Read the interview to end all interviews with woefully underrated Brett Bradford, guitarist for Scratch Acid and frontman for Suckling. Check out previously unpublished photos of Bradford with his Scratch Acid bandmates, including David Yow, in my extensive feature for Post-Trash.
“Some who voted for [Trump] are not necessarily bad or gullible people. If that’s the case, they should very well now regret their decision and do what they can to right the wrong. They helped put the fox in the henhouse and should help to get rid of it.”
–Brett Bradford
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Recently, yours truly had the distinct honor of conducting an extraordinarily in-depth and all-encompassing interview with one of the most crucial figures in ’80s underground music and foundational guitarists in noise rock: Brett Bradford, formerly of Scratch Acid and now a member of indie-rock quartet Suckling.
The extensive feature will appear on Post-Trash on October 7, but in the meantime, we’re bringing you, separately, his thoughts on Authoritarian America as part of The Bad Penny‘s increasingly critical series called On Tyranny. Here is that portion of the interview, followed by some additional thoughts that Bradford later shared.
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As our nation rapidly transforms into Authoritarian America, artists – who are typically among the first to be targeted when a dictatorship takes control of a country – are relocating to countries where their right to free speech is still protected.
One of the more prominent indie-rock artists to make the move is Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who relocated to Portugal earlier this year, according to multiple sources who recently confirmed the news to The Bad Penny. None of the sources said outright that Trump’s reclaiming of the presidency was their motivating factor for Yow fleeing the U.S., however.
When yours truly interviewed Yow and Jesus Lizard guitarist Duane Denison last year for a feature on FLOOD, the vocalist whose lyrics were historically apolitical admitted that he felt boxed in by the inexorable partisan strife in America and said he was compelled to address current events on the band’s comeback record, Rack.
“A larger percentage of the lyrics than I wished were based on the political climate in the U.S. for the last seven or eight years,” he confided in a video conference call.
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If you’re even fairly familiar with raunchy comedy, “The Aristocrats,” an ever-evolving running joke so dirty that comics used to only tell it to each other behind closed doors, probably rings a bell. The jape varies in length, vulgarity, structure, plot and tone, depending on whichever comedian is telling their version of it. But baked into the joke are, unwaveringly, graphic scenes of a family engaging in scatological, sordid and smutty behavior during an audition in a misguided effort to win over an agent to book their stage act. And the punch line always remains the same, with the family revealing at the end of the audition that their stage name is “The Aristocrats.”
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Because I said so. Order never subject to change.
1. “Gladiator”
2. “Destroy Before Reading”
3. “Monkey Trick”
4. “Boilermaker”
5. “Dancing Naked Ladies”
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Touch and Go Records went to the trouble of assembling a Scratch Acid vinyl box set to the tune of $160—as well as individual reissues of their EPs for those in search of a more affordable option. Read my thoughts on Box Set/Scratch Acid/Berserker via Treble.
After one of the worst weeks in American history, The Bad Penny just learned a smidgen of good news that may boost your spirits as much as it did ours: Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow, who resides in one the areas hardest-hit by the Southern California fires, did not lose his home.
Someone make this guy a boilermaker.
Hate to say we told you so, but a few years after an anonymous leaker from the Biden Crime Family provided Extra-Super-Top-Secret Classified Files to The Bad Penny, we can now officially confirm that the Deep State Documents are completely True and prove that two famous rock musicians (Hollywood Elites, of course) are indeed among the 47 million Lizard People living among us in the United States (which is a “garbage bin,” by the way). We call it “The Maynard/Yow Connection.”
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It was a privilege to be able to write a lengthy feature for FLOOD on The Jesus Lizard, one of my top three favorite bands of all time, and for vocalist David Yow and guitarist Duane Denison to speak extensively with me about their reunion(s), wild moments from yesteryear and their new album, Rack. Due to space constraints, FLOOD published an abridged version of the feature that ran roughly 2,000 words. Because The Bad Penny isn’t bound by such limitations, we’re bringing you the “extended and unreleased” version, which runs almost 900 words longer. Enjoy.
Continue readingExpect to hear a lot about the Jesus Lizard in the coming months, during which the underground rock legends will release their first studio album in 26 years and play a smattering of shows in support of it. But regardless of what articles get published about the band and its immortal frontman, David Yow, you won’t get to know him any better than in this 6,178-word, up-close-and-personal feature just published on New Noise.
From designing billboards for Frozen and Garfield: The Movie to terrifying a hotel room service worker on accident to witnessing a horrific disease claim the life of his mother to briefly meeting Queens of the Stone Age’s Josh Homme to throwing a Led Zeppelin-themed party to resisting Jesus Lizard reunion gigs to getting torn to shreds by his cat to turning the sound of his garage door into a song to breaking his nose on New Year’s Eve to linking up with David Lynch, Yow truly tells all like he never did before—and probably never will again.
The Bad Penny (beta) 