Whereas the writer does his usual thing and another interview just never happens; an unjustifiable anti-interview with Tamra Spivey of Lucid Nation

Self-loathing isn’t usually my bag. I find it entirely unbecoming and have way too much goddamn ego to ever tumble into the hate-myself sinkhole. But, I do get a little pissed at my severe disorganization, my lack of motivation at times and general carefree take-it-as-it-comes attitude. Waiting for inspiration is pretty fucking useless unless you’re prepared to do something with it when it strikes.

"Write me a verse, my old machine - I lack for an inspiration; the skies are blue and the trees are green, and I long for a vacation." Edwin Meade Robinson wrote that, and I find it sort of silly fun (if ya knew Ted, you'd know he was more of an early jingle writer than poet). My whole life stumbles around on this premise. So fuck it, here’s an open apology (something I am not beyond – more ego) to one Tamra Spivey and the rest of the collective that shares the "name" Lucid Nation – I’m really fucking sorry that this didn’t go down the way we were trying to make it go down. It’s me, just me, and that’s the only excuse I can come up with. I really wanted to talk Tamra, but the planets just never aligned for me…

Ok, so now I get back up off my knees and quit explaining away my untrustworthiness in order to tell the rest of ya’ll just what it is we’re dealing with here. Lucid Nation is the what. But what the fuck is a lucid nation? Stop thinking and live people. Live and listen. Does anyone out there remember Peter Laughner? He who loved rock and roll life so much that he exploded himself for it? He had this little band in Cleveland in the mid-70’s when that town was at the bottom of the American urban shitheap called Rocket from the Tomb (not those wag the dog current neo-soul-cum-punk nosiemakers Rocket from the Crypt – although a pretty cool plus for playing on the name). The Tombs also had this cat Crocus Behemoth in the band. Behemoth was actually David Thomas - who took the Tombs and warped them into Pere Ubu who melted a queasy vision of the Velvet Underground into a noise war that begat one of the punk aesthetics finest moments. Laughner dissipated into the ether on a cloud of booze and dope. Ubu railed on. Lucid Nation takes Ubu’s "Heart of Darkness" into their bosom and suffocate it – as it was intended to be done. It’s on a little disc I got in the mail with a handwritten title of "Unpoetic Rain" scribbled across it. Inside the jacket it explains the record as "Lucid Nation Live on KXLU". Fuck, I can hardly call it a record because the thing is really just this long, wild-eyed amphetamine howl at everything and everybody. Constantly building up, it breaks down the entire time. It is a strangely sexual (re: life filled) cacophony that undulates over and over again. The sleeve prattles on and on about Mingus, The Stooges, Patti Smith (all influences? Sanity?)…likeminded folk. Friends.

So they lock up in a radio studio and boil themselves into a trance. They record the whole thing, and if you’re lucky you’ll maybe hear a little of it someday. If not, you can take my word for it, they’re still out there. The freaks, the manic rock addicted wild-ones, the ones who don’t give a shit about the games to be played or the Wall Street blues. These are our people – we, theirs. Still.

What is inspiration? What is it? GODDAMN IT! WHAT I S IT? I wish I knew. Maybe you do. Would you share it with me? No? Ok, that’s what I planned on asking Tamra when we talked…I swear it. It would have been beautiful. But I have the music.

Lucid Nation put out two "proper" records prior to the live sabotage thing they did. "Punkophony" led off Suburban Legends with a hilarious rip on the very idea of being "punk" – how fucking cultivated the moves are these days. What a hoot! In fact, the copy I own has the fucking tab broken so when you open the disc the whole thing comes apart and the disc goes tumbling to the floor (I often consider this the "first song" on the record – the clitter clatter of that shiny little disc).

Los Angeles is a pretty fucked up place. Not in that it’s a bad place, or not that it’s unusual in any way, just that it’s fucked up. Its fucked in the way that only time spent there will reveal. It’s fucked up in a way that hypnotizes onlookers, sucks them in, and then turns them completely off. Not "off off" but off in the way it controls, dehumanizes, and sets you adrift in the eternal flow of things. Try having an identity in that town. Just try.

So that’s where the punks came from (at least one version of them). Sunny and happy, miserable people. Who knows? Suburban Legends seems to try and figure it out for, maybe, a second, and then it spits, and spits, and spits, spits, spits. I want to say it roars because the guitar, the drums, the whole of it takes the bludgeoning form, but it really spits. So Legends is more akin to the freakout of Rain.

Tamra would have answered questions about this shit. About L.A., about the Lucid Nation move to art-noise (although noise is only a weak stab at what is going on with this stuff). Tamra would have told me about this sort of shit. I would have nodded, "uh-huhed" her, and then asked her what her fave Mingus disc is (mine, forever The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, hers?). I would have wanted to know about what she reads, what she thinks of how shitty film has gotten. She’d tell me about L.A. "Welcome to my hometown / welcome to my hometown / it’s L.A. it’s fun" she says in "Hometown". Fuck, I should have called.

Last year Nation also put out a bit that seemed downright glossy in-between these other two platters. DNA proved a serious point in the way it comes off so sharp. Not that the band let anything down, but they picked a little something else up. Clean. Don’t be fooled by the slowdown, don’t be fooled by keen sounds, and don’t let the po-po-poetry strangle the idea. Maybe this is what punk was really supposed to be. First you have to break the visions of punk that you already have. Sledgehammer the shit out of them. Someone took it away and left you with that. Hammer it / hammer it / hammer it.

Pick one song on DNA and see where it takes you. I tripped with something titled "GKM", a Doors-ian terror. Sounds good. Fuck, gotta, gotta, got to, have to keep movin’. Amen.

I wanted to ask Tamra about this stuff. I wanted to communicate (her howl in the middle of "GKM" is wicked fear). I meant to talk to her, to someone, about all of this. I really did. Must be part of L.A. inside me. I meant to.

I wanted to hear her tell me about inspiration.

Fuck.

Ego.

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