To be a founding member of a seminal band is one thing but to found two seminal bands is something special. Lou Barlow falls in the latter category. After holding bass and occasional vocals duties for the first 4 years of existence of Alternative Rock masters Dinosaur Jr., Lou went on to define the Lo-Fi sound, at the helm of Sebadoh. Both bands are often cited as major roots of the eventual wave of Indie Rock.
These days, both bands are still going strong, both recording and touring regularly. Lou reunited with original Dinosaur Jr. members in 2005, only to deliver the best string of material of their career, in my opinion. After a recording hiatus in the ’00, Sebadoh released very solid albums in Defend Yourself (2013) and this year’s Act Surprised, out now on Dangerbird Records. Make sure to catch either band live if you get a chance!
– Ben F.
What have you been listening to the most lately?
The RAMONES. Tons of Ramones. My nine-year-old son discovered them and every time we are riding around in the truck, my son wants to hear the Ramones. He wants to know about them, he wants to talk about them.
Nice. Any favorite of his?
Well, I told him that my favorite Ramones song is I don’t want to go down to the basement. I think Blitzkrieg bop is his favorite although I asked him the question yesterday and he said all of them.
That’s a big statement, all of them!
Which is pretty valid. It really is hard to choose. Me choosing I don’t want to go down to the basement is from years and years and years and years of listening to them. That one in particular, I just love the chord progression, the lyrics, it just kind of perfectly encapsulates the appeal of the band for me. It also points to how they kind of invented Hardcore almost, with those kind of chord progressions that happened in that song. You know, this sort of rapid power chord progression that’s melodic…it’s cool. I don’t know, there’s just something really great about that.
Do you have a favorite era for the Ramones?
Pretty much anything before End of the Century, which was kind of the end of the line for me with them.
So I guess that’s mainly what you’ve been exposing your son to?
No, no, no, we went through. He really got into Dee Dee. He loves 53rd and 3rd and he loves the part when Dee Dee comes in to sing. He’s like, “Dad, that’s so cool! Is there any other songs that Dee Dee sings?” I’m like, “I think there’s one other one.” So we listened to Wart hog and I remember when the song came out. I moved past them pretty quickly when I was in high school and stuff but I remember that record, Too Tough To Die, being kind of a return to form and it did actually sound really good when we listened to it.
We typically ask guests to name three songs that you consider perfect in every way. I assume that I don’t want to go to the basement would be one of them for you? Do you have a couple more examples?
Ahhh, The Ramones are outside of the realm of being compared to any other music so I would prefer to choose three other ones. The Ramones are almost their own universe entirely. What they make, I can’t even really compare to anything else. When I listen to that with my son it made me realize that they were just completely unique.
Alright, let’s do three others then. So, please name three perfect songs and say what makes them so special to you?
Okay, these are not my top three songs of all time. I feel like I hear perfect songs all the time. For instance, I just heard Brass in pocket by the PRETENDERS while I was driving just now. That’s an absolutely brilliant song. It’s perfect. The lyrics are beautiful. The way she sings is incredible. Texturally, it’s really great, sort of jangly. I guess you’d call the Pretenders a New Wave band, but in a lot of ways, they borrowed from the ’60’s in this amazing way. It’s kind of a jangling song, yet aggressive, which is brilliant. Every time I hear that song, it totally draws me into it. I’m always amazed at Chrissie Hynde’s lyrics on that song and yeah, it’s perfect even just straight down to the way that it ends *hums riff*. It’s really beautiful, I love that.
Then, again, just the other day…Well, I was gonna say Smalltown boy by BRONSKI BEAT but actually the thing that makes that song great is the video that comes with it so I don’t know if i could say that’s a perfect song on its own. The video really has influenced so deeply how I see the song. But I guess, if we’re looking for a perfect video, that would be it. A real work of art, it’s perfect.
Girls talk by DAVE EDMUNDS. I think I spent most of the end of 2017 through 2018 with that song in my head, like every day. I never had a break from it. It was constantly either in my head or I had to be listening to it. It just totally hooked me. The song itself, I don’t know what it is. I mean, there are perfect songs that are perfectly written songs, that are just perfectly constructed, perfect pieces of songcraft. Then, there’s where we’re coming from. I’m a kid who grew up listening to the radio and what really made hit songs in the ’70’s had a lot to do with production, sort of like hooky production. So to me, quite often, the actual recording of the song and the delivery of it is somehow what makes it great. If someone played me an acoustic version of Girls talk, I don’t know if I would think it was a perfect song, you know? But his delivery of that song, and as I understand it, it’s an ELVIS COSTELLO song – a lot of people worship Elvis Costello and I’m not really one of those people – but that recording is great. Again, it’s influenced so much by the ’50’s and ’60’s but in a very kind of cool modern way, for 1979. The approach to the music, that’s where Dave Edmunds comes from. He had a really cool connection to the ’50’s and the ’60’s in his guitar playing and vocal style and production style. As I understand it, the recording of that song was done by ROCKPILE which was Dave Edmonds with Nick Lowe on bass, Billy Bremner on guitar and Terry Williams on drums and they formed this little core studio unit who recorded together for a couple of years. They did Nick Lowe records and Rockpile records and Dave Edmunds records and those recordings and playing on those records is incredible. Girls talk, I kind of consider at the peak of that group of people working together.
I‘ll have to look it up. I’m not familiar with it.
That’s a really great Power Pop song. It’s an Elvis Costello song so the lyrics are kind of mysterious. I still don’t really know what they’re talking about. And it sounds very edgy, you know?
Talking about lyrics, what would be some of your favorite lyrics? It could be a line, a song, or maybe just the work of a lyricist in general.
I love JONI MITCHELL. She’s a premier lyricist. As much as all of the greats are great, like BOB DYLAN and LEONARD COHEN and people like that, Joni’s attention to details is the genius of her writing. She’s such an empathetic writer and she’s very generous about what she gives of herself in her songs, which I think puts her kind of over the top.
Then someone like NEIL YOUNG and the simplicity and heart that he puts into a song. It’s so beautiful and it still just creeps up on me and just knocked me out now. As far as perfect song, lyrically, they both have a lot.
You know what I was thinking of recently though was, I believe in you by Neil Young, on After The Gold Rush, I think he’s basically telling us he’s breaking up with someone. There’s breakup songs, but then, to find a song about breaking up with someone that is done with the amount of compassion that is in that song, I don’t know I can think of anything quite like it. I’m sure there are plenty of examples out there but but it’s so moving. “Now that you’ve made yourself love me do you think I can change it in a day? How can I place you above me? Am I lying to you when I say that I believe in you?” It’s like, “oh my god! He’s letting somebody go!”
It’s incredible to think about the depth that he had so early in his career. I mean, the dude was in his early twenties at that time, and it’s like he’d lived five lifetimes in terms of his songwriting.
Well, those guys, I think it must have been such an exciting period for them because they were also discovering Bob Dylan. They were discovering other artists as they were happening. I think also, you know, the drug experience and the way the culture seemed to be opening up. I think for someone like Neil Young, who’s approach is so simple and so from the heart, all those those kind of crazy, really dynamic shifts happening around him, his response would be that kind of blend of his, which is just so simple and warm. You know, it’s not clouded, not overly clever, and musically, he always stays right with where he feels comfortable. That’s just remarkable, the simplicity and then the complexity.
Yeah, he’s untouchable to me. Well, changing vibe entirely, what would you say are some of the heaviest songs or riffs that you know?
There’s a song called Shine on Elizabeth. This band called COP SHOOT COP from New York City in the early 90’s. Although I think the song might actually be from ’88 or ’89, I’m not sure. It’s just got this completely crushing riff. It’s the kind of riff that really peak me, which they go from a very low to a very high and they swing back and forth, and you feel like you’re being dragged. It’s like a great wheel that they kick into. It’s kind of just an octave riff *humming*. They were kind of an Industrial band so they adopted a lot of this kind of Industrial percussion to it, with a lot of clattering going on. It’s a big, raw bass line going up and down, almost like going up and down stairs. There’s no guitarist. I mean, I think there’s guitar, but it might be guitar synths samples so it’s just these sharp shocks of guitar answering this big bottom. It’s very visceral, you don’t? The lyric that you can pick out are “Chemical sunsets shine on Elizabeth”, which refers to Elizabeth, New Jersey, which is kind of in the middlelands outside of New York City. There’s all of these oil things – the beginning of the Sopranos kind of scopes a little bit of that area – it’s like a huge industrial swamp, you know? When they would have written the song, in the 80’s, the way that the air would look like, it was more polluted so lyrically, to me, it’s evoking something that’s very familiar to me and it does actually create this anxiety in me because I always felt a lot of anxiety, going through that particular stretch of highway. So this riff going up and down, and the shocks of sample guitars and keyboards and to me, that’s super heavy. You know, and it’s not Heavy Metal, it’s not power chord, it’s not BLACK SABBATH. It’s a kind of strange New Wave/Industrial hybrid. I thought there was a lot of really heavy music being made in the late 80’s, early 90’s in New York, sort of a precursor to Grunge, which was Rock music. There was this whole other heavy style of music. Something like JESUS LIZARD would be one of them. Kind of Post-Punk, BIRTHDAY PARTY-influenced, and then influenced by stuff like THROBBING GRISTLE. And these bands were adopting those kind of textures and making super heavy music around that time.
What’s the first thing that strikes you when you hear new music? Is it the vibe, any specific instrument, etc? What makes you pick up on something?
The vibe. The atmosphere of the recording. That’s kind of the first thing. Just the ambiance of the recording, how the guitars are captured, how the drums sound, if it feels live, the crackling, that kind of stuff. But then something can also sound incredibly direct and super processed and that would also be something that would peek my interest. But yeah, that’s what I would hear first, something unique about the way it was recorded.
Is there anything that makes or breaks a band for you?
I guess it comes down to, do they make songs that I remember. I think that’s funny, like TY SEGALL, for instance, it’s really great textured recording and every time I hear it, I’m like, “What is this? Oh, Ty Segall!” But I never remember any of the songs that happened. He makes such irresistible sounding music and then somehow I don’t find my way into it.
What’s your favorite means of discovering new music? Is it live, on records, through friends’ recommendation, just dumb luck?
Well, I don’t know. Recently, I had to spend some time in bed for a while and there’s one thing I really like to do is, I go down my Facebook feed. I have tons of Facebook friends, but I mean, they’re just people who like my music. Mostly people I’ve never met, thousands of people and so my feed is this chaotic thing of just people that I don’t know commenting about their personal lives and the death of the pets and things like that, which is not very great, but one thing that’s really cool about it, is people posting like, “I just heard this, and it’s great.” So you can just press on the link and you can immediately hear the song that person said is great, and that’s really exciting to me. Whether it’s on Spotify or YouTube or Bandcamp, you can go directly to these sources and very quickly be listening to this person’s recommendation. I really, really like that! To me, I’ve been mourning the death of college radio for a long time, and I’ve had a hard time letting go of that ideal. Now, the only thing that really kind of replicates that for me, is something like that Facebook feed.
Something like Spotify is really fun too, there’s so much within that database. Whatever the algorithm is that they feed me with…for instance, they put this guy from Sweden, 1971, and I can’t remember his name, but he had this one Psychedelic record…I think he went on to do plenty of other things…But anyway, so I’m listening to this amazing thing from 1971 in Swedish with amazing sounding Rock music. What I listen to is chaotic enough that whatever the playlist that they feed me kind of bounces around, trying to replicate that and I get some interesting suggestions out of that, too.
Do you have any specific example of that happened recently? Someone you discovered like this?
Oh, God…what’s that woman’s name…Kathy…what the hell is her name? It’s really great. Some woman who put together a Folk Rock record in 1972.
On Spotify, I listened to the ROACHES for the first time. I’d never heard the Roaches. In fact, I almost probably avoided them and I don’t know why I did it, almost like an impulse, I said “I should listen to the Roaches” and via Spotify, I could and it was really really cool.
If we go way back, do you remember the first time you really appreciated music? Be it an album or a song?
I feel like one of the first things that I really heard was Bridge over troubled water, coming out of an AM radio in my parents’ kitchen. I don’t know when that was released but it must have been very, very soon after it was released ’cause I think it was current. I just remember hearing it and thinking “what’s coming from the radio?” It was really beautiful. It’s a beautifully textured song, it’s gorgeous. I don’t ever find myself listening to it as an adult and I probably haven’t heard it in years, but I’ll never forget what it sounded like coming from a speaker. I don’t know how old I was, maybe three?
From there, how did your musical tastes evolve like through elementary school, high school, and then as an adult?
At some point, my parents they gave me $1 a week to buy a record. Now I was probably five or six. We’d listen to AM radio all the time so I would hear songs on the radio that I really liked. My parents aren’t musicians, they weren’t big music people. We had maybe 20 albums in the house. They were all the big albums like HARRY BELAFONTE at Carnegie Hall or AL HIRT, this trumpet player who had these instrumentals that were very popular. GLEN CAMPBELL’s Greatest Hits. JOHNNY CASH at Folsom Prison. DYLAN’s Nashville Skyline. That was some that they had but that was kind of it, really. My parents didn’t get into Rock, they didn’t buy Rock and Roll records so anyway, we had $1 a week and I remember the very first single I bought was what I now understand to be a cover of a song called Hot Rod Lincoln by a band called COMMANDER CODY AND HIS LOST PLANET AIRMEN. I didn’t understand then what it was and how you would describe it musically but now you would describe it as kind of a Bakersfield, kind of ramped up with that really cool wirery Telecaster instrumental tone. Basically just really hot licks, blitzing and it’s very fast because it’s describing a car chase. It’s about a guy who goes to jail ’cause he speeds, he keeps racing his car. It was very exciting and fast. So I bought that thing and then after that, it was a succession of novelty hits from the time. A couple of ELTON JOHN songs from the time that I really liked and you know, ’70’s radio.
Then I moved from Michigan, which is where I grew up, and I was obsessed with AM radio when I lived there, I’d listen to it all the time and when I moved to Massachusetts in 1978, I started listening to the radio again but this time, I listened to FM radio. I found on the far reaches of the left hand side of the dial, ’88 to ’92, a totally different and incredibly wild selection of music. I realized that it was from this college or that college and where I was situated geographically, in Massachusetts, there’s a lot of colleges in the area that I grew up in. I was close to Connecticut also and so I could pick up college radio stations from all over Connecticut and Massachusetts, like at least 10 to 12 active, broadcasting every day, free form college radio stations. It was 1980 or whatever and I was hearing the first JOY DIVISION record, because there were DJ on the station that would go on trips and bring back the imports from England and play them on the radio. That’s where I heard the DEAD KENNEDYS for the first time. That’s where I heard JOHN CAGE. Then I also heard people just going on the radio and talking off the top of their heads, prank phone calling. It was just free form radio. It was just really exciting. Through that I found out there was a record store in my area that did sell imports. I had to get my parents to drive me there, which was a real chore but eventually, I would save up my money from delivering papers or babysitting and when I would get my trip to that record store, I mean, I bought like Love Will Tear Us Apart when it came out. I was hearing NEW ORDER for the first time. Then like, really early U2, I heard that on college radio and that stuff is great. And PIL. And then really scary stuff. You know, the Dead Kennedys were very scary to me when I first heard of them. Then things like THROBBING GRISTLE; I heard a lot of early Industrial music. This was all at these really cool developmental ages, 14-15-16, and this is the stuff I was hearing.
Then I figured out that if I really wanted to get records, if I wasn’t gonna get a ride to the record store for my parents, I would start mail ordering them. I figured out how to mail order them because a local news stand carried the Trouser Press, and then you wrote back. Even on the back of the Rolling Stone, you could send $1 to Ralph Records in San Francisco and they would send you back this little seven inch with four different bands on it. Like the RESIDENTS, the MX-80 SOUND, RENALDO AND THE LOAF, SNAKEFINGER, all of this kind of really experimental, progressive…New Wave for lack of a better word? But just weird, weird stuff. It was so much fun and there were ways that I could do that without having a ton of money. I would mail cash to record labels and hope I get something back, and I always did. Then once the Hardcore scene really kicked in, there was such an energy behind that wave that followed, you know, Dead Kennedys and BLACK FLAG and CIRCLE JERKS, and there was so much that followed that wave. That was my that was my introduction.
Then, I’m sure right around that time you started going to shows. What was your first one?
The first show I saw was a local Punk/New Wave show and there were three or four bands on the bill. One band was a Hardcore band but they kind of sounded like the PLASMATICS or something like that, but even more raw. Then there was the band that loved the CLASH so they all dressed like the Clash and they played very Clash-like songs. Then there was a band in bowling shoes and Hawaiian shirts and played B-52’s style, kind of kitchy, ’50’s and ’60’s influenced New Wave and it was a great show. I fucking loved it. It was so exciting. It was really the first show that I saw, this multi-band afternoon show in a porn theater that rented it during the day on Sundays.
Since then, what comes to mind as far as the most memorable shows you’ve ever seen?
Live, I really loved and I still kind of really love really aggressive bands. It’s music that I don’t really want to listen to at home at all. It doesn’t fit with my home life in anyway. Something like the METZ for instance, really great fucking new kind of noisy. They are a new band but they retain a lot of that energy from music like the JESUS LIZARD and that sort of early ’90’s sound. I used to call it Hate Rock, not because the music is hateful, but it’s angular and heavy. Not particularly Rock but just as hard as Rock could ever be? Heavier than Heavy Metal in my opinion. But, I can’t listen to that at home. I don’t want to listen to that at home anymore. Put on my headphones and listen to BIG BLACK. I don’t want to do that but when I saw Big Black for the first time, that was really great. They were two guitars, a bass player and a drum machine and it was just this sheer spikey noise, this rattling…it was great! I loved it. Another great show.
Is there any bands that you’ve always wanted to see live but never got the chance to catch them?
NEIL YOUNG, I’ve never seen him and I’d love to see him.
There’s still time!
Yeah, there’s still time! *Haha*
Even at his age, it’s still one of the heaviest show that you’ll see. Especially if it’s with Crazy Horse, they’re just crazy heavy. It’s unbelievable.
Yeah. Yep. I’ll catch him in any form!
Still on the topic of shows, what would you say is the most impressive band that you’ve toured with? The one that you had to watch their set night after night? What did you learn from it?
Hum. Well, Sebadoh toured with CLINIC once and they were just starting, they weren’t big at all. I think they were playing some of their first shows actually, opening for us. In the late ’90’s, they opened for us on a whole tour and they were just one of the most radically superior bands! *Haha* I just thought texturally, they were geniuses at what they did live. Right away, they knew exactly where everything belonged. They had the tones of all their instruments, just texturally one of the most competent bands I had ever seen. It was so atmospheric. Aggressive but not too aggressive. They were playing with a lot of really cool influences and it was great. I mean, I would definitely go out every night and watch Clinic and I was almost a little ashamed of myself, they were so good. “Oh dear lord!”
“I need to follow THAT now.”
It would depress me. I just felt like I was wallowing in this sort of outmoded style and texturally just completely missed the boat and I would be fumbling in their wake. That’s exactly what happened every night. They were amazing.
That’s really interesting. Typically, for most people, the take on this question is to mention them opening for someone else. It might be the first time someone mentioning someone opening for them.
Oh really!? *Haha* Wow. Well, I always remember a really great opening band.
At the same time, it can be a positive, where it pushes you to bring your A-game every night.
Oh, no actually, it destroyed me! *Hahaha* It depressed me so much. It completely drained me of any confidence I probably didn’t have in the first place. No, it just made me put things into perspective. That’s one thing that I’ve always really hated about…I mean, the sort of concept of Punk Rock was that you were fighting against this kind of bloated Rock music. Philosophically, what it actually really means -which I think is really interesting-, it’s a timeless thing. Music like Punk Rock, it was sort of demanding introspection. Demanding that you look at what you’re doing and demand that you’re moving forward. It was just real. Beyond spitting on the establishment, it was actually this kind of vital, artistic kind of movement. Real edgy and constantly kind of changing and…I don’t know, the concept was really exciting and I don’t know what my point is now cuz I’m rambling! *Haha*
Do you have any unpopular music related opinions that you would like to defend? Perhaps a hidden gem type of thing, where most people gravitate towards a popular record or song, but you’re all about this other, obscure one?
One band that I think is the best…When I listen to them, they make me so crazy and I get so excited by their music. Every time I hear it, I’m just like, “obviously, this is the best band that has ever recorded!” This band’s first album was the greatest debut album of all time. They were completely ahead of the curve and they’re still ahead of it. I meet people occasionally that have the same passion for this band but they’re called the MUSIC MACHINE, they are from Los Angeles, 1966. They put out two records, they had a hit song called Talk talk, which is one of the most fucking amazing pieces of Proto-Punk you could ever hear. It was 1966 and they looked insane. They were obviously totally knitted by The BEATLES, but they dressed completely in black, dyed their hair black, had black beatle cut. They wore these big medallions around their necks, and one black leather glove. The whole band was outfitted that way. They played on Dick Clark’s bandstand and you can see that. I implore anybody, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, you’ve got to go watch this. If you’re anybody who’s interested in the history of Goth music or heavy music, I swear to God, this band is ground zero. And I’ve never EVER have been able to have that conversation of this open appreciation of the band with anybody that I know.
I know for sure what I’m doing after we’re done with this call!
Check it out. That’s just the tip of the iceberg with that band. The bass player of the band went on to become this very, very successful Rock producer. He worked on Rumors by FLEETWOOD MAC and all this other stuff. The lead guy, of course was totally out of his fucking mind, and he ended living by himself in a garage, in the desert. He was weird and really intense. He wrote some of the most ridiculous lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life, so crazy ridiculous that I love them. I can never find anybody I can talk about that band the way that everybody else I know would talk about LED ZEPPELIN or RUSH. That’s always the default. If you start defaulting to Classic Rock, you’re going to be talking about Jimmy Page and Bonzo and you know, those admittedly amazing records that I love as well, but the MUSIC MACHINE, that band has never, ever got its due. I mean, I’ve never heard anybody like, “Oh my god. How did we possibly miss this?” They should be given credit for being the progenitors of like every kind of Punk, fucking Psychedelic…Ah. I don’t know! *Haha*
Well, you’re selling it really well right now so maybe this is the launching pad to their fandom.
Their incredible resurgence. I don’t understand why not someone like Jack White hasn’t reissued everything that they’ve done, you know? I guess there’s some aspects of the band that is so crazy and so particular that it probably rubs a lot of people totally the wrong way but I’m not one of them.
What band or artists do you believe as achieved the most perfect discography?
Perfect. Hum. Well, I mean, I guess there’s that band THEE OH SEES, I’ve yet to hear an Oh Sees record where I’m not like, “What the fuck? Why are they so good?”
Yeah and they’re pumping them, year after year. They have so many records.
Yeah, they’re pumping them out and they sound fucking awesome. Those records, I have to say, out of anything I’ve heard in a really long time, I can’t even think about something as good. It’s almost a succession of a ’60’s band.
I mean, talking about amazing, you know, the first four RAMONES album are unbelievable, just such a wonderful thing. And the first four KINKS records. The WHO records, JIMI HENDRIX, stuff like that. Their beginning runs are just so breathtaking. I guess, talking about it now, I really gravitate towards the more energetic stuff. I wouldn’t be talking about VAN MORRISON or The BAND or even BOB DYLAN. That stuff is probably amazing but I always gravitate towards the energy of a band.
What are some up and coming artists that you’d like to recommend?
Sebadoh just toured with a band called WAVELESS, from Minneapolis, Minnesota. For lack of a better description, they’re a Shoegaze band. I’m a huge Shoegaze fan since the ’90’s and this band kind of does that but it’s heavier, and it’s harder. The vocals are obscured with effects, which normally is not my favorite thing but they just have this very sharp, homespun Shoegaze sound. The guitars are kind of really atmospheric, kind of a drowning in minor chord-esque Pop band.
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