{"id":34,"date":"2012-11-20T08:14:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-20T08:14:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/?p=34"},"modified":"2013-05-18T21:56:12","modified_gmt":"2013-05-18T21:56:12","slug":"an-interview-with-music-pioneer-ju-suk-reet-meate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/?p=34","title":{"rendered":"An interview with music pioneer Ju Suk Reet Meate"},"content":{"rendered":"

by <\/em>Noah Mickens<\/em> on December 16, 2009<\/em><\/p>\n

It takes me forever to find Smegma\u2019s house, which is odd, because the entire thing is painted shocking pink.\u00a0 The pink of cotton candy and little girls\u2019 barettes, so pink you couldn\u2019t miss it.\u00a0 So pink that, when I find another pinkish house and knock on the door, they guy can tell me right where it is, four blocks away.\u00a0 \u201cThis house is purple!\u201d says the guy, like I just tried to kiss him on the mouth.<\/span><\/p>\n

I am greeted at the door by Rock and Roll Jackie herself, who takes on the\u00a0nomme d\u2019etage\u00a0\u201dOblivia\u00a0\u201d, in keeping with one of the\u00a0few traditions the\u00a0band takes seriously.\u00a0 Though we\u2019re\u00a0far from strangers\u00a0– I suppose I\u2019ve been interacting with Jackie for close to ten years now \u2013 an air of formality pervades the exchange, like I\u2019m entering the hall of a master monk or a great scholar.\u00a0 She shows me where to put my coat, offers me a drink, then points me upstairs to meet the man in question:\u00a0 Ju Suk Reet Meate<\/a>, the central figure in the 35 year history of the band called Smegma<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I think how fortunate it is that I\u2019m not a vintage record collector, because if I were this interview would be long-delayed as I rifled through his Smithsonianesque accumulation of gorgeous old LPs, 45s, and whatever you call those weird thick old records that come in the boxes.\u00a0 78s?\u00a0 I never could keep all of that straight.\u00a0 A lot of it looks like Novelty records, the crazy traveling variety musicians whose unique and prodigious talents were eventually encapsulated in the old Spike Jones <\/a>shows before shuffling off to Dr. Demento <\/a>land in the face of the unstoppable Television wave.\u00a0 Tap dancing xylophonists, six-man harmonica ensembles, that sort of thing.<\/p>\n

I ask about this\u00a0 \u2013 about what influences informed the\u00a0unprecedented style of free improv he first hammered out before I was born.\u00a0 Ju Suk Reet Meat speaks in magazine articles, brilliant mini-essays pouring out of his mouth in inconsistent tense and mode.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was a period (early 1970s Los Angeles<\/em>) when the great hippie movement was sort of broken apart, and in LA we definitely felt we were part of a larger \u2018Freak Movement\u2019<\/a>.\u00a0 But we didn\u2019t really fit in \u2013 We didn\u2019t identify ourselves as Hippies because we weren\u2019t into the hippie music, per se.\u00a0 And that somehow seems to be the key, the inspiration.\u00a0 None of us went to art school, none of us had any training.\u00a0 But a section of the larger Tribe broke off and formed a band, and exactly why that happened is hard to say.\u00a0 I know I personally had played trumpet in high school, and ended up later as just a way to blow off steam, or something to do at home that would scare your parents or your neighbors.\u00a0 But we were so earnest and so sincere and so serious about playing without musicians being involved, that was one of the concepts from the beginning.\u00a0 But from the beginning also we knew we did not want to leave music out, so there was always this conflict of how.\u00a0 We would allow one or two musicians who swore they would not play any contemporary sounds, like just wouldn\u2019t do a guitar solo of the day or whatever, just make them play a couple straight little things so we could do these homages to the 50s.\u00a0 Red Cadillac and a Black Mustache<\/a>, or Santa Bring My Baby Back To Me<\/a>, we would do these songs straight as part of an avant-garde music, and other silly things, right from the beginning that was our passion.\u00a0 To combine the future and the past, without the present.\u00a0 Because music and performance is all about fantasy and casting a spell, so right from the beginning we had this thing of the future \u2013 creating the avant-garde, or homages to the past where you\u2019re trying to do something that\u2019s kind of\u2026 respectful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got the bells and we\u2019ve got the flutes and we\u2019d try to go sort of\u2026 back to the ancient times, and we would jam.\u201d<\/p>\n

I ask him to further define the \u201cFreak Scene\u201d, though I think I understand who he\u2019s talking about.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s an amorphous sort of thing, We were really into Captain Beefheart <\/a>and Frank Zappa<\/a>, who were essentially locals at that point. In a weird way i think we all took that for granted.\u00a0 They were a little older than us,\u00a0 but that was sort of our contemporary mentor scene.\u00a0 But then everybody found out about people from a generation earlier, like John Cage <\/a>or Harry Partch<\/a>, and just being amused by the old Dada<\/a> movement and hearing about all of this absurd art that had gone on before, and just being really inspired by parts of those concepts, and sort of taking them away.\u00a0 There\u2019s a lot of other aspects of that classy art scene that aren\u2019t so pretty, but certainly some of the actual things that were done and some of the ways that it effected people were very inspirational.\u00a0 That effected us a lot.\u00a0 we knew about this broader different concept, and we were trying in a very folk way to apply those concepts to\u00a0 our version of music.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u201dWe were the generation that was really formed by the temple of the record store.\u00a0 There was this incredible record store in Pasadena, Poo-Bah Records<\/a>, in a basement in the scary Old Town section, and we\u2019d all go there. That\u2019s where a lot of the\u00a0LAFMS people and especially the Smegma<\/a> people would hang out.\u00a0\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s talking about The Los Angeles Free Music Society<\/a>, a seminal association of experimental musicians whose Work is legend amongst a tiny segment of the World\u2019s population, and wholly unknown to everyone else.\u00a0 Those in the know tend to describe LAFMS<\/a>, Smegma<\/a>, and The Residents<\/a> as the originators of a distinct style of playful counter-traditional West Coast Riexperimentalism that has directly inspired subsequent movements like Punk, Noise, et al.\u00a0 There aren\u2019t all that many people who are both aware of this and inclined to write about it, which I suppose is what brings me here today.\u00a0 I had always thought of Smegma<\/a> as a sub-set of LAFMS, but apparently I have always been mistaken.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are (part of LAFMS<\/em>) now, and we were then.\u00a0 It\u2019s just that we had parallel worlds.\u00a0 Like Tom Recchion<\/a>, for instance, is someone who is absolutely part of the core of LAFMS.\u00a0 But at the time, LAFMS really just meant.. well, when things are emerging and forming, the clarity of what exactly they are wasnt so apparent at the time.\u00a0 I don\u2019t remember Tom ever mentioning LAFMS when we were there (in Pasadena<\/em>), but after we moved ID Art came out, we got the flyer, and we participated in that, and\u00a0participated in everything on all kinds of levels with LAFMS for as long as it lasted in an active state.\u201d<\/p>\n

So which came first?<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s probably varying opinions on that, but I\u2019d say they started identically around the same time without knowing about each other at all.\u00a0 The primary thing with a big chunk of the LAFMS\u00a0thing was people going to art school, and I know at least ID Art <\/a>started with an art project at Cal Arts.\u00a0 That aspect\u00a0was always completely absent in Smegma<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Listen to Pigs For Lepers<\/strong><\/p>\n