The Shrine is a young, pool-skating, acid-eating trio of long-haired freaks. They play loud, fast, hard rock that evokes the heaviest music of the 70s and 80s yet sounds like nothing you’ve ever heard before—and with the release of their new album, their new tour, and their rekindled friendship with Tee Pee Records, they just might be a sound that everyone hears in 2012. To get to the source of the Shrine’s true illicit illegality, we met them at the infamous “Sludge Mansion” in Santa Monica, a punk house covered in graffiti and confused-looking roommates (but sadly, no wizard staffs). They play with Broncho and the Zig Zags tonight at the Bootleg. This interview by D.M. Collins and Kyle Souza.

As journalists, it’s hard not to want to pin you guys down to a specific subgenre, or a sub-sub-subgenre. Would it be accurate to say you are in fact metal?
Josh Landau (vocals, guitar): There’s some Robin Trower, and there’s some Rollins.
Court Murphy (bass): Once we went electric, everything changed!
There’s just a touch of falsetto on your new Bless Off demo, something that’s kind of missing from every vocalist in your wide oeuvre except maybe King Tuff’s stuff for Witch. Might you be hitting more high notes in the future?
JL: That’s awesome, it was almost like a joke at first, but then it seemed to sound rad so it stuck. You’re making me think I should do it more, it’s pretty fun. I like it, but I’m not King Diamond or Halford or someone. I’ll leave most of it to those maniacs. I bet it’s crazy to open your mouth and have that kinda shit come out.
I heard that some of you maybe worked for Rock ‘n’ Roll Movers. Is that true?
CM: I still work there. It’s awesome. It’s just a bunch of guys like me, pretty much, come and move your stuff into your new home. People actually really dig it. We’re rated #1 on Yelp! I work with a fellow who was Billy Ray Cyrus’ touring guitar player at one point.
Did he ever drop something and it had an Achy Breaky?
CM: Actually no, he’s a big motherfucker and can lift couches by himself, so he doesn’t have that problem!
You guys are avid skaters. What’s an odd band that you’ve skated with? Do you skate with, I don’t know, Skrillex or something?
JL: I met these dudes Buddy and Rick—Buddy Nichols and Rick Charnowski—these dudes make like Super-8 skate films—they made this awesome movie called Fruit of the Vine that’s a total no-nostalgia Dogtown trip, that’s all current-moment ‘This is what backyard pool skating is,’ like hopping fences, draining people’s pools, cleaning out shit. Me and my little brother—I was 15 and he was 11—we looked around for pools and we ended up running into those guys at different backyard pools, and ended up being friends with them, and years later are still friends with them. Real backyard pools are still more fun, like ones that were made in the 40s, 50s, 60s that are actual swimming pools.
Why is it that old pools are better? Just the danger?
JL: It’s something about the fact that a real swimming pool was not made to be skated in. It’s like re-directing that use in another way. There was a huge boom in the 40s, 50s and 60s where people were building all these swimming pools in their backyards, like a California dream. In the 70s, that whole thing crapped. There was an epic drought, and people didn’t fill their swimming pools because they wanted to water their lawns or they didn’t have the money and the whole pool skating thing really boomed. The fact of hopping into somebody’s house—a construction site or abandoned house, or an empty lot that’s been burned down and nothing’s left but the pool—it’s way way way more fun and exciting, looking at the swimming pool that some probably fat old woman swam in with her obnoxious husband.
They might have had sex in it.
JL: Yeah, they might have had sex in it, they might have thrown their dead kids into it after they killed them, and let them drown, and years later, after they’re in jail, the pool’s empty!
You know, all bands say, ‘We’re going to be loud, we’re going to be aggressive,’ but the word on the street is that you guys play so loud that it’s actually far beyond the level of loudness that almost any band achieves. Most bands can’t get that loud without losing their melody, but somehow for you it works.
CM: I can say it started from the very beginning. As soon as we started playing with Jeff, he was just so fucking loud as a drummer that Josh and I fortunately had really big amps at our disposal from the beginning, so we just kept turning them louder and louder basically until they wouldn’t go any louder.
JL: At the show we just played, opening up for Kyuss, I brought two full full-stacks, like four cabs and two amps and we set them up at the Wiltern—a giant fucking mansion of a place. … I set up the sickest guitar rig I’ve ever set up, it was like two full full-stacks. At soundcheck everyone was like, ‘It sounds amazing out there!’ and the soundcheck guy was like, ‘No, uh-uh, need to turn it down, you gotta turn it down.’ This is the Wiltern! It’s a fucking giant place! I use almost this much shit when we play in somebody’s garage!
How did you meet Chuck Dukowski?
JL: He lives in the same neighborhood as us, and his stepson, Milo, I had known through my old band that I played in—Rabies, just like a skate-punk band. As soon as we got our band going and off the ground it was like … the Black Flag guys were not listening to the Necros and Negative Approach. The Black Flag guys were listening to Mahavishnu Orchestra and Sabbath and King Crimson—heavy shit! I was like, ‘I think Chuck would like what we’re trying to do,’ so as soon as we got Shrine going it was like, ‘It would be awesome play to with Chuck’s band; let’s try and play a show with Chuck.’ Right off the bat he was super-stoked and saw us and was like, ‘I want to help you guys get your music released.’ It was the most epic, surreal thing ever! Because all the shit he did—SST Records, all the shit that he did—is my favorite stuff ever. … The other day we had an awesome party for our friend Harley who was moving away to college over at my house. Chuck and his family came. We were drinking and doing wizard staffs—like drinking a beer, you tape the next beer to the bottom of it. He was hanging out the whole night raging with us. It was a new concept to him, he was super-stoked. The other day when I saw him and his band played this backyard show, we were hanging out talking and he was like, ‘There’s no tape?’ I was like, ‘What’s he talking about? He’s on some tangent!’ And he goes, ‘You can’t drink without tape! How are you going to have a wizard staff?!’
CM: Being on tour with Chuck on the first part of the tour that we did two months ago, he was in the van with us and he was still the same old SST Chuck—one briefcase, telephone numbers, no GPS, just doing it as old-school as you possibly could, but still doing it just as much as ever before.
Jeff Murray (drums): He’s more humble about it than you could ever imagine. He never brings up that he was in Black Flag, or even that he’s a fucking musician. He’s just the most regular dude imaginable.
JL: The Goldenvoice epic three-weekend show at the Santa Monica Civic Center the other weekend that was a big deal, Chuck, a few days after, we were hanging out at his house … we jammed on a new Shrine song that we’re working on, that he gave me lyrics for.
What’s the title?
JL: Chuck’s title was ‘Leave Me Out to Rot.’ I think we’re calling it ‘Dusted and Busted,’ and it’s lyrics that he wrote for the song ‘I Love You,’ and the Flag guys—back in the day, in the 80s—were like, ‘That’s kind of like, a little hippie-ish or something,’ so he’s like, ‘OK, you want something gnarly?’ and he writes ‘I Love You,’ which is the most brutal relationship gone bad, like ‘You screamed, you bled, you lay on the floor, but now I know you’ll leave me no more’ song. He’s like, ‘If you want something gnarly, I’ll give you something gnarly.’ But he tells me these lyrics and I was like, ‘Wow, can we use them?’
I think that anybody’s who’s into metal and into the 70s (or not) sort of loves the Sabbathy, doomy, dirge sound. And a lot of bands do it that way, where they play with the super-slow riffs, and I love it. I feel like you guys have managed to do a sound that’s hearkened back very much to the 70s but that is NOT doom-oriented and is NOT slow.
JM: Playing slow for fucking 48 hours straight is fucking boring as fuck. I guess there’s this whole fucking stoner thing going on or whatever, and that shit is cool as fuck for like five minutes, but when people just want to be at this pace—daaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhh … nahhhhhhhhhhhhhh … nahhhhhhhhh … naaaaahhhhhhhhhh—for two hours straight, that’s boring as hell!
JL: Yeah, we don’t necessarily fit in one spot. Say we play a metal show, and we’re like, maybe the punker-looking band. But that doesn’t really make sense, and then we play a punk show and people are like, ‘Oh yeah, you’re a metal band,’ and that doesn’t really make sense, like, ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about!’ And so it’s cool because we’re right in the middle. We may not nail one thing, and you can’t be like, ‘Oh the Shrine, they’re exactly like this’ or something, but at least hopefully we’re striving to hit something else, something new—trying to make something and come up with something that’s our own.
CM: I should interject—in the very beginning of the band when we had our very first demo, like three fucking years ago, people affectionately referred to us as a Black Sabbath rip-off, which was totally stupid, but I think we’ve kind of grown in a very different direction since then.
A lot of bands are realizing that cool old metal is awesome and doing it in their own way—not just cool metal, but also sort of like, SST-era, non-punk, hard weirdness. Do you feel that you’re part of a wave?
JL: I don’t know who’s like us, really. Especially presently, almost more and more, we’re trying to make the music we’re trying to make because no one else is. It’s just what we’d want to hear. I feel like if I saw some band doing what we’re trying to do and nailing it, I’d be like, ‘I’m going to go play acoustic guitar!’ or something. Cuz there’s nobody around playing some sort of cool mix of heavy rock, but it has the energy and intensity of maybe like 80s hardcore punk or early thrash metal or something that’s really gonna grab your heart and stab you. It seems like more and more, everyone wants to be like, ‘Oh, this is the band that’s saving rock ‘n’ roll’ or ‘This is like, the revival! This is the 70s perfect revival! These guys are the last true spirits, the saviors of rock ‘n’ roll!’ At this point, I want to be the DESTROYERS of rock ‘n’ roll! Tear it apart, give it a new asshole, and do our own fucking thing.
So people should go to your show and be like, ‘OK, I’m done. What’s the rave scene like?’
JL: Exactly. They should give up, get into electronic rock, get a cat, and move to like, Albuquerque. Then we’ll destroy the electronic scene.
That sounds awesome.
JL: I don’t mean musically. I just mean physically. We’re going to go to electronic shows and break stuff.
What pedals do you use?
JL: Oh, me and Court both, guitar and bass, we have a Shrine fuzz pedal that our friend Magic made. It’s like a custom-made fuzz pedal. … Magic Spiegel, never forget the name! A legendary nose-ring-wearer, dreadlock-shaver, keep-under-his-bed-rotten-food-can, sleeping on the floor, setlist-storer, magical man! He’s who Heart’s talking about! … He made a really, really gnarly copy of a 70s Big Muff, and I was like, ‘OK, we’re putting the Shrine on this, this is awesome!’ It’s called the Shrine Fuzz! All of our buddies have bought one! It’s got our logo on it, and this epic naked chick goat demon character, and he sells them!
CM: Actually, what it is, it’s a reproduction of a Violet Ram’s Head Big Muff, which if you actually had to track down an original could set you back anywhere from $700-900. But he can build a brand new one for you for $100; he’ll sell it to you.
What power does facial hair give you guys? Is that the only real difference between punk and metal?
CM: Our facial hair brings psychedelia to punk. We’re ‘facial’ metal.
What are your favorite psychedelics?
JM: One time I was with a buddy of mine and he ordered the tree bark from some exotic tree from the Amazon that was supposed to have DMT in it—I don’t even know what it was—and got some food-grade lye, and mixed it together so it was essentially a line of ground-up tree bark about 8 inches long, and we each snorted one through a metal tube. And it was painful as fuck— this is a true story! He immediately just started throwing up into this bag of Taco Bell. I saw a bunch of green, wavy lines and was just thinking about life for a long time.
JL: When we were in Nashville on tour with Chuck, we played on our own at this place called FUBAR with a band, Hans Condor. After the show, I smoked DMT for the first time in the dude from Heavy Cream’s basement. We’re in a basement, and then somehow we’re laying under the stars, every little crack of light and reflection turned into weird alien shit. I smoked it first, and then after I smoked it I was hanging on a chair recuperating. Everyone was like, ‘Oh yeah, it’ll only last for a minute.’ I was freaking out—everything was like a space alien green, flashing, glowing, intense orb. I was in a zone, sitting there. I started freezing, and I was watching this cloud move in the basement. I was moving the cloud around with my eyes. I was trying to make it do whatever I wanted it to do and make it shape-shift, and I was trying to make it move at one point and it wouldn’t move. I was cranking my eyes to make this cloud formation in this basement move, and then the cloud erupted and shattered, and I got deathly freezing cold. I was like, ‘Guys, I’m paralyzed! This is crazy, I’m freezing cold! The cloud shattered!’
CM: Our buddy Ashton, our best buddy—like practically the fourth member of our band—on all of our tours comes with us. We were about to cross into Texas when we were on tour. We know that Ashton has weed and DMT and about an ounce of mushrooms on him. Everyone we talked to before we were going on tour said, ‘Don’t bring anything into Texas! You’ll go to fucking jail for months at least.’ And so we’re about to cross the border at a gas station and we’re like, ‘Alright dude, ditch your shit, we’re not taking any chances.’ He has this huge bag of mushrooms, he’s like, ‘Fuck! What do I do? What should I do? Should I eat them right now?’ He’s so bummed about having to throw out this giant bag of mushrooms—
JM: ‘It’s like throwing away a child!’ That you kind of liked!
CM: I was like, ‘Maybe you could make tea out of it.’ You know, it was a very last-minute suggestion. He gets a giant gallon plastic water bottle, runs into the gas station, and you know how they have the coffee machines with the red lever that pours out the boiling water? He fills this empty gallon water jug with boiling water, and cuz it’s boiling and it’s plastic, the whole bottle gets all wilted and it melts and it’s all fucked-up and it’s lopsided and shit, and he comes back with this lopsided bottle of smoking water. ‘OK! I’m gonna stick the mushrooms in here, shake it up, and everything’s gonna be FINE!’ He just puts all these mushrooms in it and shakes it up, so he has this bottle of brown water that’s full of mushrooms. I’m like, ‘How is that any better than getting caught? The mushrooms are right there!’ And he’s like, ‘Well, what do you want me to do!’ ‘I don’t care what you do, just get the mushrooms out of the car!’
You did your own tour with Howling Rain and Lecherous Gaze. Being in the genre of psychedelic violence, what does that entail?
JL: It’s a religious commitment of the highest being. It means a little combo of the most hard-rocking, acid-tripping, riffing motherfuckers mixed with the insanity of early 80s hardcore punk put together. It’s like a knife in your mouth by a really hot girl! Like, more than a steak knife. Steak knife and a grater in your mouth by a hot naked chick who’s on acid and has been converted by the most evil of religions.
How was it opening for Pentagram? Does Bobby Liebling have teeth?
JL: No. If he has teeth, they’re made out of gold, and they don’t belong to him. He’s from Baltimore, like Jeff, which is like the dirtiest city ever. Listen to Randy Newman: ‘Baltimore.’ It’s the capital of doom! It’s where people go to do evil things. Randy Newman is amazing; he’s so gnarly. That song ‘Baltimore’ is like the most ugly, brutal song ever. It’s like, ‘Look at this whole city I’m talking about. Nobody would want to live there.’ … I spent an hour trying to sneak into Royce Hall to see Randy Newman. I got in for his finale. Me and my buddy Ashton, it was like Mission: Impossible, James Bond, Rush Hour … we were wandering around the rooftop of Royce Hall, sneaking in the hallways and all the retarded closets. We finally ended up at the top of the balcony. We saw him play ‘Short People’ and some other shit. That motherfucker plays by himself, with a piano, forever. Never hires a band, never pays anybody, just doesn’t care one bit, just does his thing.
Which of your songs are inspired by Randy Newman?
JL: The Bless Off album is inspired by Randy Newman and his entire enthusiasm to destroy American society as it stands and reshape it as a redneck, ‘Baltimore,’ ‘Short Person’ society. He sees it that way as being more exciting. Political science! Let’s drop the big one, and see what happens? As long as Randy Newman doesn’t die, who cares?
Is there a question we didn’t ask, that you were really hoping we would?
JL: Oh man, I was thinking about this last night as I was going to sleep and jerking off …
Really? What were you wearing?
JL: A full skin of another human being.
What kind of person?
JL: I can’t tell you, because if I told you, I’d have to wear you.

THE SHRINE WITH BRONCHO AND THE ZIG ZAGS ON THUR., MAY 31, AT THE BOOTLEG BAR, 2220 W. BEVERLY BLVD., ECHO PARK. 9 PM / $8-$10 / 21+. FOLDSILVERLAKE.COM. THE SHRINE’S BLESS OFF DEMO IS OUT NOW ON RESURRECTION RECORDS. VISIT THE SHRINE AT THESHRINEBAND.COM.

If it weren’t for the Clean, today’s lo-fi basement dwellers would probably sound like budget knockoffs of solo Rod Stewart. Together with bands like the Chills, Tall Dwarfs and the Bats, the Clean helped local New Zealand label, Flying Nun, define “the Dunedin Sound,” “Kiwi Pop,” “lo-fi” … pretty much half the things people love about this certain kind of off-kilter music. Despite utterly demoralizing technical difficulties, Clean co-founder David Kilgour reaches across the hemispheres to talk about life before, after and during this most fundamental of bands—and to explain how his brother Hamish is exactly like Phil Collins. They play tonight at the Echo. This interview by Ian Marshall.

Can you describe the place you live—Dunedin, New Zealand—the town the Clean was formed in along with many other revered Flying Nun bands?
David Kilgour (guitar): Dunedin was one of the most southern cities in New Zealand—in the world, I suppose—on the south island of New Zealand. It was originally the capital of New Zealand, believe it or not, because of the gold rush. The city was pretty much built up around the gold rush. Weirdly enough the gold rush happened about the same time as the gold rush in California was finishing so it was kind of handy for them. Now it’s pretty much a university town. It has a huge harbor. It’s not a hell of a lot unlike maybe the feel of San Francisco, especially the weather.
How did your interest in music begin? Who, musically speaking, were your earliest inspirations?
Well, Hamish was born in the late 50s and I was born in the early 60s. We grew up listening to 50s and 60s music on the radio and also our parents’ music. As kids, my mother had records by Hank Williams and Harry Belafonte and people like that. It was probably some of the first music we heard actually. Of course, as kids we were mad about things like the Monkees and things like that. By the 70s we were pretty mad about music and we started collecting music. Vinyl junkies is what we used to call them back then. Out of that we got interested in playing music, thanks to punk rock. Punk rock gave us the inroad—showed us the way to do it, really. We had dabbled a little bit with guitars in our teens, but it seemed a bit too hard for us. So when punk rock came along we said, ‘Well, maybe we can do this.’
What was music like in New Zealand prior to the formation of the Enemy and the subsequent slew of early Flying Nun artists?
Pre-Flying Nun, I guess our biggest overseas export—one of our biggest bands generally—was Split Enz. In the 70s there was a really healthy pop-rock circuit, kind of similar to what England had, I guess. Lots of bands playing. Predominantly doing covers, I suppose, but there was still quite a lot of original music around in the 60s and 70s, even back to the 50s. There was a lot of proggy, guitar-oriented rock ‘n’ roll, there was your typical Top 40 dreck, throwaway pop, and the usual 70s schlock.
Is there any pre-Flying Nun New Zealand music you think people in L.A. should listen to that they may have missed?
That’s a hard question. I would suggest that you start with Split Enz. Their first album, Mental Notes, is a bit of a classic. I still love that album, actually. In the 60s and 70s you have Human Instinct. They were kind of a Hendrix-y psychedelic experimental band. There’s a guy kind of being rediscovered, I guess, a guitarist named Doug Jerebine. He’s kind of come out of monkdom and released an old album of his on Drag City, I think. There are a lot of great 60s pop bands in New Zealand. There were so many, it was sort of vibrant in the 60s. Bands like the Formulas and the La De Das … The list goes on and on.
Can you explain the significance of the Enemy in terms of the homegrown music scene in New Zealand?
The Enemy were friends of Hamish’s really before they picked up instruments. They were similar to us in that they were music mad. Chris Knox was the frontman. He went on with Alec [Bathgate], the guitarist, to form Toy Love and the Tall Dwarfs. They did a lot of work after the Enemy. I’m rambling now, but what I’m trying to say is that Hamish knew the Enemy and that they were music freaks and pretty much thanks to punk rock they started to pick up instruments as well and play. They were wonderful straight away—just a four-piece, three-chord pop rock ‘n’ roll band, but very punky and they made great songs straight away. They were probably the band that sparked things off in Dunedin, really.
Did Dunedin have a record shop in the late 70s akin to London’s Rough Trade shop—a place where music freaks would hang out?
For many years, we had a store that was called Astral Weeks; it was a second-hand record store and kind of an oasis to find new music, new old music I should say. But then there was another store that a friend of ours ran for a while called Eureka Records that was new music and he started importing a lot of stuff, so we were getting that early punk stuff and New York stuff pretty much hot off the press at the time. We were getting Sex Pistols singles a few weeks after they came out and it was a little bit of a revelation for us. Because then, the way things were, you might have to wait six months to actually see a new movie; it might not come to Dunedin or New Zealand for a few months. There were no email copies of magazines, so you might wait three months to get the new NME exclusive, which at the time was a little bit of a bible …
Do you remember the first record you bought?
It was either a really bad Jimi Hendrix album, like one of those ones he recorded before he was the big Jimi Hendrix, or the Bee Gees. I can’t quite remember.
When and how did you and Hamish make the leap from merely being brothers to becoming musical collaborators?
When we first started dabbling, Hamish and I were just making up kind-of comedy songs on a tape recorder, joking around, writing songs with pots and pans, banging away and being idiots. I remember we did a strange version of ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm.’
Burger should put those tapes out! And then how did the Clean come together?
I met this fellow Peter Gutteridge in my last year or two of high school and he invited me out to his parents’ house. I went out there and we had an old gramophone and a horrible old electric guitar. So, we plugged it into the gramophone and wrote a couple of songs. And so I went home to Hamish and said, ‘Look, we’re gonna form a band with this guy! I just wrote two songs with him and you should be the drummer.’ So that’s how it all kinda started really … Hamish and I at the time were still really mad on psychedelic garage rock—it came from anywhere, whether it be New Zealand or America or England or wherever, through the Pebbles albums and Nuggets. And by that time we were really mad on the Velvet Underground. We went to the music store one day to buy an amplifier, and I plugged into this amplifier and there was the sound, I remember it. It sounded like the 60s and a bit like Public Image. So Hamish bought the amp for me straight off, and right away we had a sound. But it’s partly from the way I hit the guitar. I hit all the strings—I don’t worry too much about whether there’s dissonance there or not. Especially in the old days, it comes through a lot. Live, I just hit everything all the time.
Can you tell us about Peter Gutteridge? His name seems to pop up here and there in the credits on good Flying Nun LPs.
He was in the Clean there for a very short period of time. I think we only did four or five gigs with Peter, but we wrote some good music with him. We co-wrote ‘Point That Thing’ with him, and some other stuff. He later on joined us in the Great Unwashed. … After the Great Unwashed, Peter went on to form Snapper and made one album, one EP and one single with Snapper.
Why did he leave the Clean?
Hamish and I were keen to go live in Auckland, which is the biggest city in New Zealand. At the time there was a really healthy punk/new wave scene. Of course the Enemy moved up there and turned into Toy Love, so we wanted to go up there and live with them and give it a go up there. So we kicked Peter out for being lazy basically—he wasn’t coming along like we were. [Laughs] As Peter later said, ‘I wasn’t a brother.’
Is it true that Hamish was more of a frontman in the early days?
Yes he was—he was the frontman for a few gigs and when we were in Auckland. He started the first gig or two on drums and then we put him up front.
And then back to the drums! A case of the reverse Phil Collins effect?
Exactly. Hamish was exactly like Phil Collins. Still is.
How did you end up recording a single for Flying Nun? The label had more or less just started when ‘Tally Ho’ was released, correct?
Yeah, pretty much. Roger [Shepherd] tracked us down, he’d seen us play a few times I think and had been fantasizing about starting a label. And he tracked us down to go make a single to see what’d happen.
Cut to a few years later and we have ‘The Dunedin Sound’ and all that. Was there some comparable Dunedin version of the fabled Manchester Free Trade Hall gig with the Pistols and the Buzzcocks? A legendary zeitgeist moment after which scores of youngsters were inspired to form bands?
It did happen pretty quick. We did a gig at Logan Park High School, it was when Peter was still in the band, this was like the late 70s I think. It was a lunchtime gig and there were probably just 80 kids there but I think about 30 of them must have gone out and formed bands. I think Martin Phillipps from the Chills was there, and Graeme Downes from the Verlaines, and various other people.
What did Robert Scott bring to the band?
Probably a bit of sanity, perhaps! Hard to say! I’m not too sure anymore, but possibly! When things get a little wild between Hamish and I in a musical situation, Bob’s the one who will try and hold it together. When things fall apart, we can always go back to Bob.
What does Hamish bring to the Clean?
When he’s on form, we’re on form. It’s a drummer thing, that’s a no-brainer. He’s the heart of the band. And it’s not for me to judge but yeah, he’s eccentric!
Who writes the most material?
It’s hard to generalize cuz every bit of the Clean’s music is so different from the last. There really hasn’t been a main writer I think. Perhaps in the old days it was me and Hamish, but now it’s hard to say.
Was there a bit of a George Harrison dynamic with Robert Scott in the Clean? The frustrated songwriter only allotted a few songs per album sort of thing?
No, not really. Near the end we were doing a lot of his songs, actually. Well, a good handful anyway. He took a while to catch up with us. I think I’m arrogant enough to say that. He did catch up eventually with his songwriting, and I think by the time he started the Bats he was starting to peak really—he just started to shine as a songwriter.
How successful were the Clean during your first run?
Well, ‘Tally-Ho’ went into the top twenty pretty much right away. It got up to something like five in the charts, then I think Boodle got in the top twenty, and Great Sounds with ‘Beatnik’ as the single, I think it might’ve gotten in the top fifteen or something. So those three releases were pretty successful in New Zealand. Which was kind of unheard of, especially given what people considered lo-fi. It wasn’t considered hi-fi, it wasn’t considered radio friendly or commercially viable, and it got into the charts.
So ‘Tally Ho’ was being played on the radio alongside hits of the day by Air Supply and Sheena Easton?
Yeah, stuff like that. They didn’t play ‘Tally-Ho’ on the radio, but it still charted.One good thing about the period is that there were a lot of music shows on television. We made a lot of videos—that’s probably how it got across to a lot of people as well. Funny they’d play it on the TV but not the radio.
The cultural importance of Flying Nun and the Dunedin scene seems to be growing exponentially in stature. We music freaks here in the U.S. have over-romanticized the Dunedin scene …
Yeah, it was really vibrant. Most of us were unemployed, it was post- the oil crisis and the beginning of corporate hell really in some ways. There was a lot of unemployment, so a lot of young people with a lot of free time, and unemployment benefits really funded a lot of music and art in New Zealand, especially in the 80s, the old dole. This was the period of the Chills, the Verlaines … We were always doing shows and rehearsing, everyone was always checking each other out and everyone was writing songs. There was so much good music around; it was a little explosion.
How do you think the Dunedin thing went from being a healthy local scene to worldwide record deals?
I think by the mid-90s Flying Nun got into a bit of financial trouble, so they had to look elsewhere to find cash I guess. The Verlaines signed to Slash, the Chills to Warner Brothers through Slash. One of the reasons that Flying Nun was started was as an alternative to the corporate thinking. I guess everything gets gobbled up by big business.
Why did the Clean split for a while around ’82?
I just got sick of it really. I just wanted something different. I started painting for a while, actually, and then I went back to music.
At some point or other you joined the Chills …
At the time, Martyn Bull, their drummer who they made Pink Frost with, was very ill with leukemia and the Chills were kind of on recess. I was wasn’t really doing much so I suggested to Martin [Phillipps] that we should form a band and that kind of ended up being the Chills again because Martyn bounced back from his leukemia and started drumming again with us so we were doing Chills stuff and also some of my stuff as well. We never did any live shows but there are some recordings floating around.
How did the Great Unwashed get going?
The Great Unwashed happened because Hamish bought a 4-track and he started recording on it and I started recording on it and so we ended up putting out an LP called The Great Unwashed. At the time, it was kind of an answer to the Clean in some ways. I mean we were thinking about the Clean, hence the title I suppose. Funnily enough I had to listen to some of that stuff recently for the re-master of it on vinyl, and I was having a great old laugh listening to it again after so long. It was just so … loose. [Laughs]
So after many years off the radar the Clean reformed full-on?
Yeah, just before Vehicle. We went back and did a tour of Europe I think in ’89 and Geoff Travis came to one of the London shows and found out we had a whole bunch of new songs. We said we’d carry on doing it but only if there was new music. So he offered us a deal and we made Vehicle for Rough Trade.
Is the Clean trying to make a statement with its music?
I think we definitely thought we were saying something back in the day and it was pretty confrontational with our sound. We didn’t hold back. It was, ‘Here we are, take it or leave it—it’s not going to be nice. It’s gonna be confrontational.’
Why do you think there is a renewed interest in the old Clean stuff—especially the early stuff?
You know, I don’t know but there’s been some sort of upswing and interest in that kind of indie rock in the last five years. And I don’t know why that’s happened. But there has been a sort of upswing in that sort of music, hasn’t there? Like the bands Real Estate or MGMT. No one’s trying to start bands that sound like, say OMC from New Zealand, who sold millions and millions of ‘How Bizarre.’ Yet it’s cool to reference the Clean.
I love the Modern Rock/Unknown Country phase of Clean from the mid-1990s. Can you talk about the direction the band was going in during those years?
Well—Modern Rock was the beginning of the reformed Clean, I suppose. We didn’t have any preconceptions with that album, we just wrote all of that music before we recorded it. And we recorded it in a hall out on the middle of a peninsula, actually—surrounded by sea. And Unknown Country was definitely an attempt to do something a bit different than what we were usually doing. Hence the title, I guess. It’s almost like our New Age-y/World album. [Laughs]
How does your more recent solo work compare with your work with the Clean?
I don’t know. I guess the Clean is a bit more primitive and bit more playful, perhaps. A bit more off-the-cuff. Especially the later stuff. I guess my stuff is more song-based. … The first solo album, Here Come the Cars, which is coming out on vinyl, was a deliberate attempt to not sound like the Clean. Well the production was, anyway. Because there is no point really. The Clean’s already done that so … but you know everything I do is in the shadow of the Clean. I’ve made a lot more music as a solo artist than I have with the bloody Clean. That’s what’s keeping me the busiest, actually.
What sort of music do you take inspiration from these days?
I love Endless Boogie. I’ve been a fan of theirs for a while. I make myself buy modern music now and then. I bought First Aid Kit’s last album and Doug Jerebine’s album. I’m always digging. I always find new old music as opposed to new new music. You know, the whole reissue thing that’s gone on and the internet, there is always something to find.
Let’s talk about some of the reissues that are about to come out. First off the Odditties re-release?
Odditties is these recordings that we did on a Revox 2-track that we bought and we taught ourselves how to overdub on by bouncing tracks. So we kind of learned the rudiments of recording during that and the only reason we bought that tape machine was because we discovered that the Rolling Stones recorded their first album on a Revox A77 and we found out there was one of these Revoxes for sale in Dunedin. So we bought it.
And your first solo album, Here Come the Cars—are you glad that’s finally seeing the light of day on vinyl?
Yes, I’m fond of that record, I guess maybe because it’s the first solo one but I like the sound of it and the selection of songs on it. And yeah, it’s gonna get its first American release which is nice. We’ve tried a few times to get it out over there and here it is coming out on vinyl and I always wanted it out on vinyl.
What do you hope the legacy of your work with the Clean will be?
As a band that made people happy … made life better for people. That would do. That would be a fine legacy.

THE CLEAN WITH THE BLACK WATCH AND REGAL DEGAL ON WED., MAY 30, AT THE ECHO, 1822 W. SUNSET BLVD., ECHO PARK. 8:30 PM / $12-$15 / 18+. ATTHEECHO.COM. DAVIDKILGOUR.COM.