We declined and at first light ran for the door.

Marty- I met my lovely girlfriend on tour this last summer.  We knew about each other on the internet from doing videos (I did the music on a Quizno’s ad with punk rock cats!), and thought it would be good to meet each other out of professional courtesy. I kept telling Brian the whole way out that I wasn’t gonna hit on her, ‘coz I’m a “professional” ‘n stuff, but when we met, she attacked me, and I have very poor impulse control. Now we live together in Nashville and she tells me to do things and I do them.

WDS- What would people be surprised to know about a band like Ttotals? Outside of music, what are you guys into?

Brian- I like baseball. How about those Giants? I don’t know about you, but I do fear Brian Wilson’s beard. A bit of baseball/music trivia; Do you know where Yo La Tengo got their name? Hint: It’s from a former NY Met outfielder. I helped record Lambchop’s Nixon. I also geeked-out on Pete Kember when he played in Nashville. I was very nervous, so I think it made him nervous. He hasn’t been back since.

That's why they sound so alien in Music City?

Marty- Xbox 360.  My gamertag is “wht lt wht ht”, and I will destroy your ass at Battlefield: BC 2, or any Call of Duty. Look me up, and your ass will be destroyed. By me.

WDS- If you could put together any bill with bands (together now or from the past) for Ttotals to play with (any genre), what would that bill look like and where would the show be held?

Marty- Jay Z, Os Mutantes, and Prince, with showings of Purple Rain, Scarface and Carlito’s Way in between bands. Is this a good place to mention how much I dislike the Black Eyed Peas? ‘Coz I really dislike them. I’m not even sure why; they just rub me the wrong way. It’s like they’re trying too hard or something.

Brian- Okay, I will try to narrow it down. Velvet Underground, The Pastels, Spacemen 3 doing all 13^th Floor Elevator covers, like a 20 minute version of “Roller Coaster” or something, Times New Viking and us. It would either be at Royal Albert Hall or the Fillmore.

WDS- What do you have coming up on the horizon? Projects, records, collaborations?

Brian- We have a cassette coming out on No Kings. Our friend Lee Noble runs that little cassette label out in L.A. It is from our live in-store at Grady’s Record Refuge. Expect that one mid-summer. It will be out just in time for our first outing east, Washington D.C. and back.

Marty- A martial arts/hot guitar licks instructional video, for one thing. Don’t listen to Brian; I’ve been to D.C. My mom took me there when I graduated high school, and I had a girlfriend that moved out there I visited, so “first outing east?” I don’t think so. I’ve been to New York before too, so there. I wanna go to London. I wanna play at Glastonbury, too, ‘coz my girlfriend’s English and she says Stonehenge is really cool. I got a thing about crowds, though, and apparently there’s like a shit ton of people there(Glastonbury, not Stonehenge), so I’m not sure if we’re doing that yet. Maybe if they brought me in a helicopter so I wouldn’t have to deal with the crowds.

Brian- Jeez. I was talking as a band. Also do you think we are Led Zeppelin or something? Oh, hopefully we will be headed to NYC in early fall.

WDS- What’s the story behind the name and the spelling?

Brian- We wanted something different and easy to recognize. It was really a typo that stuck.

Marty- Well, it used to be when you “Googled” ttotals, you’d see all this math stuff about the “nth term” ‘n shit, but apparently now there’s some jazz about our band, so my story about the name won’t work. Stupid Google.

WDS- Where would you like to see the band in 5 years?

Brian- 5 more records under our belt and all of ‘em out on Siltbreeze (Tom, Hint - Hint). Several more tours, including a European and having fun doing it all.

Marty- Glastonbury via helicopter.

 Ridiculous But Necessary Questions

What is your favorite cheese?  

Brian- Wensleydale, because of Wallace and Gromit

Marty- nacho

EVOL or Daydream Nation? 

Brian- Don’t make me pick between “Tom Violence” or “Eric’s Trip”.
Marty- Nice try.  Everyone knows the correct answer is Dial “M” for Motherfucker.

Taylor Swift or Miranda Lambert? 

Brian- I guess I have to go with Taylor Swift. We are from the same home town.

Marty- My girlfriend says I can’t sleep with either, or both.

Nietzsche or Kant? 

Brian- Marty you were the philosophy major at Rhodes.

Marty- I knew a guy who walked in on Derrida taking a dump.

A month in the van with anyone (your pick)?  

Brian- Zack Galifianakis, Even though I think Due Date is one of the worst movies ever made.

Marty- I would like a month in the van inside another van, so I could ride while I ride, son.

Brian- Damn! I forgot about that one.

Loose Nut In His Head: Raymond Pettibon Rediscovered...

Human depravity, sexualized violence, macabre desires come to life in two dimensions; this is the world artist Raymond Pettibon renders in pen and ink. It is a world mirrored sonically by the band he formerly played with, Black Flag, and the label where he acted as visual curator, SST, for much of the late ‘70s and ‘80s.

Most familiar with the hardcore punk scene of this time will remember Pettibon’s comic book influenced drawings. They adorned telephone poles, streetlights and album covers. Flyers depicting police officers with guns lodged in the their mouths, nuns brandishing shiny steel hedge clippers, and other disturbing scenes accompanied by cryptic captions, advertised shows by Black Flag, Circle Jerks, DOA, and many other bands of that period. In 1990 he did the artwork for Sonic Youth’s “Goo”. The album cover has been both one of his most enduring and typifying images.

While his artwork has since become iconic and synonymous with this period in punk music, few know the artist responsible. Fewer still know he was the original bassist for Black Flag; a band started by his older brother, guitarist/songwriter and SST label founder, Greg Ginn. Pettibon was responsible for suggesting the name Black Flag reasoning, "If a white flag means surrender, a black flag represents anarchy." He also created the four black bar logo that served as the band’s emblem.

His art conjures R. Crumb and Ralph Steadman, two other artists whose illustrative approach are often attached to a literary narrative. Crumb and Steadman partnered with writers Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson respectively, while Pettibon borrows text and verse from a variety of sources, including those of his own creation. He cities Henry James, Ruskin, and Mickey Spillane as literary inspirations, whose prose, often inspire and accompany his drawings. The noir themes and world the characters in his art inhabit dovetails perfectly with the grit and naked aggression associated with hardcore. His art helped to inform the gutter poetry and paranoia inherent in the genre.

Pettibon has since gone on to earn the prestigious Bucksbaum award in 2004, given to artists every two years that have exhibited at the Whitney Biennial. His work is part of the permanent collection at the MoMA in New York, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the MoMA in San Francisco, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in addition to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Despite achieving some renown in art circles he is still relatively unknown beyond the underground subculture. Recently, he has begun recording and playing music again with his band the Niche Makers. The music is described as, “New Orleans on cheap wine and canned martini's” and a record is slated for an early 2009 release.

His art seems particularly timely today and worthy of exploring. On a recent trip to New York City, a visit to the Chelsea art galleries revealed several artists working in Pettibon’s graphic cartoon style. The violent themes, sexual content, and hard-boiled view of life on display were undeniably influenced by his uniquely American vision. Given the resurgence in hardcore, with bands like the Gallows and Fucked Up looking back to bands like Black Flag for inspiration, some of Pettibon’s imagery is sure to seep into the popular consciousness. God help us all.