Lou Giordano interview from Maximumrocknroll, March 1993
Interview by Eric Bradford (eric@workingset.com), with thanks to Rich for the phone line.
Any self-respecting devotee of early '80's punk knows Lou Giordano's name; if not, you've at least heard his work. Lou cut his teeth producing and/or engineering the meat of Boston's hardcore catalog, including albums by SSD, FU's, Jerry's Kids, DYS, the Proletariat... you name it, he was there. After a stint as Hüsker Dü's soundman for the last five years of its existence, he's continued working with influential independent bands ranging from King Missle to Bob Mould's new band, Sugar. His take on the present state of independent music is that of a man who's been there from day one, and who's seen it from all sides.
MRR: When you first started out in recording, were you in Boston?
LG: Yeah, in Boston.
MRR: And what year was that?
LG: I would say '82.
MRR: So you pretty much started at the beginning of the heyday of Boston hardcore bands...
LG: Yeah, SSD, FU's, Jerry's Kids, The Proletariat; all that stuff.
MRR: And did you get into it because of what was going on, or did you know people in those bands?
LG: Both. I was primed for it from seeing the British movement in '77 and similar situations in LA and New York. I was into the local music scene from '78 on. My first gig was the Molls at the Rat, Peter Prescott's band before Mission of Burma. I guess that's where my "punk education" happened. Some of the fans I met at these early shows later formed their own bands. I offered to mix their live sound which eventually led to studio gigs.
MRR: So you were living in Boston at this time?
LG: Yeah, an engineering student at M.I.T. I grew up in New York though, so I'd always be visiting there and checking out the scene, like the Talking Heads, the Ramones, Patti Smith. There were only two punk clubs in NYC in the late 70's, early 80's; CBGB's and Max's Kansas City. Punk wasn't profitable yet.
MRR: So did somebody say to you one day, 'you seem to be into this, why don't you come take a crack at recording...'
LG: No, it was a natural progression of my past activities. I'd played guitar in bands in high school. At MIT some friends and I fooled around with an empty recording studio. We rigged up electronics we found in basements around the Institute and tried to record bands. Then I got into mixing live sound; mostly SSD shows. At the time they were called Society System Decontrol, which I kinda liked. At first, I was attracted to it for the politics as much as the music. Being on the left side of the spectrum, I was shocked and disappointed when a lot of Boston bands revealed their true right-wing colors. Possibly giving them more credit than they deserve, they were coming at it from a Libertarian perspective. I was into the truly anarchist, non-hierarchical politics.
MRR: So are you specifically referring to the whole gang mentality, straight edge type of thing...
LG: I'm talking about the misunderstanding of the left's progressive ideas, and replacing them with meat-headed right-wing jargon.
MRR: So despite this...
LG: Well, I eventually phased myself out of hardcore. I became involved with people whose politics I saw more eye to eye with, like The Proletariat. I worked for about two years at a studio called Radiobeat. I was mixing SSD live, and around December '82 they wanted to make a tape. The owner of the place had his hands full and wanted to take on an assistant, so I started doing as many sessions as I could handle and still keep my day job. Then I hooked up with Hüsker Dü in about '83. They showed up for their first Boston show without a sound guy. I was mixing the opening bands, Sorry and The Proletariat. They asked "will you mix our sound?" and I said "sure, it'd be a pleasure." Then they said "well, why don't you jump in the van and finish the tour with us, and we'll fly you home from Minneapolis," so I said "well... yeah!" So began a five year live sound gig, and many lasting friendships.
MRR: So you were with them right up until the time they broke up, is that right?
LG: Oh yeah. Their last show was a travesty and a tragedy.
MRR: Have you been doing Bob Mould's live stuff too?
LG: I did for a couple of years, when he first went out in '89 and '90. But it became clear that I had to choose between studio and live stuff, for continuity. If I was out on the road all the time, the only thing I could do would be to jump on another road gig.
MRR: Do you like doing studio stuff better?
LG: I prefer it, because I can live at home ["some of the time", says my wife!], and more importantly, it's long-lasting. With touring, I come home and the only thing I've got is this map with magic marker drawn on it. I say to people, "I went here, I went here." But with recording, you have the records and they last forever. Though some of them you might not want to last forever!
MRR: That cuts both ways, I guess.
LG: You bet! But they're there, they're published, and you can look at a catalog of work that you've done over the years, and remember all the musicians and people that you've worked with. You've helped them accomplish their goal of releasing a finished work.
MRR: A lot of people that I mention your name to out here (SF) associate you with those bands that you mentioned, the hardcore thing, but I know that you were working with bands at the time that didn't necessaritly fall into that category, like the Mission of Burma demos that Taang later furned into Forget.
LG: Right. As a staff engineer, I took anything that came in the door, from the worst new wave techno to punk bands who drank so much they couldn't stand up (The Wards). Sometimes it is a matter of economics. Some people take the high ground and say they'll only work with one style of music. I think there's a place for all kinds of music. Compare it to print media. There's music like magazines that you pick up, read a few articles and toss. And there's music that stays with you for a while, like a good book. From working with all these different types of bands, from classical to jazz to avant-garde to punk, I developed an appreciation of many styles of music.
MRR: Well, when I talk about people associating your name with that type of music, we're talking about certain people that are only into that type of thing.
LG: Yeah, well, that's OK, hopefully they'll outgrow that, and check out other cool stuff. There's so much out there, and to narrow it down and say you're only going to listen to one kind of music is a real loss.
MRR: How would you compare what you see from local bands now to what it was then?
LG: I think it's real fragmented, and I don't know quite why. Back then, there were a lot of people in gigging bands. They'd record radio tapes to boost attendance at shows, but a record deal wasn't an immediate goal. It may have happened to a few bands, but it wasn't the main thing, which was playing out and having a good local following. Now, it seems that bands want to take the beeline to a record deal. I can't fault them for that; heck, I make a living off it. But now, if a band doesn't get signed in two years, they'll quit. They won't keep going out of dedication. No one puts a band together these days without aspiring to some kind of publishing, either an independent or a major label. Many lean toward the major. They see the success of a band like Nirvana, where they release one album on Sub Pop and then get the deal. Listen, it took Hüsker Dü six records before they signed.
MRR: And they weren't exactly shooting for that, either.
LG: Right, they were approached by Warner. No one said "let's shop this band".
MRR: Looking back over all the stuff you've done, what are the records you still put on?
LG: It's funny, sometimes other people do it for me. I listen to the radio a ton. I still listen to college radio after 12 years. I hear stuff on there and think, 'god, that sounds familiar... shit, that's from that Moving Targets record.' And I think, 'that sounds pretty good' and I'll pull out the album and check it out. The stuff still holds up. Going back to the old records, I remember the anger associated with hardcore. I have to laugh, because for me, those feelings have largely dissipated. The anger seemed driven by discontent and dissatisfaction with personal situations, global politics and so forth. I'm still dissatisfied with the global and national state of affairs, mostly the distribution of wealth and the resulting social problems. But I'm able to externalize these feelings and maintain some inner calm.
MRR: It seems like, from talking to people who've been into it for a long time, it seems like a big part of their mellowing out is, initially they're dissatisfied with their own plight as much as the state of the world. And while the state of the world pretty much stays as screwed up as it is, their own plight generally gets better.
LG: You agonize over things for a while, and then realize you need to get stuff done. Practically speaking, you need a steady source of income, and of course, the larger question of finding a direction to focus your energy. It defeats your prupose if you're constantly struggling with and questioning everything. I associate hardcore music with a kind of angst which I guess I don't feel anymore.
MRR: That leads me into the next thing that I was going to ask... you mentioned the importance of the economic aspect of the thing, but I would imagine that you've been offered projects in the past that you haven't been able to deal with.
LG: Many times. The first thing I need to know is if a band is sincere about what they're doing. If they're in it to be a good bar band, I have nothing to contribute. I work with people who are trying to break down musical barriers and genres. Which hardcore did at first. It started as a bunch of serious punk rock bands that were playing a lot faster and harder than previous groups, and people didn't have a category for it. Ten years later we look back and, 'of course, those were the hardcore bands'. But when they started out, there wasn't any journalistic label, just people.
MRR: When you're within what's going on it's harder to be objective about that kind of thing.
LG: And for a while, nobody knows what it is and it's exciting. And then it starts to become... identifiable things that people see from a distance. A crowd of second generation bands emerge that ape the original ideas. To me, there's not much new in hardcore in '92. If it is, it's not hardcore, it's grunge, thrash or whatever you want to call it.
MRR: One of the bones of contention in this magazine is that a lot of people are opposed to the whole Nirvana thing, the mass exodus to the major labels. People believe that's going to kill the whole underground scene, the fact that bands like Hole and Helmet and so forth are signing to major labels, and that's going to change the attitude every person forming a punk band will approach it with.
LG: What are they afraid of? If bands stay true to their original goals, they can steer the mainstream their way. It's a great thing that Nirvana is on commercial radio. If the music business is shifting toward bands like Nirvana and Helmet and Sonic Youth, then maybe they've given up on metal, thank god. It's opening up music, it's the opposite of what's happening in the Democratic party, where the emphasis is to shift everything to the right, or "the center", to include more people. With Nirvana's success, the music industry is coming to us. They're forcing A&R departments to pay attention to bands that would have been dismissed as too radical a couple of years ago. And maybe some of the million people who bought Nirvana will get curious about where they came from and dig deeper into indie record stores.
MRR: So you think that this is going to have a lasting effect.
LG: In a very positive way. I know there are the purists who think "Alternative" has finally been co-opted [see One Dimensional Man by Marcuse]. But I'd say we've taken over. It's great that some bands can be successful on independent labels; I admire bands like Fugazi and Bad Religion for doing it on their own terms. But some bands are strong enough to get what they want from a major deal. And others choose to power their way through the indie distribution fiasco. You can't fault people for doing what they believe in. Take Bob Mould, for instance. He was in the major label arena, and now he's jumped ship to an independent label. It was a very conscious decision.
MRR: He jumped off of Virgin then, they didn't drop him?
LG: Absolutely.
MRR: That's great, and rare. I can't think of anyone who's done something like that recently.
LG: Well, he couldn't get a straight answer from anyone out there. He wanted to do things a certain way, he had a plan and he couldn't get anyone to back him up.
MRR: Do you have any final thoughts that you've been wanting to lay on MRR readers?
LG: Remember that the whole punk ethic, the hardcore movement, was founded on the idea of 'think for yourself'. When you categorize things, dress a certain way and mouth the same tired slogans, you're not original thinkers at all. More like slaves to a fashion. Be different, and proud of it.
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