by Max Gorbman

I dislike the term “grunge.”  Genre, label, whatever.  It does not evoke flannel and Nirvana, but rather high rise condos and meticulously groomed sidewalks.  It is the term of the commoditization of the concept of authenticity itself, coined by the conquerors.  I dream of the community that became a “scene” that became a writhing mass of idiots jerking each other off for free drinks.  But perhaps it has always been this way and my dream is nostalgia, which is the worst of all.

I went to the Chris Isaak show at the Little Creek Casino in Shelton on Sunday. I had never been to a casino show before (the closest I’ve been is probably the Blue Oyster Cult show outdoors in Elma five years ago, in which the musicians seemed strangely oblivious to their locale and relied heavily on the familiarity of their tunes to overwhelm the audience into confusing the aggressive goatee of the young man theatrically playing the bass for part of the organic entity which used to produce great albums), but being quite familiar with the buffet, expected the same type of satisfaction- the kind one gets from stuffing oneself on greasy delicacies scooped with the abandon of an individual drunk on choices from a trough onto an eternally clean plate. But while usually at the casino the sensation of overabundant materiality I get at the buffet ends up quickly dissipating at the roulette table, where I rediscover the true limit to my selfhood at the bottom of my pocket, on this Sunday evening my thirty five bucks bought me a lingering sense of expansiveness. Let me you tell you how my money works.

Chris Isaak was already playing when we got in. He was wearing a blue suit, sequined in what from the distance appeared to be a pattern of some kind of trippy flower, which refracted the many colored spotlights at all times, giving him a self conscious shimmer on stage. Two video screens from the side of the stage provided unflattering closeups. On the screen, his face appeared appropriately old (it seemed like some skin around the bottom of his face was sagging a little, giving his cleft chin a slightly undesirable definition), but he was well groomed and blue eyed and could alternate from looks of distant intensity (while he was soloing) to affable southern familiarity (while mildly cajoling the crowd with various types of innuendo) in an easy, human manner that I’m gonna call sexual. His band was old and they got much fewer close ups. It was really the spirit of old time rock n roll in there. Because they were old, and the first thing Chris Isaak said was “thank you for supporting live music- we play all this”. There’s something about having to note that by witnessing live music you are supporting it (as though, like a frail old rockabilly it needed the shoulder of some confused gawker to lean on as it hobbled back to the green room) that evokes that nostalgic past which rockers are so paranoid about losing that they constantly engage in schizophrenic discourses on authenticity. But Chris Isaak was celebratory. At one point the scurrying stage hands wheeled in a neon sign that said “Memphis Recording Studio” and proceeded to play a series of obscure 50’s rock numbers (“Dixie Fried”- about getting fun drunk in a creaky bar with some poor people is the only one I can remember) that ended with a flaming piano/foot music “Great Balls of Fire”. He was attempting to channel the spirit of the Sun rockers. And although everyone knows that what was dangerous in the fifties appears silly now (street thugs with sweaters? communists? juvenile delinquency? foreign people? please), when Chris Isaak referenced being drunk  or drinking (“I know the show’s running a little late, but we’re going to jam for a bit- so go ahead and call your babysitter and tell her to give your baby some gin”) it was clear from the cheers that people of all ages love to party, and that partying is more fun when you presume that someone doesn’t want you to party, and by partying you are saying fuck you to someone besides yourself. This being said, I can’t say the rebellious spirit of partying ruled the night. The rockabilly numbers would occasionally drag a little, my attention would wander to an image of a puffy hand caressing a whammy bar in spurts on the Diamond vision for a moment before being hoisted back on stage by the blue collar guitar moves (swagger, hop, three men in a row, bow and kick, crouch intently etc.) constantly being executed by the professionals on stage. Chris Isaak is more known for his creamy falsetto, and it was a playful (thank lord) sexuality that kept me interested. I can’t presume to be the only one. At various points Chris Isaak wandered into the audience to sing passionately into a customer’s eyes, sat tenderly on a folding chair near a starstruck old maid, hand selected some women to grind his bassist, and made eye contact with plenty in the first row. All without appearing grimy somehow. How much was ok here? More than the workplace, less than the bedroom. Sexuality can be a very clumsy thing in the hands of a bluesy white guy on stage- Chris Isaak reassured me with his smoothness. The smoothness is his trademark I guess. When he held out those notes for over a minute it was definitely tantric.

At these kind of shows the encore is mandatory, and they didn’t make us wait too long before he came out wearing a suit made completely of four inch mirrors. That was really impressive- I haven’t seen someone wear something that fashionable at a rock show for some time, and I go to all these hipster things where I thought people would be taking things like that into consideration. Complete entertainer, getting ecstatic crowd love by giving people what they want. Kind of the opposite of most show experiences I have, because in my scene music is all about art- it’s supposed to be art or anti art or whatever. When I do see bands that focus more on entertainment it’s awful because they’re usually poor and desperate, there’s not enough people usually in the room to get that peer pressure induced laughter that the majority of stand up comedians abuse and they’re willfully excising any shred of creativity from their music because they’re paranoid about art and what it means. Looks like you have to be rich, have at least five gorgeous songs, be able to treat people on stage and on the ground as humans, and be funny and attractive even when old to pull it off. Not so much of a bummer as it seems, because if I was this lavishly entertained every night I’d be so calloused during the day that I’d have to intravenously inject vitamins just to feel real.

— Dylan Sharp

[This interview with Colin of Slice Harvester was originally to be for the (coming soon!) Nuts! #9. But in the end it couldn’t be included because of space limitations. It’s a great interview though, so it was decided to be published here. Enjoy!]

Colin Atrophy has eaten a slice at every pizzeria in Manhattan. It took two years and four months to eat at the (almost) 400 pizza shops. Each slice was reviewed, posted on his blog, and eventually printed in his fanzine, Slice Harvester. This interview took place over the phone in December of 2011 while Colin was at home in his Brooklyn apartment.

X: Over the course of those years, how did you keep yourself motivated and writing about pizza over and over again? How did you keep it fresh for yourself?

Colin: Various ways. A million people have said it, but I think Cometbus said it most succinctly. I was like, “I’m sick of writing about pizza.” He was like, “You don’t write about pizza. You write about friendship and hating the world.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, that’s true.” So keeping the writing fresh was easy because I always had someone going with me to eat the pizza. Aside from a few instances where I went with near strangers, who mostly turned out to be pretty cool, I chose people very specifically. People like my friend Caroline, [from whom] I draw a lot of my inspiration just from being alive and being a creative person, from the very fact that they exist. These are people that inspire me. These are people that I’ve worked with before creatively, or that I wish that I could have worked with creatively, but we don’t really share a medium. I want to take them and involve them in this project. 

As for writing about the pizza, that shit got so old. I was trying to say really gross stuff to keep myself entertained. Or like, I went to this pizzeria called Underground Pizza, that sucked, and I cribbed the first paragraph from “Notes From Underground,” the Dostoyevsky, high-school kid book. I tried to write the rest of the entry in the voice of the underground man. You know, giving myself little bullshit creative exercises to keep myself entertained. And I actually got a bunch of criticism because people said I didn’t talk about the pizza enough at that place. But I thought it was pretty apparent that it sucked, so who cares? I thought by then my readers had a pretty firm understanding that I wasn’t writing about pizza anymore. The project had sort of moved on.

X: How has your relationship to pizza and New York changed and what have you learned?

I had this notion that pizza was all really good. And it’s not. Most of it sucks. Because most of anything sucks today. Because there’s so much of everything. I think one thing that was kind of dishearteningin doing this project is realizing that most people take the easy way out and do things for pretty shitty reasons, like, just to make money. Which is not saying - I’m not at all Crimethinc-ing you and telling you nobody should make money. I fully plan to make as much money as I can off of Slice Harvester so I can not work. Without compromising, obviously. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with paying my rent off a creative project. I busted my ass to do this. And I’m continuing to bust my ass. I’m not speaking pejoratively, but when that’s the only goal, when you open up a place that serves food…

Eating and feeding someone is a intimate act, on a very basic level. It can and should be an incredibly intimate act. And at a good pizzeria, even with fast food, you go in, “Gimme a regular slice,” you get your slice, you walk out the door, you’re eating it. There’s an intimacy there. There should be. Because the people that make that pizza should care about the pizza they’re making and they should care about their customer. And if they don’t, there’s a problem. And my assessment, based entirely on speculation, is that a lot of these pizzerias were planned out on spreadsheets before they were planned out in people’ hearts. That’s a fucking bad way to start making food. One of the most awful things about contemporary capitalism is that people are alienated from everything that makes them human. And that’s horrid.

This kid that I know writes this zine, and he wrote this essay one time about pizza being this alienating food. Where like - You go by yourself to the pizza shop and you get two slices, you walk down the street alone and you stuff your face with this food that’s not even good for you. I think that speaks more to the subjectivity of the pizza eating experience, in a way that it can carry itself to whatever mood you’re in, than it does about the basic nature of pizza. Because I think about pizza and I think, like, “Oh I just helped my friend Pete in his apartment. He’s going to order us a pizza. And then we’re all going to all eat the pizza together.” Or like, “My boss is trying to give everybody a treat. He’s going to order everybody a pizza.” It’s a friendship based activity. And at the same time, eating pizza alone, for me, is not a lonely, solitary and sad thing. I used to have this cargo bike that had all these baskets on it, and it fell on my roommate’s head, and I gave it away because I was mad at it. But, I used to buy four slices of pizza. I’d just get them on paper plates and I’d stack them one on top of the other - it was always a mess by the last one - and I’d lay them down in the basket on my handlebars. And I’d just bike around for, like, two or three hours. Bike around town eating pizza. Biking real slow, just looking at stuff. It was one of my favorite activities.

X: That sounds so fun.

Yeah it’s great! Biking and eating is great. I used to love eating King Cones while I was riding my bicycle, but we’re getting into new territory here that we don’t need to cover.

Colin in his bedroom, summer 2010. Fanzines are available for $3 ppd from Slice Harvester / 442D Lorimer St #230 / Brooklyn, NY 11206 or can be ordered  through sliceharvester.com