MARK: So, tell us about yourself.

ERIKA: I’m originally from Ohio. After I graduated from college I went to Boston for grad school to study painting. I worked with some fantastic artists, made huge oil paintings and when I graduated didn’t know where to go or what to do so I decided to move to New York. I ended up living in Brooklyn for two years where I worked as an artist assistant for some amazing artists. (I still can’t believe how lucky I was to work with the women I did.) Life was pretty great except I was broke and stressed out about making ends meet. I felt like I needed a change so I decided to leave the city for the summer to go to an artist residency outside Asheville, North Carolina to work on a comic book. It was literally in the middle of nowhere on an organic farm. Due to a chain of events involving rivers that flow backwards, a greyhound bus, a funeral, and painting a mural, I was offered a job at University of Michigan in the School of Art & Design. They were looking for someone to travel around the country to talk to students about their portfolios. Perfect. As you can probably tell, travel and location is something really important to me. There is a book called, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit. It addresses the idea of travel and wandering, and it’s a great read. So, yeah, traveling, art, community, dancing, comic books/books, these are the things that are important to me. I’m also attempting to be a bicyclist and I make a mean pasta salad.

MARK: What can you tell me about your artwork, other than the fact that it tends to be huge and oily?

ERIKA: My work is very involved in color and investigating space. Right now I’m interested in how shapes overlap to create a shallow space like what you see when you have multiple windows open in your computer. My paintings changed a lot when I moved to Michigan. I think a large part of that is because I started making sketches in photoshop. Before I had always made collages or small gouache studies. Being on the road half the year it is easier to work on an ipad rather than having a watercolor set with you.

MARK: Did the residency in North Carolina yield a publicly available comic? If so, how might we see it? And what’s it about?

ERIKA: Yes it did. I wanted to make a comic book to teach people how they could easily grow their own food in recycled containers. Organic produce is expensive and a lot of people can’t afford it so I wrote and illustrated “Contain This: Adventures in Urban Container Gardening”. It basically outlines how anyone can easily start growing their own food on a rooftop, window sill, anywhere you can fit a planter. I was awarded a grant from FEASTMass, an art funding project based in Boston, that helped me pay for the printing of the comic and to travel to a few cities to disperse it at farmers markets. You can find images of the comic on my website, and, if you would like one, you can email me.

MARK: So, why Ypsilanti?

ERIKA: I literally drove a moving truck from New York straight to Ann Arbor to an apartment I had only seen in really bad jpgs. I had only been to Ann Arbor once for the job interview and that was a fly in and out scenario. I didn’t know Ypsilanti existed. I started my job and a guy I worked with invited me out to Corner Brewery so I went to meet him. Well, he gave me the wrong date and ended up being busy, so I sat at the bar in a state where I didn’t know anyone and drank a beer. I’m glad the guy didn’t make it bc it gave me a chance to take it all in. The bartender was really nice, the people seemed cool, there were board games and all I could think is, “I should be living here and not in Ann Arbor!!” There is a vibe in Ypsi I love. The people, the community, the local businesses, the grit, I feel at home. I ended up officially moving to Ypsi in August and am here to stay.

MARK: Can we trust you?

ERIKA: I don’t know if you believe in horoscopes but I kind of do. I’m a Leo, so I’m one of those people that if you are my friend I will go through hell or high water for you. Basically, if we were in “The Warriors,” I would make sure you made it to home base, and even give you my sweet bandanna.

MARK: If it’s not asking too much, could you please draw a picture of me wearing this sweet bandanna? I’ve having a hard time visualizing it, having not read The Warriors. (My daughter and I were going to begin reading the cat version of The Warriors together this winter, but got sidetracked by The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.)

ERIKA: Ha! Of course!

MARK: Just a few weeks ago, I interviewed a guy by the name of Rob Hess, who intends to peddle his homemade ice cream from a bike in Ypsi. You wouldn’t happen to be related, would you?

ERIKA: I heard about that guy! Great idea, and I can’t wait to order some ice cream. Unfortunately we are not related, so I guess I won’t get the family discount.

MARK: I wonder if there’s a market for a business that sells pasta salad from the back of a bike.

ERIKA: Maybe Rob and I can go in on a picnic business. We’ll show up with ice cream and pasta salad, and we’ll bbq for you.

MARK: Do you have any questions that my audience might be able to help you with? Is there perhaps something that you’ve encountered in Ypsi that just doesn’t make sense to you, like how low the Tap Room’s door handle is?

ERIKA: My coworker told me the Tap Room door handle story! I love it! Someone needs to make a comic about that. Questions… hmmm, yeah, so are there Roller Derby events in Ypsi? I saw a mural by ACE, and went to a fundraiser for the Ann Arbor Derby Dimes, but is there an Ypsi team?

MARK: I think the Dimes rented that space. I’m not sure if they still do. I know people in Ypsi who do roller derby, but I’m terrible when it comes to keeping track of team names. I have, however, gone to see matches at the park behind Cobblestone Farm in Ann Arbor. I believe it may be the closest venue. As for local teams, I know there’s a team called The Ypsilanti Vigilantes, but I’m not sure if folks consider them our “home” team, as I believe that Ypsi women skate for a number of different teams. I’m sure someone more knowledgeable than me will respond, though… In the meantime, if you could bring one thing from Brooklyn to Ypsi, what would it be, and why?

ERIKA: Maybe Brooklyn Bowl, it was a bar and bowling alley that had great live shows. So basically if you added a bowling alley to Corner Brewery. Why? Because who doesn’t love beer, bowling and music?

MARK: You first introduced yourself to me a few weeks ago, when you were looking for studio space in Ypsi… Were you able to find something?

ERIKA: Unfortunately nothing has turned up yet. So maybe that is what I would bring from Brooklyn, lots of studio space.

MARK: It’s beautiful outside today, isn’t it?

ERIKA: Yes, I am loving this weather! I think I’m going to go hang out at Riverside Park with some pasta salad.

[note: For more Ypsilanti Immigration Interviews, just click here.]

A big thank you to everyone who went out of their way to flyer Ann Arbor with our poster requesting Mr. Bragg’s presence in Ypsilanti. I’ve heard from reliable sources that he was greeted with one as he walked into his dressing room at the Ark this afternoon, and again as he reentered his bus. And I imagine that several people also mentioned to him that we’d launched a campaign to lure him from Ann Arbor. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in visit, but I think it’s incredibly cool that we were actually able to reach him and get a response. And, who knows… maybe next time he’s on tour, things will work out differently. I’d love to have him here next year, when the meadow that we all planted today is full of color and teaming with life.

I know it’s a long shot, but what have we got too lose, right?

[Download the PDF]

Here’s a little video of those band members – Autumn Wetli, Shelley Salant, Jules Nehring and Amber Fellows – making beautiful music in what appears to be a cozy, wall-less living room in the middle of a darkening forrest.

It struck me as a kind of K Records – David Lynch mash-up, and what could be better than that?

[The above drawing of Rebel Kind comes courtesy of Jim Cherewick.]

And I know it doesn’t exactly make a lot of sense, given the story I shared above concerning how this interview came about, but here’s a link to a slightly different version of the above interview.

Oh, and I wanted to mention that I’d be bringing seed bomb making materials to the Totally Awesome Fest kickoff event behind VG Kids on Friday evening. So, if you’re one of the people who wrote to me, asking when you could help with the bomb making, there’s your answer. [More on the Ypsilanti seed bombing initiative can be found here, for those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about.]

A schedule of Totally Awesome Fest events can be found here.

Anticipating his own death not too long ago, Ebert, a lapsed Catholic, had the following to say.

I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born, and I think of death as the same state. I am grateful for the gifts of intelligence, love, wonder and laughter. You can’t say it wasn’t interesting. My lifetime’s memories are what I have brought home from the trip. I will require them for eternity no more than that little souvenir of the Eiffel Tower I brought home from Paris…

What I expect to happen is that my body will fail, my mind will cease to function and that will be that. My genes will not live on, because I have had no children. I am comforted by Richard Dawkins’ theory of memes. Those are mental units: thoughts, ideas, gestures, notions, songs, beliefs, rhymes, ideals, teachings, sayings, phrases, clichés that move from mind to mind as genes move from body to body. After a lifetime of writing, teaching, broadcasting and telling too many jokes, I will leave behind more memes than many. They will all also eventually die, but so it goes…

Someday I will no longer call out, and there will be no heartbeat. I will be dead. What happens then? From my point of view, nothing. Absolutely nothing. All the same, as I wrote to Monica Eng, whom I have known since she was six, “You’d better cry at my memorial service.”

[Bonus points for the Vonnegut reference.]

Ebert didn’t know it, but our paths have crossed twice… at least in a kind of cosmic sense. The first time was in Atlanta, when Linette and I had the pleasure of spending an evening with his on-again-off-again collaborator, the ferociously un-PC Russ Meyer, who talked with us for some time about his friendship and working relationship with the young screenwriter. (Meyer, as I recall, after telling us how he’d like to kill that “skinny bitch” Kate Moss, explained to us that it was Ebert’s wife who kept them from seeing one another. I didn’t press the matter, but, seeing as how Ebert gave up booze, and sought treatment for alcoholism not too long after he and Meyer last worked together, I suspect there may have been good reason for him to keep his distance, whether it was his wife’s idea or his own.) The second crossing of paths took place at a zine conference in Santa Barbara, where an elderly man approached me with a half-century-old mimeographed booklet, asking me to turn it over and read the author’s name. It was a little, self-published sci-fi publication called Stymie, and the author was one Roger Ebert. (The whole zine movement, by the way, rose up out of the sci-fi fanzine scene in the 50s.) According to the old man who had handed it to me, Ebert, before turning to film criticism, had been a precocious kid, writing furiously in his parents’ basement about science fiction. And that’s what fascinated me about Ebert. As much as I would have liked to have talked with him about the debauchery of his time with Meyers, the highly cantilevered women in the cult director’s entourage, and the Sex Pistols, what I really wanted to find out more about was his early years, working alone in his parents’ basement.

Maybe it’s because I’d come into adulthood publishing zines of my own, and I felt a certain kinship there, but I really liked the vision of this super motivated kid in the suburbs, hammering out articles behind the backs of his conservative parents. I jotted down the address noted on the back of Symie, and wrote a letter, hoping that someone in his family might still live there, and asking for an interview. Unfortunately, I never heard anything back. I did, however, stumble across a mention that Ebert had made of Stymie, and his early forays into publishing, a little while ago online. Here’s a clip. I fear it will be of little interest to anyone but me, but, as I love the history of self-publishing, and think this is one important aspect of the man’s life that’s not likely to be celebrated elsewhere today, I’m going to include it.

… Prozines and fanzines were two different worlds, and it was in the virtual world of science fiction fandom that I started to learn to be a writer and a critic. Virtual, because for a long time I never met any other fans; they lived only in the pages of mimeographed fanzines that arrived at 410 E. Washington St. and were quickly hidden among the hundreds of SF mags in the basement, on metal shelves that cost four books of Green Stamps. “Hidden,” because at first I concealed my interest in fandom from my parents. Fanzines were not offensive in any way–certainly not in a sexual way, which would have been the worst way of all in a family living in the American Catholicism of the 1950s, but I sensed somehow that they were . . . dangerous. Dangerous, because untamed, unofficial, unlicensed. It was the time of beatniks and On the Road, which I also read, and no one who did not grow up in the fifties will be quite able to understand how subversive fandom seemed.

Most fanzines had a small circulation of a few hundred, but they created a reality so intriguing and self-referential that, for fans, they were the newspapers of a world. Looking through old issues of Xero, which during its brief glory was one of the best fanzines ever published, I was stunned by how immediate and vivid my reaction was to names not thought about for years: Harry Warner Jr., Mike Deckinger, Guy Terwilliger, Gene DeWeese, Bob Lichtman, bhob Stewart (how evocative that “h” was!), Walt Willis, Bob Tucker, “Ajay” Budrys, Ted White. I met Donald Westlake as an adult (we have been on a couple of cruises together) and he was surprised to find that I was already reading him in Xero. I found established professionals (Harlan Ellison, Donald A. Wollheim, Anthony Boucher, Frederik Pohl, Avram Davidson, James Blish) happy to contribute to a fanzine, indeed plunging passionately into the fray. I confess happily that as I scanned pages and pages of letters of comment (“locs”), my eye instinctively scanned for my own name, as it did forty years ago, and when I found it (Blish dismissing one of my locs), I felt the same flash of recognition, embarrassment and egoboo that I felt then; much muted, to be sure, diluted, but still there. Locs were the currency of payment for fanzine contributors; you wrote, and in the next issue got to read about what you had written. Today I can see my name on a full-page ad for a movie with disinterest, but what Harry Warner or Buck Coulson had to say about me–well, that was important.

Wilson (Bob) Tucker was the first fan I met. He lived in Leland, a hamlet south of Bloomington, not far from Urbana. In the summer of 1958, still in high school, I was working as a reporter for the Champaign-Urbana News-Gazette, and was assigned to drive to Springfield to cover something at the state fair. I made a detour past his house. Bob and Fern made me feel right at home, and to meet them again I concocted a sort of fraud on my newspaper. We had a Sunday article on interior decorating, and I convinced an editor that I should write a piece about the household arrangements of one of Downstate Illinois’ major writers. Well, Tucker was major! In the endless fanzine debates about whether SF was really literature, The Long Loud Silence was always cited as real literature. Bob was a movie projectionist in Bloomington who wrote in his spare time (a writer with the same talent would be a best-seller today). The Tucker home was a modest two-bedroom suburban house with attached garage– “turn left off the highway when you get to the motel.” I photographed the high points of the interior decoration, which to my eye consisted of Bob’s typewriter, his desk, his shelves of books, his piles of SF magazines, his framed movie posters, and the Tuckers, standing in front of various compositions of the above. This article actually ran in the paper.

A year or so after that I joined Tucker and Ed Gorman, a fan from Cedar Rapids, on a trip to the MidWestCon in Cincinnati. We drove in my family’s Dodge, nearly skidding off a road in Indiana, talking all the way about fandom in a giddy rapid-fire exchange of inside jargon. At a motel in Cincinnati, I made people laugh with my reproductions of Bob and Ray routines, and drank a little beer, which felt like a lot of beer to an inexperienced drinker, and–here is the earth-shaking part–I actually met Buck and Juanita Coulson, Dick and Pat Lupoff, and Harlan Ellison! The Coulsons struck me as two of the nicest people I had ever met, the kind of people where you would like to move into their spare room, and the astonishingly long run of their Yandro was one of the monuments of fandom. The Lupoffs were enormously funny and smart New Yorkers–that city that the novels of Thomas Wolfe had forever colored in my daydreams. Harlan was–how old? Twenty? Young and cocky, with the color proofs for the cover of his new paperback that Berkeley Books was about to publish, and as he showed me the glossy reproduction, I knew envy of a desperately sincere kind.

The summer of 1961, now a student at the University of Illinois, I made my first trip to Europe on a $325 charter flight, and in Belfast visited Walt and Madeleine Willis. They invited me to tea–tomato sandwiches and Earl Grey–and took me around to meet James White, another of Belfast’s BNFs (Big Name Fans), whose prozine collection was carefully wrapped in brown parcel paper, year by year, and labeled (“F&SF 1957″). Fandom was a secret society and I had admission to friends everywhere who spoke the same arcane language.

In the summer of 1962, I found myself going to South Africa as the press agent for a tour of wheelchair athletes from the University of Illinois. After the long bus trip from Urbana, we stopped overnight at a motel near LaGuardia, and I called Dick and Pat Lupoff. We met for dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Times Square. Other members of our party included Lin Carter and his girlfriend, Gerry Deindorf, Walter Breen, and Ted and Sylvia White.

These meetings, these connections and conversations, were important because they existed in an alternative world to the one I inhabited. Fandom grew out of and fed a world-view that was dubious of received opinion, sarcastic, anarchic, geeky before that was fash-ionable. In those years it was heretical to take comic books or “Captain Video” seriously. Pop culture was not yet an academic subject. From Lenny Bruce, Stan Freberg, Harvey Kurtzman, Mort Sahl, and Bob and Ray we found an angle on America that cut through the orthodoxy of the Fifties and was an early form of what would come to be known as the Sixties.

I published my own fanzine (Stymie), cutting the ditto masters on an old L.C. Smith and paying an office supply company a few bucks to run it off for me. My freshman year in college I published The Spectator, a weekly “newspaper of politics and the arts” at the University, and this was a descendent of my fanzine. If I had only known it, I had stumbled on the format of the alternative weekly, but I didn’t know enough to give it away, and the ads and circulation income weren’t enough to keep it afloat; at the end of a year I sold it for two hundred dollars and joined the staff of The Daily Illini, then as now a great independent campus paper, and it took so much of my time that, little by little, fandom drifted out of sight…

And here, for those of you who don’t care so much about his 1950′s foray in self-publishing, are a few of my favorite videos of the beautiful, kind, thoughtful and generous Mr. Ebert in action… brilliantly egging on his old foil, Gene Siskel, defending Star Wars against a sci-fi hating asshole, and tearing apart the shittiest movies of 1983. (Those seeking more video clips can find a good list here.)

MARK: So, Thom, I hear that you’re going to be leaving us sometime soon. What’s up? I’m hoping it wasn’t anything that anyone said on my site.

THOM: No such luck. My life is in a time of great transition… I’m getting married, finishing my degree at EMU, and trying to decided what to do for grad school. And I was also recently diagnosed with type II diabetes. Living here for over a third of my life has been enough, for now. I am moving to a condo in Novi (owned by my parents) with my fiancée.

MARK: While in Ypsi you lived in a house commonly referred to as the Pleasuredome. What can you tell us about the Pleasuredome, the role that it played in the community, and its ongoing legacy?

THOM: The house in Depot Town we call the Pleasuredome is a one hundred and sixty year old former way station for freshly recruited Civil War soldiers. My bedroom, which is on the first floor, would have been where the country doctor examined them, and the rooms upstairs would have been used to store them before they were sent wherever they went next… probably to die on the front. Much like my great grandmother’s home, the P-dome has been like a depression-era boarding house, a place where people could cheaply turn their lives around, or where a person could completely self-destruct. Dustin Krcatovich once called the P-dome “the longest running semi-autonomous zone in Ypsilanti history.” I would say its role has been multifaceted; it has been a trailer park, a mental institution, cultural center, counterculture flophouse, and philosophical symposium, as well as one of southeastern Michigan’s première venues for some of the most culturally significant outsider music and noise over the last decade. We’ve had musicians and artists play my basement or kitchen from all over America and the world. What is the P-dome’s legacy? Well… it was definitely formative of not a few artists in our area. Its alumni have gone on to either fade into the apeiron, or to be innovators in their mediums. People have told me they already miss it.

MARK: What first brought you to Ypsilanti?

THOM: As a seventeen year old, I applied to one college because I knew someone who lived near campus (who tragically went on to take his life). I was accepted to Eastern, so that’s where I went, and it has made all the difference in my life… That one choice made me who I am today. I never had a plan. For some reason, I have always naturally put more stock in chance circumstances and encounters. I was entranced by the ancient architecture of Ypsilanti, the mesmerizing blur and haunting bellow of the train, Vinyl Joe’s Café, the extraordinarily variegated social scene, the storied hedonistic atmosphere, the oddball cultural history, and the sheer density of creative artists and interesting events. In my highly traumatized, dreamy, and lost youthful condition, it felt like Ypsilanti was the center of the universe… and for me it was. This was especially the case when juxtaposed with the endless expanse of graveyards and golf courses, strip malls… the charmless suburban nowhere I was accustomed to as a youth.

MARK: Will you be moving closer to, and further from, your guru?

THOM: Farther from Rama, who lives in Toledo.

MARK: You are the only person that I know who has a guru. What’s that like?

THOM: Well, guru means roughly, “dispeller of darkness.” I have had many gurus who have been extraordinarily meaningful in my life, including Dr. Sarah Heidt, Dr. Andrew Antis, and Dr. John Koolage. My guru you are referring to, Dr. Ramakrishna Puligandala, is like my philosophical grandfather, and I visit with him about once a month. He is a great rishi and teacher in the philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedanta, or the non-dualistic phenomenological interpretation of the Vedas (India’s oldest wisdom tradition). It means I have a basic metaphysical allegiance to the concept that you and I, and all beings, are actually non-different from Being itself, that there is approximately one ontological reality, it is one without a second, and you are that. Discovering that I was always already in Being, but radically nescient to it, was tremendously soteriological, or life-changing for me.

MARK: Speaking of changes, in the time that you’ve spent in Ypsilanti, you’ve no doubt seen quite a few. If you were to distill those changes into six words, what would those six words be?

THOM: Lack of mindful attention and care.

MARK: Where did you meet your wife to be? What were the circumstances?

THOM: Kassey and I met initially through mutual friends in EMU’s philosophy department, at a now defunct anarchist collective in Ypsilanti – the “Ypsi Free Commune”. We had an encounter where there was a protest (I think over the unionization of adjunct professors) happening at EMU, and there used to be a wall at EMU called the “free speech zone” where people spray painted their crude political slogans and other ephemera. She apparently had spray painted the vulgar expression “fuck EMU cops” earlier, and, not knowing that she’d done it, I commented that whoever had done it was likely a “real sociopath,” vandalizing property with vulgarity like that. She responded saying, “Yeah, a real nut,” but I think I could tell it was her from her reaction. We met again at the commune’s Halloween party, and she was just so adorable to me. At one point in conversation she quoted pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, and it was all over. The rest is history. Our first date was at Café Habana. And, three years later, we’re getting married… in May of 2014, at a Victorian mansion in Toledo.

MARK: I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say that, over the course of the past few years, your comments on this site have been among the more incendiary. I’m curious as to how you see your role relative to this site.

THOM: I grew up reading the 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche… he was probably my first real role model in life. Returning to Nietzsche is like hearing from an old friend. He gets ever more profound with each passing year. Nietzsche (riffing on Martin Luther) commanded those living in the era after the death of God to think with a hammer! Amongst my duties as a philosopher are to sometimes use my thinking as a tuning fork to find that which rings true, that which sounds hollow, and other times to smash utterly that which is rotten! Philosophers in tragic ages are those who are called-out to be diagnosticians and physicians to their sick society, and ours is surely a tragic age. Our bleak, neo-medieval technicity and its ubiquitous relativistic egoism need desperately to be overcome. If our tragically ill society cannot be “enlightened” because of the twisting effects of our absolutist framework of global technology, then individuals must make personal ‘U-turns’ away from the spiritual destitution of our age. I am condemned to be a Socratizing gadfly, wherever I am, and at markmaynard.com.

MARK: What do you think of this site? Feel free to be critical.

THOM: Markmaynard.com and other weblogs like it are the equivalent to the ‘town square’ of yore, it is where the people of our disharmonious hamlet and others voice their ideas. In the age where the ‘virtual’ has entirely overtaken the ‘real’, your site provides an essential function. I don’t care for the mainstream democratic, flesh eater bent if that’s what you mean.

MARK: Will you continue to visit the site after you’ve moved away?

THOM: I’m sure. I’m sort of addicted to markmaynard.com and facebook.com… The cobbler’s house is never finished.

MARK: (I sent the following question to a woman who will be leaving Ypsilanti for China, but, since she never wrote back, and as I very much like the question, I thought that I’d give you a shot at it.) What would shock you the most… If you returned to Yspi, after being away for two years, to find no signs of life whatsoever? Or to come back and find Ypsi a bustling metropolis?

THOM: Frankly I think either would be surprising… apart from EMU I feel like Ypsilanti is a place which will always have a niche appeal for its 19th century architecture, its gritty bar scene, and its cultural history as one of the most artistically productive and strange in the area, which attracts working class weirdoes. I’m sorry; I don’t prognosticate that Ypsilanti will become a megalopolis or a ghost town, barring some unforeseen disaster (in either case).

MARK: What will you miss the most about Ypsilanti?

THOM: The convenience of excellent vegan cuisine in our positively first class restaurants and bars (like Bona Sara Café, Beezy’s, the Sidetrack, Dalat, etc), the Ypsi Food Co-Op, living in beautiful (slightly gothic) Depot Town across from the ancient mayoral mansion, proximity to my hair stylist Sindy (of hair rock band Glitter Trash), living in the shadow of the most enormous lingam statue in the US (which are venerated by worshippers of Shiva), proximity to one of the best bookstores in the world (Cross Street Books), the transcendent tranquility of LeFurge Woods nature preserve (on Prospect), the dreamy Van-Gogh-esq ambiance of Frog Island park… and, mostly, my gloriously strange, beautiful people and ghosts who I love.

MARK: In Casey Dixon’s exit interview, he noted the existence of an “evil tree” in Ypsilanti. Do you know the tree of which he speaks?

THOM: Only the dead one in the P-dome’s backyard, which threatens every house around it.

MARK: Over the course of the past several years, I think it’s fair to say that you’ve done quite a bit to turn your life around. I don’t know to what extent you’d like to share the journey with our readers, but I thought that I’d offer the opportunity, in case you wanted to share?

THOM: Well… after a series of horrific events, I was very alone and trying to drink my profound clinical depression away. At one time my therapist said something like “any one thread of your life would require a lifetime worth of therapy alone.” Drinking was for me an ineffective coping strategy for catastrophically out-of-control traumatic stress; I was a terribly mentally ill person. Ypsilanti has a dark drinking scene, and if you don’t care what happens to you so much, you can find yourself in pretty horrific circumstances. After years of terrible alcoholism, and the kind of debauchery only really depressed people can get into (I was also a fairly prominent drummer/noise artist at this time as well), I eventually started to turn my life around. After a terrible night, I spent a strange day walking for hours, eventually losing myself, staring into the sunlight on the Huron River. Somehow I knew I had to change my life, and that I felt different. I quit smoking Kools (I was a two pack a day smoker for longer than I like to think), and started meditating and walking regularly. The shift came too late to stave off life threatening illness, but since that time, about four years ago; I have lost cumulatively almost one hundred pounds, I drink single glasses of red wine very occasionally, I eat a strict low starch vegan diet, my blood glucose is well controlled, I found Shiva and mysticism (which in itself is a radical shift from my fiery church protesting atheism of the past), I’ve almost completed my double bachelors, and I met the love of my life. Now I lead a mostly relaxing life of erudition, unconventional music (with my new group Oak Openings), and love.

MARK: What was childhood like for Thom Elliott?

THOM: I have some memory loss, but I recall being a highly imaginative, artistic ,and isolated boy, who spent most of my free time in make believe play, drawing, avoiding school work, playing the OG Nintendo, and being involved in theater. I was also constantly harassed, first, as a child, it was for being weird… If you reverse my initials, it spells ET, as in “ET phone home”. And, my last name is Elliott, like the first name of the little boy in the movie. So, I was knows as “alien”, or “ET”. Children are so creative in their cruelty. I was constantly harangued with that until, in middle school, people began alleging that I was a homosexual. I was bullied throughout my public schooling experience, which I may have taken out on my younger brothers and cousins. I was also diagnosed with a learning disability and prescribed Ritalin as a child, so I was made a class-three narcotics addict at twelve, when your brain is most plastic. My rearing may not have been entirely this way, but, unfortunately, what I remember most about my parents growing up was screaming, name-calling, and inappropriate conflict resolution. I was also molested. I’d rather not discuss that really, but there isn’t much to discuss… the person is in prison as far as I know for internet predation. People in my life also started killing themselves in high school, and haven’t stopped; it was a really popular option in the town I grew up in. I made friends with other outcasts, started smoking young, and we made noisy industrial music. Then I went to college too young.

MARK: My friend Pete seems to recall a discussion that the three of us had together in which you noted that you went to school with a person whose “intestines kept falling out.” As I don’t remember this at all, I’m inclined to say that Pete is making it up. Is he?

THOM: No he isn’t, that’s very close… that was after an excruciatingly dry presidential debate that we watched at the Sidetrack. For some reason, I was talking about the school I went to from 7th to 10th grade for intellectually gifted children who also happen to have learning disabilities (Eton Academy in Birmingham), which is an amazing program, and I was very fortunate to go there… but some of the people there had some terrible problems. The fellow who I was talking about, he was born with all his organs on the outside of his body… he was a “miracle” baby… they were able to surgically put them all back in, but he had some… dilemmas.

MARK: What do you hope to find in Novi?

THOM: There is positively shit for me in Novi other then the condo, my family law firm, a radical health-food/Reichian pseudo-science store in Farmington that I love called the “Tree-house for Earth’s Children”, and good Japanese, Thai, and Indian restaurants. There are no book stores (of merit). There are really no weirdo places. The people are all yuppie bilge who drive like they are looking to kill themselves and others… A piece of my heart will always live in Ypsilanti.

MARK: Your most memorable Ypsilanti moment?

THOM: There are so many… maybe my Talking Heads cover band’s set during the Totally Awesome Fest (with Patrick Elkins, Leggz Pierce, and Stevo Doccerson), where they played on the roof of the Déjà Vu. It was so awesomely, spectacularly Ypsi weird.

MARK: Please complete the following sentence. “I’m thankful that I moved to Ypsilanti because______.”

THOM: It is responsible for who I am, and almost all the positive things I have.

MARK: Please complete the following sentence. “Now’s the right time for me to leave Ypsilanti because ______.”

THOM: It just seems like the right time for me, but I will never leave Ypsilanti behind.

[All of our Ypsi/Arbor Exit Interviews can be found here.]

Chris Savage: Eclectablog
Ben Connor Barrie: Damn Arbor
Patti Smith: The Palate of Patti
Edward Vielmetti: Vacuum
Mary Bilyeu: Food Floozie
Steven Krause: EMU Talk
Patrick Diehl: What’s the Diehl?
Anne Savage: The Savage Feast
Peter Larson: Freewheel Burning
Christine Barry: Blogging for Michigan
Mike White: The Projection Booth
Ruth Kraut: Ann Arbor School Musings
Sarah Rigg: I Did It So You Don’t Have To
Joseph Schafer: Invisible Oranges
Kenneth Bailey: Michigan Exposures
Chuck Marshall: Life in Michigan
Mark Maynard: Mark Maynard dotcom
Roger Kerson: Driving Growth

If you’re planning to join us, you can RSVP on Facebook.

MARK: I’m thinking of requiring everyone who wants to leave to first get 100 signatures. Do you feel as though you could get that many people to sign a petition on your behalf, allowing you to leave?

CHARLES: That’s a weird petition… you should be collecting signatures to convince people to stay. And, no, I don’t think that I could collect 100 signatures.

MARK: I was just wondering if you could find 100 people willing to let you go. I mean, on one hand, I know that people want folks that they love to be happy, but there’s also a certain selfishness. We don’t like change. We don’t like our friends moving away from us.

CHARLES: I believe someone wrote a song about that. What’s it called? “Allan“? Oh yeah, I wrote it… Allan told me that moving away is great because then everyone parties when you come back around. Wouldn’t that be nice? [See video of "Allan" being performed below.]

MARK: Where is it that you want to go, and why?

CHARLES: Portland, Oregon. Kate got into Portland State and I’m going to pursue Electrical Engineering via Electrical Engineering Technology at Portland Community College.

MARK: What will Kate be studying? And what made led her to apply at Portland State?

CHARLES: She will be studying urban planning. She applied there and Seattle. She got into both. I favored Portland because I’ve already spent time in the Puget Sound and I’d like to try somewhere else.

MARK: Have you ever lived outside of Michigan?

CHARLES: I was born and raised in Oak Harbor, Washington. It’s a smaller city on an island in the Puget Sound. I was sent to live with my father when I was 12 in Canton, Michigan.

MARK: Was that a move that you wanted to make?

CHARLES: Well, that saga is long and winding, and too long to go into here. I wanted to get away from my mother who had a lot of problems, but it wasn’t my choice. It was “the State” that sent me to live with my father. I don’t think my father really wanted me at that point, which is why I left home when I was 16 and ended up in Ypsilanti, where two incredibly nice lesbos took me in and helped me finish high school, so I didn’t become destitute. Which is why I took personal offense when, a little while ago at Krampus, you referred to me as “so Ann Arbor,” because I know what you meant.

MARK: Sorry about that, Charles. I just think of you as an Ann Arbor institution. I was aware that you’d lived in Ypsi at some point, but I didn’t know the circumstances. At any rate, I’m sorry if my stupid comment upset you, and I’m glad that you brought it up here so that I could properly apologize. (And, for what it’s worth, I was super happy to see you at Krampus.) As for the circumstances that brought you to Michigan, I don’t know what to say, other than that it’s amazing what children are often made to endure. And even more amazing still what they’re able to make of their lives in the wake of such trauma. If you’re comfortable talking about it, I’m curious as to how, if at all, you see your childhood reflected in your creative work, which, at least on the surface, comes across as very happy.

CHARLES: There’s some sad stuff in my music too, if you listen for it. My humor tends to be of a sarcastic nature, but I’m a positive person. My bandmate Micah has called me the most practical absurdist ever. I don’t know exactly what that means, but maybe that has something to do with it. I just want people to be happy when I’m around. My earlier works – Pass the Time Machine (PTTM), and Walter Carlos (WC) – were more self-referential. There’s a hidden track on PTTM, at about the 5-minute mark in “My Time Machine,” that talks about my mother. “You Never Tried to be My Friend” is another song that people are surprised to learn is about my relationship with my father, and they’re even more surprised to learn that the song title comes from something he said to me, and not the other way around.

MARK: It seems that a majority of people that I interview these days, are either going to Portland or Oakland, and it makes me wonder if there might be a market in Ann Arbor for coins that say “Portland” on one side, and “Oakland” on the other, that people who are struggling with the decision could flip… Do you think they’d sell?

CHARLES: I do think they would sell. But, in most cases, it really has to do with having “Anchor” people in those places. Do you ever wonder how so many Polish people ended up in Hamtramck, and things like that? Anchor people? RIGHT?

MARK: OK, here’s a test for you… Sum up Ann Arbor, Oakland and Portland, each in six words? Go!

CHARLES:

Ann Arbor: Post hippy revolving Moderate Hotel California
Portland: Inland Bridge bicycle Buritto almost Goonies
Oakland: Taco truck bird sanctuary estuary forest

MARK: Well done. As I read it, “Moderate Hotel California” is kind of devastating. Do you care to elaborate?

CHARLES: That’s mostly in reference to my job at Downtown Home & Garden. I used to sing that song to the store cat (Lewis) as a joke on him. Later I came to see it was really a joke on me, and how I’d become really comfortable with everything, and no longer “hungry” as they say.

MARK: So you would tease Lewis by singing this song about how he could “never leave,” but then it occurred to you that you were actually in the same trap? Is that the moment when you knew that you’d have to leave?

CHARLES: Mark, you keep coming back to this idea that I have to leave, or something brought me to the breaking point. Ann Arbor and I are not getting a divorce. But I am excited about moving. I can’t wait to do different stuff. Go to different thrift stores and eat at different restaurants.

MARK: I totally understand. I was just trying to get some clarity on the moment you decided to go, and what your thought process was. Regardless of why people go, there’s point when they decide that it’s what they want to do, need to do, etc… Let’s try something else, though… What’s your first memory?

CHARLES: I dunno man… like I remember crawling off a weird stairwell thing and falling onto a couch, but it’s more like a dream.

MARK: I remember bright sunlight through a yellow curtain, and a gentle breeze coming from outside, as I lay in a crib in Monticello, Kentucky. My next memory after that is seeing the opening credits of the Dick Van Dyke Show on a small television. I don’t attribute any deep meaning to such things, but I think it’s interesting what we choose to remember… How about this… What was first television show you ever really loved?

CHARLES: Hhmm… I used to love Ducktails, Rescue Rangers, and Tailspin. When I was really young, I had a black and white TV in my room and I used to stay up all night watching Nick at Nite. That’s kinda weird, cuz now I can relate to people who watched that stuff when it was actually on TV. I liked “Mr. Ed” a lot and “I Dream of Genie”… oh and “Dragnet.” “Dragnet” was so cool. I hated “Green Acres.”

MARK: The color of “Green Acres” bothered me. It was too washed out, unnatural, or something… Why did you stick around Ann Arbor this long?

CHARLES: I like Ann Arbor. My friend Kelly once told me, “You don’t have to hate a place to leave it”. But, really, I was comfortable working at Downtown Home & Garden and I was able to pursue the music thing in my own way. The city is full of parks, and I can walk to work. I also happen to pay really cheap rent. A lot of my friends moved out to Detroit, but I must not really be a Detroit kinda guy.

MARK: Is there anything that you’d still like to accomplish in Michigan before leaving?

CHARLES: Me and some of the guys at work have been kinda putting together a bucket list of things I have to do before I leave. Some of them are specific to them, like getting the Bomber breakfast before work on a Sunday, but other stuff is more universal. Like they want me to do stand-up once before I leave. We’re also supposed to build a boat out of garbage and float it down the Huron.

MARK: I’d forgotten that you were contemplating stand-up… Have you put together any material?

CHARLES: I’m always in joke mode, but I have a hard time writing stand-up jokes that I can repeat. I’m better at just riffing with people. But something about being on stage makes that really hard. I haven’t given up on comedy, though.

MARK: What’s the best show you ever played?

CHARLES: Shows have some many different vibes, so it’s hard to say one was the best, but this was my favorite…… We played in an apartment kitchen in KZOO and it was so small that I had to set my equipment up on the counter and put a speaker on the fridge. It got so hot, that midway through the show, I turned around and used the “dish sprayer off thingy” to spray everyone. Someone opened up the cupboard and found a bag of rice and started throwing it around like it was a wedding or something, like we were all getting married to each other, or everyone was marrying me. The floor felt like it was going to cave in.

MARK: Would you consider yourself more of an inventor or a musician, or isn’t the distinction important to you?

CHARLES: I’m just a man, I do things… Socially, I often feel like I don’t fit in with my fellow musicians, like the kid who got invited to the birthday party because his mom called the birthday kid’s mom and asked why he wasn’t invited. I don’t know which one I am… Which one makes more money?

MARK: I’d like to follow up on your comment about not feeling welcome in the local music scene. Do you think that might just be your perception, or do you really feel as though people didn’t want you around? And, if it’s the latter, why do you think that is? Did they just not get what you were trying to do? Or was it more a personality thing? …And, if it’s money you want, invent an iPhone app.

CHARLES: First off, I think it was entirely personal and having more to do with the fact that I don’t really drink or do drugs. Not participating in those ritualistic things can make you unwelcome in some circles, but, even when that is not the case, an experience wall can develop where it becomes hard to communicate with people who are experiencing the events in a different way. I’ve always been hyper sensitive about whether I was welcome somewhere. It probably comes from when I was kid and always staying the night at my friends’ houses – to get away from my mother – always knowing I didn’t really belong there. Then, later, with my father… Second, I’ll never make any money. I’m black licorice.

MARK: As for the inventor/musician divide, I ask that because it seems to me that maybe you’re deriving more pleasure these days from creating electronics than from performing. Would I be right about that?

CHARLES: A few years ago, I started to get kinda bored with performing. I realized that I was never going to get to be a famous rock n roll star on my terms (or probably on anyone’s terms). I also realized it wasn’t really the lifestyle I wanted, or the people I wanted to surround myself with (not the artists, I like artists, the other people). I also realized that no amount of fame (or anything) will ever fill the emptiness inside me – an emptiness that drives me to constantly be working on something or towards something. I decided that I should broaden my view of what I can do with my life and still be happy. You have this idea when you’re younger that there is only one fate for yourself, or at least I did. Like I was going to a famous rock n roll star, or fail at it. Now I’m 30, and I realize that there are still plenty of other things I can fail at too, and have fun doing it. I wasn’t happiest when I was the most popular. I’m happier now than I’ve ever been… I’ve surprised myself with how fast I’ve gotten good with electronics. It seems my brain was made for this. I’m taking some math courses at WCC, and I’m doing really well in those as well.

MARK: I’ve been told that I should ask you about your hair. Are you cool with that?

CHARLES: Ha Ha. That must be because I make lots of jokes about it. It’s one of those things where, you’re like, “I don’t want anyone to think I’m really worried about my hair, so I’m gonna be the first to make jokes about it,” but then you realize, you’re always talking about your hair – how you’re losing it – so everyone knows you must care about it. Of course I don’t want to be losing my hair. It’s one of those things that happens, and you’re like, “Do I really want to be an old musician?” No. I want to be an old artist. Do you want to be old Axel Rose, or old Brian Eno? The answer is obvious.

MARK: At what moment did you know that it was time to move on?

CHARLES: From Ann Arbor? From Michigan? from my hair? Everyone in Michigan has this “sinking boat” mentality. Like, if you leave, it’s because you can’t hack it… have no pride. A true Michigander goes down with his ship. We’ve had this Detroit auto-based economy “we’re all doomed” bullshit crammed down our throats for so long, it’s shaped how everything is phrased. Doomsday pride. The question is not, when did you decide to leave, but, when did you decided to get out of this stinking hell hole. This isn’t just in reference to this question… it’s the attitude I witnessed a lot. Again, you don’t have to hate a place to leave it.

MARK: I see it differently. I don’t think there’s a sense that people leave because they can’t hack it here. Quite often, it’s the most talented people who are leaving (which is the frustrating thing). I think the sense is that people leave because they feel unfulfilled here, or they believe that they could achieve more elsewhere. At least that’s what I think… I certainly don’t look at the people who are leaving and think, “They just aren’t strong enough, or smart enough.” If anything, it’s the opposite. And, for what it’s worth, I don’t see the state as a “stinking hell hole.” While I hate what’s happening in Lansing, there’s a lot to like about his state. And I think that people will come to realize that as the effects of global warming worsen.

CHARLES: I agree. I like Michigan and I like Ann Arbor, though it may be a “yuppie food court.” Allegiance to a city or state can be so strange, like it all changes depending on the circumstances. If two people are racing, and one lives in Ann Arbor, and the other lives in Ypsi, who do you root for? Or if one is from Ann Arbor, but the other lives in Ann Arbor? Would it be worse if the most talent people moved to the moon rather than Portland or Oakland? I dunno. Talented Michiganders are being conceived at this very moment… it’s just too bad that one day they will be forced move to the moon because that’s where they will be appreciated.

MARK: How have you seen Ann Arbor change over the years that you’ve spent here?

CHARLES: I feel like a lot of people interpret changes in their role within a town as a change in the town itself. I don’t think Ann Arbor has really changed that much since I moved here 10 years ago. My role in the town has changed a lot. I don’t play parties anymore. I don’t go to parties. Some people know me and come to my shows. Some people know me from Downtown Home & Garden. I’m not really involved in “youth culture”. I’m just a guy who does stuff, and so the town seems different than when I was younger, but it’s really the same… But, some places closed, I guess.

MARK: At some point, not too long ago, you mentioned to me that you’d prefer, at this stage in your life, to be known as Charles Slick, as opposed to Charlie Slick. I imagine that’s a difficult transformation to make, though, when you’re such a well-known public figure. I don’t want for this to come across the wrong way, as I really appreciate your work, and don’t want to trivialize it, but it’s kind of like you’re going through, at some level, the same kind of thing that people who achieve stardom early in life often do… trying to reinvent yourself as an adult artist. And it’s not an easy thing to accomplish. For every Justin Timberlake, there’s a Dustin Diamond. And I’m just wondering how, if at all, that factors into your decision to move? Was the memory of the young, shirtless Charlie Slick, covered in glitter and his bubbles, playing in front of swooning young women, just too hard to break free from here, in Michigan?

CHARLES: I am very excited to reinvent myself in another city. My best shows these days are out of town shows, where people don’t have any idea who I am, or what I’m about to do, or cover myself with. As far as the name thing goes, I’ve changed my name so many times… I was Charlie up until I was 6. Then I wanted to be called Chucky (which turned into Chunky, because I was kinda a fat kid). When I was 12, I went by Chuck. And, when I was around 23, I started performing as Charlie Slick, and now everyone knows me as Charlie Slick. A name is just something people call you, and you’d be surprised at how easy it is to change. When I started my math class at Washtenaw Community College, I told everyone my name was Charles and that’s what they call me. I’m trying not to think of my life in terms of fame, and so I don’t believe comparing me to Dustin Diamond is relevant.

MARK: Just for the record, I wasn’t comparing you to Dustin Diamond, or, for that matter, Justin Timberlake. I was just noting the fact that some people make the transition well, while others struggle with it… Let’s talk about your recent electronics work, though. What are you working on right now that you’re excited about?

CHARLES: I’m building a Modular Synthesizer. I design and etch Printed Circuit Boards (PCBs). I recently started sneaking pictures of Sigourney Weaver into my PCBs. Just yesterday, I etched a piece of aluminum for a front panel with a picture of Sigourney Weaver on it. I’m basically teaching myself at this point, but it’s been one of the most mentally rewarding endeavors I’ve ever attempted. I don’t think there is a lot of money in Modular Synthesizers but I like the idea of making Boutique modules to sell for fun. You can follow all my progress on my blog.

MARK: Would you say you’re obsessed with Sigourney Weaver? And, if so, what is it about her that you find so compelling?

CHARLES: I like strong women. I also like tall women. I like women who can put me in my place. I like women who don’t take shit from anybody. It’s true that Sigourney Weaver is that kind of a woman, but I have history of name dropping Sigourney Weaver. I’m not sure why I chose her, or if in a strange way, she chose me.

MARK: I think I must have asked you this before, but have you ever seen Quintron’s infomercial for the Drum Buddy? Ever since I first met you, I’ve thought that you’d be great in that format. Will you do me a favor and consider it?

CHARLES: Yeah, I’d actually never seen that before, but it’s pretty awesome. I’m sure I have a future in QVC.

MARK: What’s the ideal career for Charles Slick, and do you think it’s attainable in Portland?

CHARLES: I don’t know what my ideal situation is exactly in Portland and I don’t think it would be terribly different than if I stayed. I’m going to pursue my electronics education full-time, find some people to play music with, perform with my modular, try to sell my electronics, and maybe get job doing something remotely related to electronics.

MARK: How would you like to be remembered by the people of Ann Arbor?

CHARLES: As I am, a self-absorbed jerk who was mostly a good guy.

MARK: Any parting words of wisdom for those of us who remain behind?

CHARLES: Don’t waste your time trying to “build a scene”. Things like that happen organically when people work on stuff and share it with other people – and as soon as you get this magical problem-solving scene, you’ll hate it, because that’s how it is. For 90% of musicians, the idea of selling records/downloads is over… let it go. More than ever, music is just a means of communication, with your peers and your community. That may be strange coming from me, a person who was completely obsessed with trying to make money playing music. That was just another variation on the many ways I tried to quantify what I was doing. How many shows can I play in month? How many plays on Youtube? How many downloads? How much do I matter? Engineering a “scene” will never turn into anything your father (or your girlfriend’s father) will understand. I am proud to have been a part of things that I think make Ann Arbor/Ypsi cool… Totally Awesome Fest, seeing “this must be the place” play on top of Deja Vu, Water Hill Music Festival, Sherwood Bar. This town does cool stuff and I was a part of some of it, and I’m not moving away to a “cooler” place where “better” things happen. I’m certainly not in search of a better “scene.” See ya’ guys later.

MARK: Did you find this at all cathartic?

CHARLES: I like hearing myself talk.

Now, here, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the musical work of Mr. Slick, are a few examples.

[note: The other Ypsi/Arbor Exit Interviews in this series can be found here.]

I wasn’t able to get away from work and attend in person, but my good friend, and former bandmate, Pete Larson, who often leaves comments on this site, was awarded his PhD on Friday afternoon. I am incredibly proud of him. A lot of people that I know bemoan how shitty their lives are, but very few have the follow-though to actually do something about it. To see Pete, over the course of the past dozen years or so, go from working a job that he said was killing him, to become an authority on the prevention of infectious diseases in Africa, has been an incredibly inspiring thing to see unfold. And I could not possibly be any happier for him.

As for Pete’s PhD defense, he’s lucky that I wasn’t able to attend, as my intention was to blast the following once the papers had been signed and everything had been made official.

That’s Pete singing, for those of you who didn’t already surmise as much. The piece is called “Alright,” and, if I’m not mistaken, it’s one of the first songs that he and I wrote in the basement of 502 Catherine Street, along with Dan Richardson and Matt Krizowsky, as Prehensile Monkeytailed Skink.

As I’ve never seen anyone get their PhD, I don’t know exactly how it happens, but I imagine that it’s something like that scene at the end of The Wizard of Oz, where Oz the Great and Powerful hands the Scarecrow a diploma, pronounces him a Doctor of Thinkology, and explains to him that it’s receiving the credential that makes one educated. (I have this wonderful image in my mind of Pete being handed his diploma and suddenly putting his extended index finger to his temple and reeling off all kinds of technical jargon as though it’s just come to him in a flash.)

At any rate, I thought that I should mention this recent change which Pete’s undergone, as his comments on the site from now on are likely to be exponentially more brilliant and insightful than they have been in the past.

One more thing… I don’t know if Pete will pursue it, but he and I have been kicking around an idea which we think may cut down on the spread of malaria in Africa. The idea arose out of a conversation that we had over lunch a few weeks ago, upon his return form doing field research in Kenya on the use of insecticide treated bed nets. During the course of our conversation, Pete mentioned that, according to his research, a surprisingly large percentage of people don’t use bed nets because they feel as though malaria is spread by way of witchcraft, rather than by mosquito. Well, upon hearing that, it occurred to me that, if you could convince people that bed nets actually served as barriers to witchcraft, that the end result could be increased usage, and decreased instances of malaria. As I scientist, I don’t know that he so much liked the idea of playing upon superstitions, and marketing something as “witch-proof,” but he conceded that it might be a test worth running. And, from there, we began talking about other possibilities, such as imprinting the nets, which are given away freely by a number of non-profits doing work in the country, with images of famous football players, revered spiritual figures, and musicians like Bob Marley, who, according to Pete, still has quite the following in Africa. At any rate, Pete and I pitched the idea on Friday night, over coffee, to a the director of a Japanese research group doing work in Africa. I suspect it’s highly unlikely that we’ll get any traction with it, but, as I very much like the idea, I thought that it was worth mentioning here… just in case anyone from the Gates Foundation might be reading.

Those interested in getting to know Doctor Larson better are encouraged to check out his website, which, among other things, contains some great information on African heavy metal. And, if you still want more, a video interview that I did with him not too long ago can be found here. And, if it’s the music that you want more of, here are links to two more of the songs we recorded back in ’92 or so: Anarchy is Stupid, Face Like A Piranha. Both, I think you’ll agree, are classics.

Good work, Pete.