Interview: Sugarblast Al Crisafulli Talks Sugarfest. Happening August 12th & 13th at The Citizen in Jersey City.

Dentist play Sugarfest at The Citizen in Jersey City This Friday.

Sugarfest

Al Crisafulli has been part of the New Jersey and national music scene for "20-something years." As founder of Dromedary Records, Al has released music from Cinema Cinema, Footstone, Speed The Plough, Stuyvesant, and The Mommyheads. In 2014, Al founded The Sugarblast Music Company whose stated aim is "to continuously release interesting, noisy music with zero consideration to what people might actually be interested in buying." Sugarblast currently has Stuyvesant and Tenterhooks signed to the label.

For a couple of years now, Al has hosted the "Signal To Noise" radio program. The show focuses on just the type of music that can be found on Sugarblast -- loud, noisy, interesting. Currently on WFDU HD2, "Signal To Noise" maintains a heavy focus on New Jersey and New York bands while peppering in independent music from all over. It's one of the only outlets currently on the radio where independent, DIY, loud, challenging rock and roll can be heard.

On August 12th and 13th, "Signal To Noise" will present Sugarfest at The Citizen in Jersey City. The two-day fundraiser for WFDU will feature bands who have appeared on the "Signal To Noise" program and who represent the sound and ethos the show promotes on a weekly basis. Both days feature fantastic bills with Dentist, Fruit & Flowers, The Karyn Kuhl Band, and The Brixton Riot on Friday and Stuyvesant, Sink Tapes, Miss Ohio, and Kerbivore holding things down on Saturday.

Fruit & Flowers

I had a chance to ask Al a few questions about the event and also to get his thoughts on the importance of a station like WFDU to the current musical landscape. He mentions this below, but I will be direct about it. If you value the kind of music represented by the bands playing Sugarfest, if you think it's important to keep some of the human element in the way we discover and listen to new music, then make sure you head to Sugarfest this weekend or make a donation in the name of "Signal To Noise" at WFDU.FM.

Hi, Al. As always, it’s great to catch up.

In the last couple of years, you started a new record label and became a radio DJ. Can you talk a little bit about the motivations behind spinning Sugarblast off of Dromedary records?

Sure.  After 20-something years of releasing records with Dromedary, I had started to become disillusioned with the way independent records get released in today’s environment. There’s sort of a formula for releasing a new record that I think strips a record of the passion and effort that went into creating it. This process of releasing music via digital media, emailing digital files around, communicating electronically in hopes of getting your MP3s some exposure on a streaming music service that uses an algorithm to determine which consumers may like your music is a little nauseating to me. Sugarblast is sort of a response to this. I could talk about this all day; but, essentially, with Sugarblast, I wanted to create a smaller label that releases fewer titles that all share a common aesthetic, and to try and keep each title alive as long as possible.

What are some of your goals with the “Signal To Noise” show on WFDU?

There aren’t a lot of resources for loud, guitar-based independent rock music to find its audience in New Jersey and New York. The goal of the program is to provide an avenue for people to hear louder, more adventurous rock and roll, to experience it in a live setting, and to take the process of discovering new music out of the hands of streaming services and put it back into the hands of human beings who create or facilitate it.

I remember the previous version of “Signal To Noise” on Blowup Radio. Hell, I appeared on it a few times. With the move to FDU, you’re now doing the show live. What are some of the differences — pro and / or con — going from a pre-recorded to a live format?

There are no cons.

Doing it live enables me to respond to the flow of a radio program. I generally plan out about two-thirds of each show, to the extent that I’ll come into the station with a list of bands and songs I want to play. The rest is organic. I’ll put together a mix of songs on the fly and then decide that the Stooges might sound great next, or the OBN IIIs or whatever. The only restrictions I give myself are the desire to keep the playlist as close to 100% independent as possible, and to ensure that our New Jersey and New York bands get the same type of exposure as bands from out of town.

The biggest pro, though, is the ability to bring guests into the program and have them set up in a proper air studio. I try and have a different guest every week, and it’s often a band that plays an acoustic set right in the studio. That’s almost always interesting, as we’re generally talking about loud punk or rock and roll bands that are typically accustomed to plugging in and playing. On our program we’re asking them to strip down and figure out a way to translate their music into an acoustic setting. Sometimes the results are brilliant.

On August 12th and 13th, you’re uniting your two relatively new endeavors with Sugarfest at The Citizen in Jersey City. It will feature several bands that have appeared live on “Signal To Noise,” plus it’s a benefit for the station. How important has an independent, listener-supported radio station like WFDU been to you personally and to bands like the ones on the bill?

As a kid in the 1980s, WFDU was my go-to for new music. Back then, you’d find a DJ or a writer you could identify with; and, a lot of times, their suggestions would be the best way for you to discover new bands. WFDU was responsible for my first hearing The Replacements, The MC5, and a bunch of other indie bands that just weren’t available to me through commercial radio.

All this time, WFDU has continued to soldier on at the left side of the FM dial, bringing eclectic music to people with more adventurous tastes. As a noncommercial station, they need to depend on financial support from listeners in order to cover their expenses. On the plus side, by being a noncommercial entity, stations like WFDU are less restricted by programming formats than the stations up at the top of the dial. That enables them to present shows like “Signal To Noise,” which can expose people to interesting music that they may not otherwise hear.

On the minus side, though, today’s noncommercial radio station competes for listeners with hundreds of other stations on terrestrial radio AND satellite radio, plus things like Pandora and Spotify. As a result, many college stations have had to make massive changes to their formats, just to keep enough listeners to help fund their operations. For a music fan, becoming a more active participant in the process by donating to your favorite college station or attending a fundraiser like Sugarfest helps ensure that we’ll be on the air, helping expose people to less mainstream music.

Sink Tapes

The bill for the show features bands from North Jersey, New Brunswick, Asbury Park, even Brooklyn. Has doing the show opened your eyes to more of what’s been going on in this region or are you the kind of guy who would have found it anyway?

Any music fan in New Jersey or New York is fortunate to have a seemingly inexhaustible supply of interesting bands. Doing the show hasn’t really opened my eyes to any of them, as I try and seek them out anyway – but hopefully it’s opened up the eyes of listeners who may not otherwise have heard some of the bands on the show, whether local or otherwise.

Karyn Kuhl Band. Photo: Dan Evans Farkas.

How does it feel to be getting back into throwing benefit shows after a few years off from the CamelFest shows you used to do with Dromedary Records?

I love hosting live shows because that’s what rock and roll is all about, so I’m really looking forward to it.

And you’re doing this one at The Citizen. North Jersey in general and Hudson County specifically don’t have a ton of places for independent, local bands to play since the closing of Maxwell’s as we knew it. It’s great to see a place like The Citizen throwing shows and supporting something like “Signal To Noise,” isn’t it?

Any time a music venue wants to step up and host live, original music, I’m a fan.  But when they throw their support behind music that’s a bit less conventional, it’s a business risk because if you think about it, which is more likely to fill up a room? A movie trivia night, karaoke, a cover band, or an original punk band? So it’s really important that when a venue is willing to step up and host live music performances, that fans of that music step up and support the venue by attending.

Finally, not that anyone wants to miss this, but if they have to, how else can they support WFDU and the kind of music you deliver every week on “Signal To Noise?”

If you want to make a donation to WFDU, you can do it online by visiting WFDU.FM and clicking the “donate” button, where you can make a secure, online donation. If you’re doing it on behalf of "Signal To Noise," please be sure to write “Signal To Noise” in the appropriate box – but it’s far more important to make the donation than it is just to give me credit.

If you’re the owner of a local business, music venue, record store, clothing store, etc., and you’re interested in underwriting Signal To Noise or any other of WFDU’s programs, you can visit http://wfdu.fm/Money-Matters/underwriting/ online. Underwriting enables you to offer financial support to the station while receiving a number of donor announcements on the station over a 13-week period.  It’s a great way to support the station while exposing the station’s audience to your message.

 "Signal To Noise" Presents Sugarfest takes place Friday August 12th and Saturday August 13th at The Citizen in Jersey City. Proceeds benefit the listener-supported WFDU, and you can RSVP to the event here.