Interview with Jared

So, I hear there's an interesting story to go along with the first time you played at DV8 here in Salt Lake. Wanna share?

 salt lake city. i will always think of it in a very positive light. people always talk down a lot of cities that aren't "major markets" and they really miss the point. i have had the best shows of my life in cities that are not considered to be "important" in the same way that NYC or LA are thought of by the industry. i always have a great time in places like cleveland, grand rapids and salt lake city and i think that a lot of this is due to the fact that major market cities are glutted to the point of information overload. it's harder to appreciate anything when everything is immediatly available and places like salt lake are hungry for something new and interesting. really hungry. the first time we played there was while we were out on tour with kmfdm, having fun tearing across the country. the day passed quickly, hanging out with some of the local kids and marveling at how cool they were considering they had to live in the shadow of the 'surrender dorothy' temple. pre-show, wandering around thru DV8 and it's jammed to the walls with kids. it's dark and steamy and faces keep floating out of the sweaty murk at me..and then we hit that tiny stage. the vibe in the house that night was electric, wound tight and from the first sounds of air-disaster that starts 'filament' the crowd was in motion..and i mean motion! once we dropped into 'suicide jag' the whip was unleashed..lashing out. kids were jacked up against the front of the stage, hands scrabbling at my feet trying to pull me into the mouth of the swirling mass. the pit engulfed the whole floor as far as i could see, one swirling mass of twisting arms and legs pitching and heaving, straining to let out the beast. i looked up to the dark smokey roof, trying to place the high pitched sound i often hear during shows. a sound like screaming angels on fire, and i notice that the adrenal juice that's shooting thru the veins of this place is causing people to throw themselves off of the balcony ontop of the thrashing mass of flesh below. icarus trying to fly. faces distorted, mouths wide in ecstacy or fear or some nameless pleasure. the pit is one great orgasmic mess spread out infront of me, opening it's lips to me, hot, sweaty and red..ready for the plunge. the band is leaning hard into the music, forcing it forward. geno raging a silent shriek as he jolts across the stage almost colliding with me. servo pumping the grooves harder, booting hooks and driving them home. he's the best cyborg i have ever had the pleasure to play with. ever. dylan's leering, watching the crowd twitch. SK8 seems to be laughing uncontrollably, his head swinging from side-to-side. i'm drenched in sweat and sex and hunger and that high pitched screaming as the whole room goes into a streaming blur roaring around me, thru me, images meshing, darkness plunging in..and the next thing i know we're swinging around the dressing room.
jump cut.
laughter. hot and sweaty and talking to a bright young thing with a glint in her eye. love that glint! stroking my legs. jump cut. servo's disappeared off into the smoke with some beauty, off to watch kmfdm get a cramp on that tiny stage. i follow him, out into the close and unholy sweat-dark to press against the flesh. as i lounge at the bar there is an endless stream of kids coming up to me to talk about the show and the sex and all of it. it feels good, as good as ever, to rap with them. the dressing room bores me. out in the venue is where it's always happening. i see SK8 slipping thru the press with an evil look on his face, knowing he's going to find a dark corner with the girl he's found. maybe the van.
Jump cut.
we've hooked up with some members of a dyke biker gang (name withheld, cool name though). they want to come back to the hotel with us, which is fine with me because their energy is the most, best sense of sardonic humor i've run into in some time. sharp as a knife edge. someone is breaking beer bottles in the alleyway as we leave. indistinct voices yelling as we drive into the hotel parking lot blocks away followed by a couple of fully tricked out motorcycles, sweeping and roaring into the parking court in full flame. things seem to be speeding up and slowing down simultaneously. the other guitarist had picked up two corn-fed midwest beauties somewhere along the line. the room is actually two connected bedrooms and he's off in one of them with both of these fine treats. we've ensconsed ourselves in the other room and the bikers have broken out their stash. unbelievable stash, all of it on offer.
jump cut
and things start to blur. noises from outside the windows. a haze of streetlights dampened by the drawn curtains and the reefer is smoking. we're stretched out over the beds and sofas with music (16 volt, stones, miles, delph, nails and radiohead) snaking thru the place. there are a few bottles being passed around. the bikers have been passing downers around to us just to keep things interesting ontop of the lines of speed we've been indulging in. it's harsh basement swing and really burns as it cuts in. talking. talking. talking. talking. there's a knock at the door and three kids from the show arrive. don't know how they found us but here they are. so we pass everything around to them too..and then one of them says that she wants to take a shower, and goes in. looking surprisingly delicious, hard curves, short skirt and bouncing on her high-heels..and i would have followed her normally, but at the moment..just couldn't care less. the sounds of the trio getting down in the other room is increasing, sounds extreme and wet and there's a lot of crying out that's clearly audible. the phone rings as servo returns. the front desk wants us to quiet down but as servo and his girl step into the bathroom to join in i tell the desk clerk that it might be too late for that. the line goes dead. the bikers have started to unwrap their personal stash of opium. i've smoked a lot of opium, both good and bad, and i wasn't convinced it would be any kind of kick ("in salt lake??" guess i learned my lesson). i was wrong. the air got thick and warm and close, comforting in a cottony sort of way. sirens outside..moving past us, fading away. the music gets louder to drown out the noises from the bathroom and the room next door. swirl. swirl. somebody is yelling from the bathroom. servo? we're chasing the dragon down foil and things are getting soft in the middle. and in this pharmacologi-mix i am sure that people have started to dance on the beds. things are too clear. things have become much too blurry. most of the lights are out. one of the lamps is lying on it's side on the floor..and it looks so much better there..
i smoke some more and get into a deep conversation with one of the bikers about sexual politics and how most men are women inside and how i'm a whore and love it, and this must be the end of the world and how happy that makes me. i'm waiting for the satellites to fall from the skies. one of the kids comes running up to me yelling in my face; "i want to die young!" and i say i'm going up to the roof and he can prove it to me, but he falls over on his face and stays there. so much for his chance for glory. i take the bottle of vodka out to the balcony and hang over the edge looking at the full moon that is so clear out here away from all of the light pollution. i'm looking for the falling com-sat stars. i look down at my body and it seems to be made out of segments of steel, riveted together. i feel like my joints are well oiled. i feel good as i look out over the world, lights flashing up against my face as the phone rings again back in the room. i sit down on the walkway with the biker i was talking to earlier and we snort more of the speed. she hands me a couple of 'ropers' and i drop two. the phone rings again. and again. voices crying out into the early morning. ring. dark blue sky. i think there's a fire burning in the room. is there a fire burning? ring. we're laughing. sirens close in as i close out, my head resting against the cool concrete of the wall, listening to the biker tell me stories. dark blue light fades to static.
i woke up later that day in the back of the van, heading west. it turns out that there was an even worse scene going on on the floor above us and the desk clerk thought he was calling that room instead of ours. or maybe he was hearing ours and the cops came to bust the other room. cops all over. i honestly don't know. don't care. i just regret that the cameras we normally had in use were nowhere to be seen that night..well, i didn't take any shots. none in the bathroom or the bedroom, both of which started mixing eventually, i'm told. none of the people dancing on the furniture. in the light of the fire. was there a fire? the bikers took real good care of us. they helped bundle us into the van while the bust was going down on the floor above us. they made sure that we got out of there before the pigs decided to nail us as well, before they found the burn marks and everything else. they watched over us, and ever since then i've loved salt lake city.

How'd you get involved with the guys from Invisible?

i left the music scene in '97 after we had finished the gwar tour. the record label (fifth column) was going up in flames and there were thousands of dollars in different debts accrued from the tour. the label had been gutted and mismanaged because the owner had decided that he simply didn't want to play anymore and he wouldn't give over the control of it to me. he stopped paying for ads, manufacturing, advances and royalties (he was never good with those two!) and hadn't paid me in two months. it was incredibly unpleasant and this guy ran the label into the ground. it fell apart as soon as i left, the artists scattering. chemlab was in massive debt. the labels that had been looking at us didn't know what to do with our music.."what catagory to put it under" and lost interest..we weren't 'electronica' and that was what was happening at the time. self-destruction was the reigning king with us and our lives were generally falling apart. i had decided i'd had enough of 'the music biz' and wanted out for good. that was it for me..i was cast adrift. through one twist and another, a few weeks later i found myself working for an investment banking firm on wall street. that's another long story, but, i was moving between two wire-houses when i got a call from atkins asking me if i would be interested in coming out on tour with pigface as one of the slew of singers. so i arranged a quick break and went off on the tour that eventually led to my recording 'covergirl' and leaving wall street (or being told to leave the city, depending on which story you believe). martin and dave were both very supportive of the idea of getting me into the studio to record some of the ideas that i had run past them. they knew that it wasn't going to be a new chemlab album but they were willing to just let me record what i wanted regardless of what it might sound like. i was still uncertain as to whether or not i was going to be going back to wall street to get my broker's license (a six-and-a-half hour exam!!) or not, and putting together a new version of chemlab for recording and touring was not even on the horizon yet. they liked the idea of an album of some of my favorite cover tunes and so they just let me loose in the studio for a month of rending and noise-making. in terms of being in the music industry again, it simply makes sense to work with invisible. they are supportive of the things i want to do and are really into my doing a new chemlab record. i have the artistic freedom i want. i'm not making any money, but that's nothing new. it's not as if i was living in the lap of luxury and had to down-shift my needs and expectations. i've always been broke except when i was working on wall street and pulling down some real bread. rock and roll has yet to pay the bills. the only way to get that to change is by working with a label that understands the concept of "artist development" and that is financially impossible at the majors nowadays. the only place where it still exists is at the independant level.

The liner notes in the reissues of the Chemlab albums.. Was it your idea or was it pitched to you by another?

dave baker at invisible suggested the idea of putting in some liner notes for the re-issues because i was always riffing off stories to him about how something we had recorded had been done, or some tale of the road, or some bizarre rumor that had gotten started and what it actually came from, etc. storytelling is a lot of what i do at shows here in london so it just made sense to me. i could have gone on for pages and pages. 10 Ton Pressure and assorted remixes and unavailable trax are being re-issued this summer as well and i'm in the process of doing more liner notes for that too. it looks like the CD will be called "sounds of the suture" though we all know that these things can change. i'm also involved in putting together the CHEM/LOUCHE website at present and that will be full of stories, misinformation, photographs, tour/album info, etc. it should be up and running in a few months.

Was there anything that you had to cut short, or wanted to add into the liner notes that you couldn't because of a word count, or you just weren't thinking about it at the time?

it would have been easy for me to go on and on for much longer, but there was the issue of space limitation. i also wasn't sure just how much of my rambling people would be interested in reading. there are a lot of rumors surrounding the band that i was considering debunking, but i finally decided to let them continue to fester. ...and, yes, there were things that i didn't think of at the time, but that's always true. we had a great time working with critter, putting the albums together. we also had a gas being on the road, that's what it's all about..and we took advantage of it all, all. that makes for a lot of good (and bad) stories.

The ex-Marine with 'a "12 blade and a nasty revengeful temper' phone message used in 'Derailer'.. You mention it in the notes to 'Burnout...', but what actually provoked him to leave the message?

he didn't like the fact that, when he got into a pissing match with dylan about dick size (and even more importantly, girth) one night in vesacs, down the lower east side, dylan whipped out his cock right there at the bar and proved he was the weightier of the two contestants.
he didn't like the way a mutual friend of ours was running one aspect of his business and felt that he was getting ripped off. he also felt that he had been poorly paid for a couple of "favors" he had done for our friend and wanted to exact revenge..on everyone connected to our friend. he was like that. can't tell you what the favors are, that would neither be kosher nor prudent nor safe.
he was furious because there was a rumor circulating around that i had had an affair with his stripper girlfriend (even though they were broken up at the time of the alleged romp) and that she had flown out to meet us in texas while we were on tour with nails. the story gets even weirder, in that, she then went on a sex junket that had her going from us to the band and crew of nails and ending up flitting around hotel hallways at night dressed in lacey underwear, wide leather belt and very high heels going from room to room servicing whoever she could find..band, crew and total strangers. she was finally fished out of the pool of the hotel in phoenix and put on a plane back to new york where some sort of reconcilliation must have been made because i saw her together with her marine again months later asleep in the grass in tompkins square park. the happy-destructo couple!
he was ripped off on a very large dope deal and was convinced that we were somehow involved and thus to blame and would have to be made to pay..one way or another. he was somewhat delusional and always seemed to be taking revenge ("revengeing himself" as he called it) on some hapless person, or persons, for some infringement or other, every time i ran into him. i think he's currently locked up in attica.
one thing that is certainly true is that he was an incredibly dangerous cat that you didn't want to cross under any circumstances. big, too. i saw him take on three guys outside of sidewalk late one night and proceeded to put one of them into the hospital and render the other two unconscious in a matter of minutes. very quick. very brutal. also very unsettling to listen to him raving over their collapsed bodies on the sidewalk about how he was going to come to the hospital and rape and smother them..all this while kicking them.

What did you think of the remixes done for the reissues?

great! it may seem like favoritism, or ass-licking (it's neither), but i really feel that the track atkins did of 'chemical halo' is brilliant. it really captures the feel of the song. i also really liked the mix mark from death ride 69 did. i was hoping to do some of the new chemlab trax with him but he's out of the music biz as well.

What were you wanting to accomplish with the release of 'Covergirl'?

i wanted to record an album that was just, selfishly, to satisfy me. i wanted to record an album that would allow me to explore some of the terrain that i had never had the chance to do with chemlab. i wanted to record an album of contrasts that would stand in diametric opposition to each-other. i wanted to create a time-bomb of confusion. i wanted to mix, meld and mutate sounds in unexpected ways, referencing both backwards as well as forwards in time through musical history. i wanted to record an album that would let people know that the old goat was not dead but that he had certainly mutated into something unexpected. i wanted to record a jazz version of 'suicide jag' because i've heard it that way for so many years..even on stage sometimes. besides, i figured a jazz version would really take people by surprise..and i was right! i wanted to record an album within whose context i could do things like sodomise a song by 'air' ..and i did..twice. juicy! i wanted to make some of the songs that have taken up space in my head, with all of the noise they make, start paying rent. an exorcism of sorts, if you will. i wanted to record a diversion before i returned to destroying the world with a new chemlab machine.

Were there any covers you had in mind that didn't work out, or that just didn't make it on the album?

lots and lots of them. i could go on for hours talking about the songs that i would like to mutate. there are loads of great songs that even a 10 CD set would not be able to encompass. the total destruction of every single one of madonna's songs, in sequence, played end-to-end at triple-speed, would take up quite a wedge on their own. ahh what twisted wreckage i would leave in my wake!
here's a short list of tracks just off of the top of my head: 'for the benefit of mister kite' the beatles (this song was one of the motivational forces behind my wanting to do a covers album..and we worked on it like mad but it got the better of us. i'll try again on the next album, though the next Louche album will not be all covers)

i could go on and on. there are loads of songs that would be a gas to twist around into all manner of configurations. so many songs form the sonic backdrop for me and in the blur of days they start to mutate and take on new shapes. that's when i start wanting to do un-natural things to them. i joke about never releasing another original ever. there are so many good songs out there to drag over the coals. i could just make a career out of other people's songs..but then i would become the joe cocker of the machine rock scene. bad joke.

We all know what you've been up to since the breakup of Chemlab, with the 'Covergirl' album and all, but what ever happened to that Dylan fellow?

there's only so much i can say about how/what he's doing. he left new york about a year ago. it's uncertain if he's going to be doing anymore music. i would like to work with him again but it would be easier if he lived over here in swinging london. he's a genius, that much is for sure. a true-born cybernetic-organism!

Are you expecting to release anything else in the future? As 'Jared Louche and the Aliens' or anything else?

i'm back. yes, i'm mutating and shifting my skin and i'm certainly not done with making music. i am in the process of putting together a new chemlab album that will be a twist on what came before but will rock in that same broken fashion. i'm almost ready to reveal the details of who is in this version of the band and exactly what the material sounds like. i am doing shows here in swinging london to support 'covergirl' as well as to preview new chemlab material. i'm also working on a multi-media book as well as some performance-endurance pieces and a few steel sculptural installations around europe. i'll be back in the states again in the fall to support the albums and to soak up as much of it as i can. i've been missing the road, i'm hungry to get back. see you on the stage soon. stay burning, burning hot!

this is jared's top ten list for '99/'00 that was published in CDNow on-line mag.
1. Iggy Pop "The Idiot" (forget about it, Iggy's king, that's all you need to know)
2. a well tailored suit (if only one could get a swank Sy Devore shark skin nowadays!)
3. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (and its companion, of-course)
4. Tom Waits "The Heart Of Saturday Night" (a real beauty for atmosphere)
5. Throbbing Gristle "20 Jazz Funk Greats" (disturbing mood music for disturbing sex)
6. a very cold, very dry martini at about a quarter to 3:00 (AM, 'natch)
7. all of Joel Peter Witkins photographs (dementia divine!)
8. Thelonius Monk "Live In Italy, 1964" (he was cool personified!)
9. silver nail polish (to accent my rings)
10. performing a sweaty Machine-Rock show in the heat (especially in Texas)
11. changing my mind whenever i feel like it (every contradiction possible!)

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