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Richie Warwick; The House of Warwick

Mayfly Records continues to shine a well-deserved spotlight on those associated with it in some form or another. In WordPress form.

This is the Big Time, my friends… writ very, very small.

Today’s interview is with someone I personally find to be a shining beacon; one of the few of the modern independents that my wife and I can agree on – Richie Warwick of The House of Warwick! 

Mr. Warwick, as I forever address him, contributed an original, unnamed piece to the Mayfly Radio Vol. 1 compilation released earlier in the year. He did so without a second thought – and was one of the first to champion the concept.

Much respect all around. 

Video: House of Warwick: Stuff: Mayfly Radio Vol. One

 

Mayfly:  For those that might be unaware, please tell us a little about yourself.

Warwick: I’m a solo artist that records from home. I’m from North Georgia U.S. 

Played in and out of live bands for over two decades and started recording from home in 2017. 

What are some of the things that have shaped you?

I like vintage horror comics, Classic Sifi and every day is Halloween. lyrically I’m influenced by these things, but like any artist I’m influenced by everything. Hope, despair, and all that stuff in between that makes human. I like a wide range of music. If it catches me, I don’t care what genre it is really. 

Who are some of your favorite artists?

Favorite artists? Type O Negative, Björk, Talking Heads, Marvin Gaye, The Cramps, Sonic Youth, Iron Maiden, Portishead, I could keep going. But Type O and Björk I guess are my favorites, I think they’re a good mental balance for me. 

What are some of your favorite books?   

Clive Barker‘s, ‘The Great and Secret Show’, Dostoyevsky’s, ‘Crime and Punishment’ come to mind. Big Stephen King fan too.

Our societies have become a sports rivalry Writ Large: My Team vs. Your Team; in politics, in theatre, and even in polite conversation. Who or what do you inevitably cheer for? Who or what do you inevitably hiss? 

My team vs yours? Stars upon Thars, ridiculous envy. I consider myself an independent, I believe in individuality. I think social media has stripped that away to a degree. People judge one another by their memes and what have you. I still believe most strangers can sit down and after a good conversation, realize they have more in common than not. Extreme ideology, no matter what it is, is not for me. If people aren’t hurting one another, then I don’t care what they do. I hope for a day that the cultural war in this country fades away, and people become confident enough in themselves and their own beliefs to appreciate the differences of others. 

I commend and appreciate that answer. Thank you for it!

When was it that you decided that music was a passion? Is it a passion? 

Why? 

I grew up around music, several people on my dad’s side and my mom’s side were musicians. My dad was a drummer, sometimes he would take me to help set up before a show. As a small kid, if my head wasn’t wrapped up in Star Wars, I was running around, beating on pots and pans and playing air guitar. My Aunt had a great 8 track collection. I fell in love with the motion picture soundtrack to Heavy Metal at a very young age. Every time I went to see her I would continuously play it. I don’t think I saw that movie until I was probably 12 or 13. It was kinda of a disappointment, but I still like the soundtrack. 

My mom was a big fan of ELO, so I have a deep appreciation for them. My first cassette was Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil. A kid in the fourth grade brought it to school, and I immediately went home and asked for it. But it wasn’t until I saw The Return of the Living Dead when it came out on VHS, that I wanted to be a musician. It sparked something. My dad bought me a guitar at 14 and I found some friends to form a Garage Band, the Ramones became a big inspiration so anything we wrote came out like that, only not good. 

I’ve played in industrial bands, metal bands, punk bands, stoner rock,  throughout the years. 

What is it that you are trying to get across to the many listeners you have managed to snare – and to those you’ve not yet?  

With House of Warwick, I don’t know what I’m trying to get across to listeners. I don’t think about it. If people dig what I do, that’s cool: I sincerely thank you. 

If they don’t, that’s cool too. 

If I release a song and it goes over well, the worst possible thing I could think of is to dwell on that and try to out perform it with the next. I try and stay in a state of mind to just write whatever comes out and let it do its thing. 

Many claim that we do this artistic song and dance for ourselves – but if that were truly the case, we’d all pull an Emily Dickinson.

From where have you gained the confidence to put yourself out there (musically or otherwise)? 

I’ve been doing this for a very long time. I’m cool with criticism, I appreciate when someone is honest and tells me, that song sucked. 

Have you anything currently in the works?

I’m currently working on some new videos to put to older songs, and I’ve got a few new ones I’m tinkering around with. But I’m also in the midst of some collaborations, so when I get the time, I’m focusing on that 1st. 

This is lifted directly off Deb LeMotta’s line of interview questioning: If you could go back and give your younger self a piece of needed advice, what would it be?

If I could go back and talk to my younger self? I would tell them to stop compromising, write the music you want to write. I think I held myself back creatively for decades in bands. I spent a very long time, just writing lyrics and laying down vocals, never really giving a lot of input in the structure of songs. In my area, if you wanted to be in a band, it was either country, rock, metal, every now and then a punk band. I would’ve told my younger self, have patience and don’t join any bands until it’s exactly what you’re looking for.

Now, I don’t care anything about forming a band. I have no desire to deal with all the stuff that revolves around it.

Thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to ramble on. Much love and respect! 

The pleasure, indeed was all mine. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in the many independent music communities that could say anything bad about the man. And if they did, I wouldn’t believe them. 

As always: Power to the Imagination

With this post, I am going to share one of the single greatest bits of media subversions I have personally come across. As the bits presented here were originally released on SST Records, I can rip and share these tracks with my moral compass unblemished.

Fuck SST Records.

Negativland is a sound, radio, and electronic ‘music’ collective originally based out of the Bay Area in California. They have produced some mighty influential material since 1979. Strong proponents of Culture Jamming, they’ve gone far out of their way to subvert medias. To the points of being sued by U2, Greg Ginn of the aforementioned SST Records, and Shaggy from Scooby Do.

On their ‘break out’ album, Escape From Noise (SST 133) from 1987, the collective did a piece called ‘Christianity is Stupid‘. It used a rather heavy guitar riff and then sampled atop it a sermon by Estus Pirkle. It was cool. The kids liked it. I liked it.

From my own vinyl collection (w. heavily weighted stylus to remove as many skips as possible…).

Christianity is Stupid

On the success of that album, there were the inevitable calls for the ‘band’ to go on tour. At the time, it wasn’t possible for such a sampler and loops-heavy outfit to realistically hit the road. Off shows, sure… but an actual tour?

One of the collective’s founders, Richard Lyons (whom I deeply admired), devised an escape route. He found a real-life case of a young man who had killed his parents and suggested that Negativland’s Christianity is Stupid could have been a possible motive for the tragedy. The local San Francisco media fell for the bait and ran a comprehensive ‘investigative’ story about the band and its alleged connection to the axe murders.

For their next LP, they cut up this news broadcast and made it a basis for an incredible attack on the media and society that resonated strongly with me: Helter Stupid.

Fucking brilliant.

Side One: Helter Stupid

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Side Two: The Perfect Cut

The Perfect Cut (Canned Music)

The Perfect Cut (Rooty Poops)

The Perfect Cut (Good As Gold)

The Perfect Cut (Piece of Meat)

The Perfect Cut (White Rabbit And A Dog Named Gidget)

The Perfect Cut (11 Minutes)

The Perfect Cut (48 Hours)

As a bonus, here is the album that put the collective on the map: A Big 10-8 Place (1983)

… a collection of 7″ singles.

You’re So Bored, because You’re Boring.

I am a third generation punk. I embraced and grew old to Husker Du, Minutemen, Bad Brains, Dead Kennedys, and Flipper.

Oh, how I love original Flipper.

No less than respected punk legend Henry Rollins called Flipper, and I am quoting here:

“Blah Blah Look at my tattoos Blah Blah Denis Leary Blah Blah VH1 Blah Blah Heavier Than You!!!!”

And, well… if it is coming from Henry Rollins, you’d be silly not to take it as gospel. He is a spoken word artist and actor, you know. Just like Jello Biafra! And that crazy bag lady down the street who cries drunken soliloquies to her long dead child. But I don’t see her getting her own VH1 show or college spoken word tours, you two-bit carnies.

But I sure loved Flipper. If the bands around them played faster, Flipper slowed it down to a crawl. If the bands around them politicized their inner (and outer) angsty bullshit, Flipper boldly suggested that the Bored (i.e. YOU) were simply Boring. Frankly, they were the most subversive band of the punk era – and possibly beyond. 

Today I am sharing my Flipper-esqe 7″ vinyl collection for anyone that may be interested. These singles are long out of print. No harm, no foul.

Love Canal /Ha, Ha, Ha (1981)

Sexbomb / Brainwash (1981)

This here single is one of the most outrageous releases of the American punk era. Sexbomb, in itself, pissed off a lot of the more serious punkers – but Brainwash… Brainwash is special in its Subversion. They take a twenty six second bit and repeat it for over six (6!) minutes. I cannot believe the band had the GALL to release this.

And that’s why I love them so.

Forget it. You wouldn’t understand anyway.

Get Away / The Old Lady The Swallowed The Fly – 1982

Bruce Lose Solo!

What’s Your Name? / Waking To Sleep – 1983

 

 

Probably my all-time favorite song ever put to vinyl: Ashtray Heart by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band. Don Van Vliet dynamites the punks and new wavers for essentially ripping him off – in particular the ‘Man on the Porcupine Fence’, Johnny Rotten.

Fair or not, the man had a point.

And Beefheart’s word play in this one is simply off the charts.

You used me like an ashtray heart
Case of the punks. 
Right from the start
I feel like a glass shrimp in a pink panty
With a saccharine chaperone
Make invalids out of supermen
Call in a “shrink”
And pick you up in a girdle
You used me like an ashtray heart
Right from the start
Case of the punks
Another day, another way…
Somebody’s had too much to think
Open up another case of the punks
Each pillow is touted like a rock
The mother / father figure
Somebody’s had too much to think
Send your mother home your navel
Case of the punks
New hearts to the dining rooms
Violet heart cake
Dissolve in new cards, boards, throats, underwear
Ashtray heart
You picked me out, brushed me off
Crushed me while I was burning out
Then you picked me out
Like an ashtray heart
Hid behind the curtain
Waited for me to go out
A man on a porcupine fence
Used me for an ashtray heart
Hit me where the lover hangs out
Stood behind the curtain
While they crushed me out
You used me for an ashtray heart
You looked in the window when I went out
You used me like an ashtray heart.

Blawnox, PA – 1982: The old man that we called ‘Lung Player (LP) Louie’ deftly pulled out a well-worn album from one of the many stacks of vinyl slabs littering his two room ‘studio apartment’ (as he called it), and placed it on the turntable.  As he sat down with a weathered cough, he tossed the album cover onto my lap and laughed.

“You think that last one was weird, Stevie?  Check this one out…”

– Introuniversal Jam

And so I was introduced to Kit Ream.

In my previous post on Gary Wilson’s ‘You Think You Really Know Me’, I mentioned a half-hearted comparison to Kit Ream’s ‘All That I Am’ album. It might seem a stretch – considering the different types of subject matter that Wilson and Ream specialized in.  However, an underlying sense of paranoia, uneasiness, and individualism unites both.

Don’t Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly

While Wilson’s jazz-based work would veer into the avant-garde with a touch of early electronica, Ream’s work has been described as ‘cocktail-by-the-pool crazy’; a compelling mix of soft jazz and new-age hippy philosophy, spiced by a menacingly stoned lounge singer who may or may not have been heir to the Nabisco Cookie fortune.

And who, after the recording of this album, may or may not have murdered his best friend after experiencing a psychotic break.

Funk

And surely that is the biggest difference between Ream and Wilson: Gary Wilson, I would like to think, doesn’t actually talk to mannequins named Cindy and Linda during his spare time.  Sure… he is probably an odd duck – but aren’t we all?

The ‘Gary Wilson’ persona is a gimmick.  A good one, mind you – but still a gimmick. Kit Ream?  Look at that face on the album cover again and tell me his was a put-on.

All That I Am is far from an Outsider masterpiece.

But if you subscribe to the theory that art must challenge the viewer – or in this case, the listener, then surely Kit Ream’s opus is artistic.

The End

 

The album that put The Residents on the collective map…

** Side One:  Swastikas on Parade

** Side Two:  Hitler Was A Vegetarian

Noted psychoanalyst Erik Erikson professed that humans go through eight stages of psychosocial development in their lifetime; the most significant stages, obviously, being the earliest.  According to Erikson, all early stages were meant to prepare the human for stage seven: Middle Adulthood (35-55).

When I was near ten years old, my Uncle Larry (AKA: Donald to you) felt it time to introduce a ‘proper music education’ to his sheltered nephew. In his infinite wisdom, the first album he ever played for me was the Residents’ Third Reich ‘n’ Roll. Within minutes, I became so disturbed that I began to cry. His reaction, at least initially, was to turn up the volume and laugh at me.

Being ten years older than myself, I have no doubt that the end result that day was exactly what he intended. Teenagers, after all, have cruel streaks in them. Had he known that his act of sonic terrorism would set me on a bohemian-laced, avant gardening path, he probably would have been twice as pleased with himself.

We all could use an Uncle Larry in our lives.

The Residents mythology is a complex one. The group and their hardcore fans steadfastly maintain a pro wrestling like gimmick of complete anonymity; 50+ years into their careers and people still pretend to debate the Residents’ identities. Whatever. They can try to pull the wool over my eyes, but I’ve never fallen for it.

The Residents were an art collective made up of a group of friends sometime around 1969. These friends, primarily consisting of Homer Flynn, Hardy Fox, Jay Clem, and John Kennedy, were acid drenched fans of the avant-garde.  And Captain Beefheart. And Sun Ra. And Harry Partch. And all of the true psychedelics of the world.

The Grateful Dead? Pfft. They, like just about every big name psychedelic band you can think of, tiptoed around the avant-garde, pussyfooted the ‘Out There, Man’ act, then became a county and western band to a bunch of Dead Heads. 

Through sheer creativity and gumption, this art collective would end up producing some of the more powerful, interesting, and subversive material of the 1970s. Not bad for a bunch of hicks that couldn’t even play their instruments when they began recording in 1970.

After being largely ignored by the music press, 1976’s ‘The Third Reich ‘n’ Roll’ album and the companion cover of the Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ single released that same year would make a splash. For a year or two, the ‘band’ (though they never really were a band) became darlings of the hipster press; right up through 1979’s Eskimo album, the Residents could do no wrong.

In 1982, the ‘art collective’ officially became a duo. After a severe financial crisis brought about by the ill-fated Mole Show tour, Clem and Kennedy abandoned the Residents to Flynn (the singer, lyricist, and principle visual designer), Fox (the composer), and anyone that would collaborate with them.

Despite the fact that sparks of genius have been produced ever since, many early fans will suggest that the Residents began to parody themselves the minute Clem left. While the mythology and respect for them runs deep, I am not one to argue that particular sentiment.

When I began experimenting with electronica in early 2020, one of the first projects I wanted to realize was a soundscape opera based upon Euripides’ tragedy Medea. 

With the resurgence of ‘Feminism’ at that time, and how much attention it was getting, I thought Medea was a great metaphor. You have it rough, lady in the Starbucks checkout line? Well dig this…

Euripides’ Medea

I’ve worked on it off and on in that time, but needed – at the least, a voice actor to read as Medea. I got one for a spell, resulting in ‘Her Loathed Existence’. The following pieces represent Medea as she realizes her husband has betrayed her – and then when she makes up her mind to see through her horrible revenge.

If interested, here are the demos…

Her Loathed Existence

Her Mind Unfurls Such Dreadful Horrors

Bärkər: Synthesizers, Sounds
G.A.B: Recitation 

Engineered and Produced: Bärkər
Equipment/Instrumental VSTs used: Ableton Live, Ableton Push 2
Recorded: Cyclops' Lair - Middleburg Heights, Ohio

Cover art: jprocyonart

 

Out now on Bandcamp, Live: From the Basement – Kent, Ohio ’24

Recorded Live at ‘The Residence’s Basement’ – July 12, 2024
Private Sound & Discussions Event – Kent, Ohio

Performed, Engineered, and Produced: Bärkər

Equipment/Instrumental VSTs used during live recording: Ableton Max for Live, Ableton Push 2, Apple MacBook Pro, Arturia Minifreak, Arturia Tape MELLO-Fi (tape emulator), Ember (Micro Collage Machine), Replicas (Splice Sampler), and Strom (Generative Micro Texture Synth) by Puremagnetik, Focusrite Scarlett 18i20, Zoom H5 portable recorder

Mixed: Cyclops’ Lair – Middleburg Heights, Ohio

Do You Believe?

Live mix of a looping Strom generative synth line, an interview with Ohio’s own, the former Ernest Winston Angley, and an Ember micro collaging of said interview fragments.

 

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