Miscommunication 101
by Matt Chrystal
Contest: Leave a comment here or on the Facebook post about this article on the CoolDad Music Facebook page between now and noon tomorrow; and, from that, we'll pick a winner at random to receive two tickets to The Dwarves' show at Wonder Bar in Asbury Park on Friday, May 11th, with special guests Hot Blood.
I did not get into punk rock until my early- to mid-thirties. Sorry, folks. I guess I just needed those extra two decades of life experience to build up enough angst to want to rage against the trappings of my middle-class, suburban surroundings. So when CoolDadMusic asked me to interview Blag Dahlia of The Dwarves, I had basically nothing to go on. My only exposure to the band was from the poster for their upcoming show in Asbury Park and from the few album covers that I had seen on the shelves at Vintage Vinyl. You might think that would be enough to give me a basic idea of what I was in for; but, still, I did not know the scope of it all. I was about to immerse myself in the fast livin', no fucks givin', hard partying, blood soaked, controversial, vulgar, finger in the face of conformity, myth vs reality, rock n f'n roll scope of it all that was the saga of Blag Dahlia and The Dwarves.
The Dwarves are the seminal punk rock / hardcore band, often referred to endearingly as scum-punks, who have a storied career, rich with tales of fighting with each other and audience members on stage at shows, of members performing in lucha libre masks while others are clad only in jock-straps, if anything at all, all the while singing their merry songs about murder, rape and substance abuse.
Controversy has followed the band since their start in the late 1980s with album covers depicting naked women (and an actual little person) covered in blood and a laundry list of song titles and lyrics that detractors claim glorify drug use and promote misogyny and homophobia. It would seem that words like "misogyny" and "homophobia" have become as synonymous with The Dwarves as the terms "punk" and "rock n roll."
But here's the tricky part. Yeah, sure, albums entitled Free Cocaine (1988) and Blood, Guts & Pussy (1990) might not do much in the way of dispelling their bad reputation; but, perhaps, we shouldn't be so quick to judge a book…errr an album... by its cover. Blag Dahlia has long claimed he writes songs about characters and that the songs are stories from those characters' points of view. They aren't necessarily his. I mean, that is a writing device employed by almost any writer who has ever picked up a pen. Should we be so quick to lambast Blag and The Dwarves?
I decided to do some homework, and I dove into the deep catalog of The Dwarves. I came out on the other side in need of some air. The music made me want to bang my head and shake my fist in the air, but the lyrics made me feel kinda sticky and kinda guilty, like I just got caught watching my first VHS porn.
Was Blag entertaining listeners and trolling critics by presenting ridiculous, over the top characters and sending a message of "FTW" to supposed pitchfork-carrying champions of political correctness that want to quiet him down? OR has Blag been trolling all of us even harder for over three decades by telling us that is what he is doing just so he can continue to glorify drug use and promote misogyny under the guise of artistic license?
Seriously, what was I getting into here? I thought I was just going to talk to a musician about his new album and maybe get a quote or two about life on the road. I did further homework and read some older interviews that Blag has done, and it seemed he stayed in his "bad guy" character and gave quick, humorous, often flippant answers to questions. And nearly every interview found him in defense of The Dwarves and their music. What had I gotten myself into?
Much has changed in the world since The Dwarves released the inspirational, Blood, Guts & Pussy back in 1990, but The Dwarves seem to have found a way to be timeless. These eccentric scamps who once gave us the mantra, "Fuck You Up & Get High," are still continuing to get "Down and Dirty" with 2018's Take Back the Night. This record is the latest release in a long line of introspective albums depicting characters facing relationship issues and the occasional existential crisis.
In the track, "City by the Bay," the narrator speaks of how he garners "queer" looks because of something he said that "wasn't PC." Is this a reference to Blag and the last three decades of The Dwarves' album covers, song lyrics, and onstage antics…? Or was this just a fictional character making a fictional statement? So many questions! It was time I got some answers.
I called Blag on the phone and caught him while he was taking a mid-afternoon stroll along Newport Beach. To my surprise, I didn't get the "bad guy" character. Instead, I got several different characters throughout the course of the call. I got to speak to Blag, the artist who was eager to have a conversation about his love of music and literature. I got Blag, the rational human being who is concerned with society's continuing lack of communication and understanding when it comes to opposing viewpoints. I got Blag the enthusiast of Icelandic sheep farmers. I got Blag, the egotist who wants the world to now and forever know that The Dwarves are the best damn band in the world; and I got Blag, the touring musician who is just looking to rock out, catch all the feels, and take a shit in a clean bathroom.
Was Blag just playing a character? Was Blag just trolling me? I don't know. I'll let you be the judge -- that is, if you decide to continue on to read to my interview. I came out of it thinking that Blag made and brought up a lot of great points. He also likes Birdcloud, so that makes him pretty ok in my book… I think.
BLAG DAHLIA: For this one, I wrote a lot of poppy bubblegum songs, and the rest of the guys came up with some intense hardcore songs; so we thought that maybe we can make another one of those Dwarves' records where it kinda ricochets between the hardcore and bubblegum and leaves everybody scratching their heads. It switches up about every 60 seconds, and that is something we have been working on for a long time. There is a very retro influence in The Dwarves that is pretty garage rock, but then we have this noise rock, hardcore nasty side to us; so we try to get as deep into both of those as we can.
There definitely seems to be a more balanced feel to this album, so perhaps you found that sweet spot you were searching for.
BD: Yeah, I'd like to think so! Part of that is because I have such a great band, and we have been with each other for so long. Each member is a great songwriter; and, because we are that lucky to have that, we can make some pretty cool variations happen. In a lot of bands, there are usually one or two guys that write the songs, so they tend to write the same songs over and over again.
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| Take Back The Night |
Many of your songs are about relationships; do you consider yourself a hopeless romantic?
BD: (laughter) … I consider myself hopeless.
Do you find it exhausting to constantly field questions on whether or not The Dwarves are misogynistic or homophobic or glorifying drug use? Are you counting down in your head until an interviewer brings it up?
BD: It doesn't really bother me because there actually is another whole layer to that where most people will not even talk to me, so they just assume we are misogynistic or whatever. At least if people are talking about it or asking me about it then I can say something.
Basically, I look at it as my songs are depicting characters, and these do not always have to reflect my feelings on things. We have lost our sense of humor as a culture, and we have lost our ability to do basic reading of artistic material. When you go see a movie and there's a bad guy in it, do you assume that the actor, Anthony Hopkins, is going to eat you? You should be smart enough to realize that this guy is playing a character. If I write a song, and it's about a certain kind of person, that does not have to mean it is about me. Even that easy interpretation of source material seems like it is impossible now. So, what you get nowadays are severely limited conversations where people cannot talk about things they cannot bear to imagine because they are seen as automatically endorsing that.
Fortunately, on the other side of all that, I have had people call me a misogynist or a bad person for over three decades now; so even though it has gotten much more insane during this era, I am just so used to it and it rolls right off me. I ignore it. I don't pay attention to it. I do not think about it. Maybe that's a limitation of mine, but people have been laying this kind of stuff on me for decades; so I just won't play ball with them.
Even though you say that it "rolls right off of you," you have spent much time in the last thirty years having to defend the music of The Dwarves. So it must upset you that people can't separate characters from the writers?
BD: It upsets me on a certain level, but it also upsets me because I want to make more money. I want to sell more records and have more people get into my shit. This has just become indicative of today's society. It's sad. It's also weird that rock n roll is dying on a number of levels. If you look at like the Top 100 records, almost none of them even have a guitar in them! It's like the whole genre has become insignificant.
You were vocal about your frustrations with the emerging wave of political correctness in the 1990s, soooo... how are you dealing with it these days? Does this era of extreme PC culture fuel you even more?
BD: It does and it doesn't. More and more I do see that there is more common ground between my points of view and everyone else's, but the conversations become more and more polarizing. As long as we are having conversations, then I feel good about it; but what really disturbs me is that most people will not even engage in conversations. When I was a kid, everyone who liked punk rock read Maximum RocknRoll, and there was a healthy exchange of ideas in those pages. But, nowadays, institutions like that have changed and unless you are a transgender, lesbian from Finland who is putting out a cassette who has never had a conversation with a record label, then you are not allowed to enter the conversation. It's not enough that I have been making punk records for thirty five years and live on the same street that their headquarters are on. It is still impossible for [Maximum RocknRoll] to have a conversation with me about my records.
What I find sad is that that there is a fear of interacting with the enemy or the other side. This is the heart of the problem we are having as a society where radically polarized sides cannot see any validly in someone else's opinion. It's ok to disagree with someone's opinion, but where we are at now is that each side just sees everyone else's opinion as invalid.
If I am doing an interview, I will talk about more advanced ideas like this; but, on my records, I don't talk about this stuff! I talk about fucking and death and rape and incest and murder. That is what is in my rock n roll heart!
It's not like my records are making some impassive plea for understanding. My records are a way of expressing myself; I am not trying to bring all sides together with it. What also makes it complex is because half the conversation is just people seeing the album covers and reacting. They see the song titles and react, and they do not even get into the music itself.
You have been open about early Dwarves records being influenced by music you listened to during your younger years such as The Misfits and Ramones. What do you find yourself being under the influence of in recent years?
BD: I listen to a lot of talk radio. I do a talk radio show here called "We Got Issues," and it has made me more interested in listening to podcasts and talk radio than listening to music. In a way that is kind of sad. In many ways, I have done what I am going to do in music; and I know exactly where I am going with my music. But because we are out playing shows all the time, I stumble into bands that I think are good.
When we were in Texas, we played with a band called Birdcloud. I thought they were very funny. It was two girls with funny lyrics, but what I really liked about the band was that they seemed to be friends in such a way that the band couldn't exist without one of them. With The Dwarves, we went the opposite way. We have a posse of ten or twelve people that get substituted in and out; but, with Birdcloud, I zeroed in that it was just the two of them and they were doing their own type of thing. Seeing Birdcloud made me believe that there is still hope out there for music. People are out doing something that only they can do! The Dwarves are that type of band, love it or hate it.
It's not like we are directly related to anything else or any other band, but The Dwarves have been influenced by a lot of different stuff over the years. We have bitten from The Misfits and Ramones and that whole crew. And we have bitten from The Cramps and Gun Club crew. We have bitten from the hardcore crew and the speed metal crew and from the Black Flag crew and we have also bitten off of the crooner crew like Frank Sinatra.
In today's culture, it seems the curtain is being drawn on the era of the straight-white-male; and there are many good things to come out of that, but the bad thing is that people might forget that The Dwarves are the best band ever!
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| Blag Dahlia by Ester Segarra via thedwarves.com. |
Despite your claim that, "rock n roll is dying," is there anybody or anything out there today that has won over your "rock n roll heart?"
BD: I am just a finder of music now. Stuff just comes across my path. It's not like I know about new records or what is going on now. I am pretty old, so it's all just about what I happen to hear and whether or not it touches me. There are still good rock n roll records getting made, I do not think it's dead in that sense. Rock n Roll is dead commercially and dead as a societal thing, but it is not dead in terms of great bands that are coming out.
I saw Scott H. Biram the other day. You can make a strong argument that he is one of the great bluesmen. There is such a great and unique quality about him and how he can assume three different voices. If you are somebody that just likes Son House and Robert Johnson records then maybe you won't like Scott Biram; but, for me, I think he is the obvious answer to who is one of the great bluesmen of the modern era. So, I still see and hear things that I like. I still have hope for music. I am in my fifties, so music being made today is not being made for me; so maybe I am really not the right guy to ask about new records or about is good.
You mentioned you are in your fifties, and over thirty of those years have been spent playing with The Dwarves. So, with that said, what wisdom can you share with us from all those years in a band?
BD: When you are on the road, you always need to find a clean place to shit. Once a day, you need to take a good one. So, to all those club owners out there who are operating without a decent place to shit, shame on you! We need to shit! We also need a good meal, so stop giving us pizza from a microwave oven! Good food and good defecations are the essentials of the rock industry.
Speaking of bathroom breaks and being that you are also an accomplished author, can you recommend any books, for restroom reading or for reading in general?
BD: Wow, good question! I am actually reading this book about Icelandic sheep farmers. It's a very famous book in Iceland. It's called Independent People. It requires you to re-acclimate your mind to reading about sheep farmers. I do not know if I will make it all of the way through, but it is interesting for the moment. Like everyone else, over the last few years, I started reading Politico and The Hill and political websites just to see what is going on out there. In a way that gives you the best window into our fractured world.
People are wildly opposed to each other, not only do they have different interpretations of fact, they also have completely different facts. It's a fascinating time because we are returning to tribalism. People love their political heroes depending on what tribe they perceive themselves to be a part of. Nothing changes people's minds anymore. Actual content does not change people's minds anymore. It's all about whatever tribe you feel you are a part of. It's like 1984 where even if political leaders change their story every day, the tribe will just believe whatever they say. That is fascinating. You do not need core values anymore. It all comes down to tribalism and both the right and the left practice it. I am more sympathetic to the left's version of it; but I recognize that, in a lot of ways, the right and left are interchangeable. There is just a mindlessness to it all that is really breathtaking. It is so fascinating that this is all really going on that it has become harder for me to read fiction.
But I have written a couple novels, and I am working on another now. Fiction is very freeing because different things can happen in the story and I do not need to stick to the facts. That is true with rock n roll, too. I am not trying to be your buddy or your best fucking friend on my records. You can view me as anything you want. You can view me as an independent heroic figure OR you can view me as a disgusting rapist. Both views are equally valid in terms of imagination.
You put forth a lot of energy both on record and on stage. Besides microwave pizza, what helps you to keep going so damn hard?
BD: The shows that are the most fun are the ones that have a great crowd. It's hard to do a great show for a crowd that is not great. Sometimes, we play festivals; and they lack intimacy, but there are thousands of people and so I have to play up on that. Other times, I am in a room with only a hundred people, but the energy is just so intense that I feed off of that. That's what turned me onto rock n roll. I started out listening to much more sophisticated kinds of music. My brother was a jazz DJ, so I was listening to these twenty-minute trumpet solos and then Frank Zappa -- and I still think he is one of the greats -- but this was all sophisticated music with lots of changes and variations; and when I heard The Ramones and Cramps, I was drawn to the simplicity of the music. Then, when I saw The Ramones, and other punk bands live, the crowds were incredible. To me, that is what rock n roll is. It is the intersection of simplistic tribal music with the entire crowd being part of it.
I do not like to travel anymore. I have done all the traveling that I feel like doing, but the reason I will tour to places is so that I can play my music to people and, hopefully, get that feeling and transmit that feeling, that feeling that is at the heart of simple music which is the heart of rock n roll. So, anyways, there's that, ya know?
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| The Dwarves by Cameron Postforoosh via thedwarves.com. |
The Dwarves are legendary anti-hero figures to your rabid fanbase, but signing to a major label is something that still eludes the band. I know, for street cred purposes, you must wear that as a badge of honor; but is the legacy of The Dwarves something you think about or are you just content to be in the moment?
BD: I am an egotistical person. I want to have a great show, and I want to have a great legacy. I think we deserve a great legacy. I think we have a great legacy now, but that is mostly among our fans. So, if I am preaching to my choir, then everybody already knows how great The Dwarves are. I do believe that we should be spoken about in the same breath that you speak about all the great punk bands and about all the great rock n roll bands! We always make really great records because I do not compare myself to the tenth record made by some mediocre East Coast punk band. I compare myself to The Beastie Boys and their best record and to The Beatles and their best record and to The Talking Heads' best record. I am trying to make a record that is amazing and transcendent to anyone who listens to it. I think if anyone shoots for that, then maybe they will get lucky. I think about The Dwarves' legacy, and I feel like it deserves it be so much bigger, broader, and stronger than it is; and it should be making me so much money that I can swim in it.
What are your hopes for the future? Rock n Roll Hall of Fame inductee? Gospel album with full choir? Reality Show? Corporate sponsorship?
BD: I have the podcast "We Got Issues" (It's also on the radio in San Francisco), and I would really like to get into broadcasting more. I find it really fun. I also think I have a few more books in me. I always just want to be involved in the arts, and I always want to play rocknroll. I want to enjoy myself. If the public wants to come along with me, then that would be great. The more the merrier!
Bonus question: What are your thoughts on the term, "Scum Punk?"
BD: (laughs) Scum Punk! Wow! Scum punk was a term for 80s bands that had like a GG Allin influence about them. It doesn't quite describe The Dwarves because I think we have a lot of pop elements to us that aren't there with a lot of the so-called scum punk bands. I always found our humor to have a poppy shell around a core of scum. A lot of people just write reviews of The Dwarves based on other reviews that they've read, so if that original reviewer saw The Dwarves in 1988, then maybe we were scumpunks. It's like making sourdough bread. You need to save a little piece of the old one to make a new one, and people hear or see something about us from one time and just continue to say the same things about us now. I take words like scum and use it as a compliment. I have to take on being called scum-punk, then cool. Whatever moves a ticket!
The Dwarves with special guests, Hot blood, will be performing at the Wonder Bar in Asbury Park, NJ on May 11th.
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