Besides a split 12-inch record with Los Cincos on Sympathy for the Record Industry (which I have not heard yet), GGGAH's 1999 output is thus far  rounded out by a CD on Overcoat Recordings (formerly known as All City)  called The Things We Need. This seven-song EP is a no-wave wet dream,  recalling the spriteful keyboard patterns of DNA while remaining true to the  abrasive, yet artful brass-funk assault of the Contortions. Then, of course,  there's the sociological implications in title. Ian Svevonius eat your fucking heart out.
 

The Interview

Chris Woo — I want to start off with some history. Just start
from the beginning. You've been around since ... which year?

Hash Vyas — '96.

Mike Vermillion — I have this cabinet full of practices and shows and I have
one that says "first tape" or whatever. I think it said the first part of
'97. The first show I think was in '97. I know that for sure.

Woo— And that was as Derailer, or ...

Vyas — No, no that was before ...

Vermillion — I've known Hash for longer than that—for like five years.

Vyas — Our original drummer Freddie Dieks had quit. And at that time I was
like, "fuck everything" so I ended up just going to India. And one day when I
got back, Mike had told me that he had met this girl who played violin and he
also said that Freddy Dieks had called him back after three months of not
playing music. He wanted to play that weekend and so when I got back we
started playing. But before I had left we had changed the moniker to GoGoGo.

Vermillion — Before that it was just kind of like figuring out how to play
music, pretty much. It wasn't really like we were a band and we're here to ...

Vyas — We did play out, though.

Vermillion — We did play, but the intent was more for our own personal
experience rather than to convince anybody else. And I think at that point,
right before he left we were just ...

Vyas — I think we just weren't really that confident. I mean we were a band
from the get go. We had different monikers each ... every month and we just
couldn't find something and we weren't winning out, so it was different [each
time].

Woo — So it started as GoGoGo and then ...

    Vyas — No, no we had names ... ask [David] Stampone. Stampone will give you
every show. We were called Hussie, Hussy, or Huffy once.

Vermillion — Just make shit up. There was Derailer and then there was another
band with the same name ...

Woo — Wasn't that the Derailers?

Vyas — Ah, fuck! The Derailers! So then ours was called Bom Bom Bom Bom-Bom
Bom-Bom.

Vermillion — But actually that name only came because ... we were playing and
we got us a name and we were were like, "Dude, we should have a side project
band." And on the side of your bicycle is a derailer. So we just go, "we'll
have this side project called Derailer." So when we go to practice, we can
just mess around. We don't have to be so serious.

Woo — A side project without a main project.

Vermillion — But there was a main project ...

Vyas — It was funny because the side project consisted of the same three
people as the main project.

Vermillion — It's just as stupid as it sounds. We had no social life so you
just entertain yourself every night.

Vyas — Literally no social life. We used to practice six nights a week.

Vermillion — So anyway, '97 is pretty much the start of the band.

Woo — And then Terry [Hoefer] joined around that time?

Vermillion — Yeah.

Woo — Wasn't she the reason for the Airheart part?

Vyas — Yeah.

Woo — Why was that?

Vyas — When I got back, I heard that she wanted to be a pilot so Emilia
Earhart is obviously the most famous female pilot.

Vermillion — Obviously the spelling is different.

Woo — Yeah the spelling is different.

Vermillion — At first it was GoGoGo vs. Airheart as in two different entities
are playing together. In the sense that this band and this band, or in a
sense that this person and this band are playing together. Like GoGoGo and
Airheart, as if it could be the same thing. I think there was one show like
that and then it just got condensed.

Woo — And you even had one show I remember that was GoGoGo vs. the Spacewürm.

Vermillion — That was one of my favorite shows. That was actually as a three
piece ... then as soon as our drummer joined again, he quit again.

Vyas — It was actually for about four months. I don't remember the reason why
he quit.

Vermillion — Yeah, it was about four months later when he quit again.

Woo— Oh yeah, I remember you [directed toward Vyas] were playing drums that
night.

Vyas — Yeah, at the Spacewürm show. Right.

Vermillion — So we had this short lived incarnation as a three piece, which
was cool for us because we had drum machines and we were getting into that
aesthetic. It was at that same time, we started making some tapes. We started
the Cassettepet label. I think it was the first one ... And Vaugn from Vinyl
Communications got that Cassettepet. Shortly thereafter we had got in contact
with him or he contacted us ...

Woo — What's a "Cassettepet?" Can you explain?

Woo — Yeah, the songs are still there, they're just not completely produced.

Vermillion — Actually, some of the recordings on the tapes ... sometimes when
we get back the records ... we still to this day wish that we could make a
record as good as some of those tapes. Just for the aesthetic.

[interruption]

Vermillion — So anyways, it was throught the cassettepets ... when we first
made them we would give them to friends, but we made so many of them were
like, "What the fuck are we going to do with these?" So we also sent them to
labels, we sent 'em to everybody. Vinyl Communications and Thrill Jockey ...
And at the time we didn't include any information about us or any way to
contact us. I mean really what's going to happen? It's more like novelty and
I think it will just spur people's interest and maybe then they'll actually
LISTEN to it.

Woo — Did that GoGoGo vs. the Spacewürm show lead to a Vinyl Communications
release?

Vermillion — That happened after. [the Spacewürm] got the tape and Hash had
talked to him and he wanted to meet us. He had never seen us. We weren't
really playing around [San Diego] or anything. He didn't know who we were, but he
was like, "I like your tape. I can set up these shows. Would you guys be
interested in playing a show with us? That way I can see you guys and we can
play together and blah blah blah." So then we ... I think it was Hash who
came up with the concept of playing at the same time. Like we'll play, then
you guys play, we'll play, we'll play back and forth—like in old dub fashion.
And so Vaugn, the guy from the Spacewürm, was totally down with that
aesthetic and that was the first time we had met them. It was after that show
that he was pretty much was like, "Yeah, yeah, I want to put something out by
you guys."

Woo — Did any of that Cassettepet material end up on the first album, or was
that exclusive to the cassettes?

Vyas — Actually there are things on our records that you might find on a
Cassettepet because Cassttepet would have probably been one of the first
times that we had ever done it. Like if you look on our new EP there is a
song ... the first song, actually ... is really a year and a half old. We
have a version on I think Cassettepet 12 ... in between 12 and 14, one of
those three tapes, it's the same song it's just that what we did now has been
really worked into a song whereas back then it was more of a jam.

Vermillion — There is no acual recording that's the same on a Cassettepet as
on a record.

Woo — Like on an album you might do more studio manipulation and things like
that?

Vyas — No, we do it the same way we did it for Cassettepets, we just record
things and then wuss ...

Vermillion — On the very first record there is a couple songs that were
recorded on four-track, like cassette four-track, and were taken off tapes,
but they were just maybe leftovers and we never used them on cassettes.

Vyas — But the principles of the way we recorded for the Cassettepets and the
way we recorded for a record are pretty much synonymous. We take the best
shit. The only difference is that the stuff that's on the albums is a little
bit more produced. It sounds better, whereas the cassettepet is usually one
or two mikes strategically placed in the room. When we recorded those
records, the drums were fuckin' miked, the bass was ... everything was miked,
but it was still the same process. Where it was like, "Okay what we're going
to do is play for two hours and take the best material."

Woo — Another one of your early shows was when you did covers of all Joy
Division and New Order stuff, which was called GoDivisionGoOrderGo. And a lot
of that first record reminds me of early Factory Records stuff and just kind
of has that sense about it. Not to exclude other UK towns like Leeds for the
Gang of Four, or even some Blondie on that song "Something Else?" Was that
something that you employed intentionally or was it more of just like you
went into the studio and it came through freeform improv ...

Vermillion — I think it's just a process like anything. Everything is
influenced to the point of being ripped off, but it's not intentionally
ripped off because you are a by-product of your surroundings. You're
influenced by what you are into.

Vyas — It's kind of weird because where I am at right now in life, I'm
realizing how much crazy stuff in the mid'90s was going on in San Diego in
the underground and what not. What I was listening to then was hardcore bands
and stuff like that. I was listening to Joy Division, the Fall, Wire. I was
listening to all these post-punk bands from England as well as post-punk
bands from America. And when people say, "Oh, you guys sound like the Gang of
Four. You guys sound like PIL," that's because I was fucking listening to it
then.

Vermillion — We never sat down, put on a record and said, "This is what we're
going to do." We listen to music every day. It's in the back of your brain.
Still to this day, I put on a record that I've had for ten years and I go,
"Oh shit! There's that fucking keyboard line that's in our song." Obviously
I've had this record for ten years, I haven't listened to it in maybe five
years and it's in my brain somewhere. It's the exact keyboard line, but I
didn't intend to do it. But if somebody called me on it, I'd be like, "Yeah,
okay." So anyways, Factory ... I had been into Joy Division since I was in
junior high. Like [aradhad] was into them, which like fuckin' many years
before. And things like Gang of Four were things that I was listening to
currently. I had kind of rediscovered Joy Division and started listening to
them again. It just sparked my interest in ... I was able to shop for records
myself and drive to different places instead of shopping at the same record
stores ... Driving to different places and start looking through all the used
records and the ones that caught my eye were the Factory records, just
because they're plain. At the time it was a totally neat aesthetic,
everything was clean and it was ... interesting!

Woo — Cover art wasn't polluted by song titles or anything like that ...

Vermillion — It was just like the mystery of these bands. Like what are they
about? And most of the time, the music did not hold up to the intrigue. Most
of the records I bought I was like, "This is all-right." With every band you
could find one good record, but they had eight shitty ones. But I still was
into Factory Records so I bought records by the Durutti Column, A Certain
Ratio ... Happy Mondays were on Factory at one time and ...

Vyas — Fuck Factory! It's all about Rough Trade [laughter]. Factory is so
fucking ...

Vermillion — I hadn't really been into that for a while, but it was still a
neat idea. And it was just the whole idea that those guys employed people
from that area ... like one person did all the writing and publicity and one
person took the photographs and one person produced all the records ...

Vyas — It was kind of like what Sub Pop was doing when it first started.

Vermillion — ... That's the way they got noteriety—they created this fucking
illusion of a community or a scene that was happening. But really if you
examined it, it wasn't happening and people were not buying the records when
it started out. But it created the illusion that there was something crazy
going on and for the average person ... well, everyone wants to be a part of
something that is going on that they don't know about. That's how things
happen. Like, "Oh, I hear something's going on down there in San Diego. I
want to move there. What's San Diego all about? I hear there is some great
bands down there." [responding to self] "Yeah, there is like two bands right
now." "No, no all the great bands, y'know ..." [responding again] "Yeah? Name
'em." "No, San Diego has all the great bands .."

Vyas — All defunct.

Vermillion — There is just like an illusion that there is something going on,
but when you examine it ... the only problem here is that there's not ...

Woo — ... there's not a Simon Reynolds coining.

Vermillion — It's come and gone and it's probably in circles I don't know
about, but it'd be neat to have more of that community feel.

©opyright 1999 Titanium Exposé

• For a more complete copy of this interview write Chris Woo (at PO Box 86639, San
Diego, CA 92138) or just buy the fucking magazine when it comes out (which, I
might add, will include your very own seven-inch record featuring an
exclusive GoGoGoAirheart song among others by Physics, Soul Junk, the Black
Heart Procession, Üüm, Rafter, Upsilon Acrux, Custom Floor, Last of the
Juanitas).

     This photo of Chris Woo providing the backbeat for the Adams Avenue Street Faire Riot '98 and the photo of David Stampone were taken by Patrick Haley. Stampone and Woo are part of the "Cahiers du Rock" movement (basically a place in time where the critics pick up instruments) not to be confused as being members of GoGoGo. -- jazz

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