(conducted by Quin, February 2nd, 2002, Silverlake, CA)
Okay. This is it. I can now retire from No-Fi "Magazine" a very happy guy, because I have interviewed one of my favorite newer bands. That band, of course, is Young People. They've been a band for two years and I just got into them a couple months ago after getting one of their songs off the Kill Rock Stars web site. So, I immediately ordered the CD and began playing it on my radio show, and it hasn't left my CD player since. A few weeks ago I decided to e-mail the band to see if I could get an interview and I heard from Jeff very quickly and he seemed interested. I began to prepare questions and get nervous and then on Feb. 2nd, my friend Daniel and I got in the car and took off to see Young People play at Sea Level Records on Sunset. The performance was great and we tried to record it for No-Fi "Radio" as part of our "sessions" series, but the recording didn't come out (we arranged a soundboard recording the following weekend which came out really well). After the short show we packed it all up and went to the Silverlake pad (The No-Fi "headquarters"). We ate Hollytron's food and Brandon Huff played video games while I sat down for a conversation of the three nicest musicians you could ever meet. Here is what happened:
K= Katie (singer, guitar, bass, violin, drums, metal pot) JF= Jeff (backup vocals, guitar, bass, drums) JT= Jarrett (drums, guitar, backup vocals)
G= Greg (of The Centimeters) P= Phillip (of The Centimeters) B= Brigette (newest member of The Centimeters) Q= Quin (me)
Q: I am here with Young People. They are one of my favorite bands right now and their self titled CD available on 5RC is my number 1 pick of the year for 2002. I really can't stress that enough...it's brilliant...so, I''m very excited and nervous about this interview. Anyway, the first question is have you found someone to take care of your cat while on tour?
K: Yes. I actually ended up moving my cat to New 
York City the last time I went to New York, which was a couple weeks ago. I took her on Jet Blue and I will make a plug for Jet Blue because they were really nice and even took me back behind the ticket counters and helped me force tranquilizers into my cat's mouth because I couldn't do it. So the ticket lady took me by the hand and took me back there and gave my cat drugs and I gave myself drugs and then I passed out on top of her cage, which they make you take the cat on the plane with you...
JT: Wait, so you took drugs too, huh?
K: Oh yeah!
JT: Did you use forceps to put the drugs into the cat's mouth?
K: Forceps?
JT: Yeah. I just thought it might be helpful.
K: No. I used my hand.
JT: Have you washed your hands since then?
K: Yes, I have. So, anyway I moved her to New York and she's been in the apartment I am going to live in for the past month and she's doing quite well. Thank you for asking.
JF: I believe she's becoming a very famous cat these days...
JT: At least in the e-mails.
JF: She's showing up in the Yeah Yeah Yeahs photo shoot. I think she's taking a cameo role. Beware and look out for Mao Mao.
K: Mao Mao the black cat.
JF: She's gonna have a solo album pretty soon I think.
Q: Like those singing cats with the Christmas album.
JF: Wasn't it singing dogs?
Q: Umm, I don't know and I'm ashamed to know anything about that so I will just stop talking about it right now. Is Young People named after the Shirley Temple movie from 1940?
JT: Yes it is but we've never seen it.
Q: damn.
K and JT: Have you?
Q: No.
JT: How did you know about that?
Q: I'm just ridiculously obsessed with movies and I just know. Well, something that got me wondering was when I read this web site that said Young People was named after a Judy Garland movie.
K: That was so wrong.
Q: Yeah...
JT: Who directed that movie, do you know?
Q: No, but I could find out.
JT: I guess we could look it up on Internet Movie Database.
K: We should watch it.
JT: We SHOULD watch it. They only have the colorized version at Video Journeys so we would have to turn down the color knob on my TV.
Q: So is anybody here a Shirley Temple fan though?
JT: Not really.
K: I am, I really like The Little Princess, I used to love that movie.
B: I think she looks like a whore.
K: I read recently someone described Shirley Temple as a whore.
JT: The movie critic Andrew Saris wrote this one movie she was in Wee Willie Winky that John Ford directed...I think I can actually quote this, I think he said 'It has extraordinary camera prose passages from the wide eyed viewpoint of a child.' I just remember that, I read it in my parents bathroom.
Q: Well, here's a good segue...what is your favorite film of all time and why?
JT: Oh, I don't have one. I like a lot of movies.
Q: Name one that you love.
JT: Um, I'll have to think about it. Oh okay I got one, I don't think it's my favorite movie of all time necessarily, but I really like the movie On Dangerous Ground directed by Nicholas Ray with Robert Ryan and Ida Lupino. I always try to make my friends watch that with me. It's pretty good, it's from like 1951 and Ward Bond is in it, who's in a lot of those John Ford movies.
Q: Jim Jarmusch worked for Nicholas Ray, did you know that?
JT: Yeah right, I did. I still haven't seen that Lightning Over Water movie yet.
(Which is actually a Wim Wenders film.)
Q: I've been looking for it and I can't find it anywhere. It documents Ray dying of cancer and sounds incredibly depressing.
(Greg from The Centimeters hands Jarrett and Katie potato skins.)
K: (With her mouth full) I got one. A Chorus Line which is the film version of the broadway show and Michael Douglas is the mean director who sits in the audience and a bunch of people are in it and I just really really love that movie.
Q: Have you seen Chicago yet?
K: No, I haven't.
JT: We all want to.
Q: My sister saw it last night and said it was really good.
(Jeff makes a strange sound.)
K: Jeff is obsessed with Catherine Zeta Jones.
Q: Really?
JT: Don't put that in there though. My favorite is Somebody Up There Likes Me which is an old Paul Newman flick. He plays a boxer and overcomes adversity. It's really great.
JT: The part was made for James Dean too, right? and then he croaked...he bought the farm, if you will.
JT: I remember the scene where he's just so frustrated about his situation and hid girlfriend or wife keeps handing him lamps so he can break the lamp...when he's just so frustrated he needs to break something and she keeps handing him lamps out of the corner, know that's what he needs...something to break.
Q: One of my favorite movies, and for some reason that made me think of this, is a movie called the Country Girl with Bing Crosby where he plays a raging alcoholic. It's amazing, like nothing else he ever did.
JT: Or she...Grace Kelly. I want to see that one really bad actually. I saw a little bit of it on T.V. and the part I saw looked really amazing.
Q: Definitely check it out, it's good. Okay, who are some of your favorite local L.A. bands?
K: I like The Deers.
JT: I like The Deers too and I like The Centimeters even though they're right over there.
(laughter)
JT: Oh, I like Damien Romero. He's like this sound artist guy who does stuff with acoustics. He builds these little boxes and gets them to feedback in various ways, or at least he's done that thus far, but I think he's working on some new stuff. And I like Crib when he plays and I like...
K: Very Be Careful.
(lots of agreement in the room)
K: I like Kraig Grady.
JT: There's some other stuff too that we're probably not thinking of.
K: I like Dave Stone. I like So Damn Insane.
JT: Oh, So Damn Insane is pretty good.
G: What about that band Child Pornography?
JT: I haven't seen Child Pornography.
Q: Oh yeah...they played The Smell recently. You can download some of their songs on their web site and you can tell everybody you downloaded Child Pornography.
(Not much laughter)
K: Sweet.
Q: Jarrett, you co-founded The Smell, tell us about that...
JT: I did...well, uh, there was three of us in the beginning, it was me and Jim and Ara from Godzik Pink and we used to be in North Hollywood and Ara dropped out to go to school. Jim and I kept doing it and then we moved. My friend Mack who plays in the band Get Hustle he kinda got involved and we moved the space to downtown. Mack and I built a lot of the space, along with Jim and a bunch of other people who helped out, including Damien Romero and some other people. As of this past November I had stopped doing it two years ago because I just wanted to go to school for film, and then I met Jeff and Katie and we started the band.
Q: The next question is for you Katie, you are in a couple of dance troupes, tell us about that...
K: I'm in a dance troupe based in Los Angeles called Janet Pants Dans Theater and it's me and Jane and Lindsey and our friend Melinda does music sometimes and all of us play music, so we sometimes make music for the dance and sometimes don't. It's dance theater which means that we talk sometimes and we all have various kinds of dance training and so we all choreograph and we all dance for each other. And then we book ourselves like a rock band...and we've toured the west coast twice and we're going to tour the east coast in april. I'm making them come east because I'm moving east...and that's that. And then there's a company in New York called Four Hard Gulps and that's a theater company and I do musical theater with them. My friend Dan Bascilla is a play write. He writes musicals and my friend Dana directs them and I get to choreograph and dance and sing and act and have fun. And that's another reason why I'm moving east is to do more of that.
Q: I was telling you earlier that I read that article that your mom wrote about your dancing and the way it made her feel to see you dance. She had said that she never told you that she had done dancing in a production of Cinderella in high school.
JT: I haven't read that.
K: It's from my mom's column.
Q: It's amazing...she's a really great writer. So tell me a little bit about what she does.
K: She's a journalist and she started the alternative weekly newspaper in Colorado Springs. It's a very conservative place on the surface, but there is also Colorado College there which is a bastion of liberal thought and whatnot.
(ten points for the word bastion 'a fortified position')
K: And there's a bunch of weird mountain freaks and just like radical, very independent minded people. And unfortunately some of the dominant politicos are very right wing, christian people...so anyway, they didn't have an alternative weekly, but they started it up about seven years ago or something so she was the editor for a long time and then she decided that she wanted to be less of a boss and more of a writer and she does big investigative pieces about...she specializes in traumatic events. She covers a lot of really violent, horrible incidents...
Q: Things like the Columbine shooting?
K: yeah, there was some high school kids who murdered some people in Colorado Springs and she's attending their trials and covering that and there's a prison in Canyon City and she covers women and their children there...there was like a child pornography ring in Manatou Springs and anyway she really good at dealing with that kind of stuff I think because she is mother first and foremost and actually relates to people. Like when something horrible happens she can approach them as a journalist in a very personal way and be like hey, I'm a mom, I can totally relate to what's happening to you. And she's really good a just talking to people and listening. But she also writes this column every week called Domestic Bliss where she talks about her life and so I learn a lot from that column, things that I didn't know.
JT: Your a frequent topic.
Q: Yeah, I was just about to ask, does she divulge private things about you all the time?
K: About me, I have four brothers...her ex-husband my father lives in town with my stepmother and he's actually running for mayor...they're very close but...
Q: So does anything she writes ever hurt his political career at all?
K: No. Because she is really good at what she does and she's just so straight forward with what she talks about and there's nothing that scandalous really.
Q: ...and Jeff, you get the toughest question of all...
JF: Oh great. oh, I thought of another great L.A. band...My Little Red Toe.
(Jeff also e-mailed me the next day and wanted me to add Wives to the list of L.A. favorites)
JT: We like The Sharp Ease also.
Q: Yeah! Did you guys ever see The Grown Ups?
JT: Oh yes. They used to play at the old Smell a lot.
Q: I saw them open for Sleater Kinney once...
K: Do you guys like New Collapse?
JT: Oh I like New Collapse.
K: I think I also like Ambuletts
Q: You think?
K: It's Melinda who does music for Janet Pants and she has a band called Ambuletts and I haven't heard them in a long time, but I like what she originally was doing and I think that it probably only improved.
Q: So as I was saying, Jeff, you get the toughest question of all...
JF: Hit me.
Q: Tell us something about yourself that you have never revealed to anyone else before.
JT: Something about your feet.
JF: I do itch my feet inappropriately...I think Jarrett knows about that so I've revealed it to him.
JT: I don't remember Jeff itching his feet actually.
JF: I take off my shoes and go on itching while people are staring, Miss Manners is up in arms over it...
JT: Am I Miss Manners?
JF: In my life you are.
Q: I keep hearing comparisons between you guys and Cat Power and Dirty Three what do you think about the comparisons? I personally think you guys are pretty damn original.
K: I don't think we sound like Dirty Three at all.
JT: Thank you for saying nice things...I think we all like Cat Power and Dirty Three...I guess maybe I'm a little influenced by Chan Marshall's guitar playing but other than that I don't think I take that much from her music, but I do like her a lot. I like Dirty Three too, I saw them play once in No Life Records like maybe four or five years ago and I thought it was really great.
JF: I think people say comparisons for lack of better reference points, because Katie's voice is in a similar register as Chan Marshall's that they just think Cat Power...I just think, those are good bands that's great but I think when you hear our new record, it's very telling.
JT: One thing that I think I can safely say is that our new song were probably influenced by classic rock radio, but there's a lot of other stuff in there too so.
K: About the comparison thing I'd also like to say that I do really like those bands and if we have to be compared to someone, that's a really nice comparison.
JT: Yeah, to be compared to Cat Power is good.
(Jeff has been distracted by a Smiths DVD)
JF: (fumbling with the box) How do you open a DVD anyway?
JT: You unfold that little black strip there.
Q: The other way.
JF: Oh okay. (completely transfixed on the shiny disc)
Q: Jeff has just opened a DVD for the very first time.
JF: Is this good? Is it yours?
Q: No it's probably Chris's. He's also got that picture of Morrissey up there where he's pointing to a sign that says I want you for vegetarianism.
JF: I totally want to see this. I'm just like lusting over it.
Q: What is love any way and does anybody love anybody anyway?
(A Howard Jones reference which no one got)
JT: I love some of my friends. I don't really like Valentine's day.
Q: Well, I've always called it VD Day.
JT: I think that's a great thing actually, Quin.
K: Does anybody love anybody? Yes.
JF: I don't know.
K: I think love is what makes the world go round, and yes, people love people.
JF: I'm into sensual interactions sincerely Jeffrey Michael Rosenberg.
Q: This is my standard question...I always ask this.
JT: It's not about monkeys is it?
Q: No that's Chris's question. When I say the name of a band or performer I want you to describe the feeling you get when I say their name.
Liars-
P: Don't be honest.
JT: I'm gonna say love.
K: I'm curious about what they're going to do.
JT: I'm curious about what they are going to do too, but I still say love.
JF: Sensual.
Cat Power-
K: Affection, beauty.
G: Nervousness.
JT: Nervousness, thank you Greg. Greg Gomberg says nervousness and he's right. And I think also honesty to some degree.
K: Yeah, she doesn't give a fuck.
JT: Yeah, she does whatever she's feeling at the moment.
K: She doesn't look back, I don't think.
Grandaddy-
JT: I've never heard Grandaddy before.
K: I've never heard Grandaddy either.
JF: Radiohead. You've heard Grandaddy, remember when we saw Yo La Tengo?
(Greg stands up and walks over)
G: Diapers.
Q: That's what I was looking for.
JF: I thought Radiohead when I saw them, but just because of the guys voice. I haven't heard the recordings yet.
JT: Even though I haven't heard them, I think they sound like Rosemary Clooney.
Built to Spill-
JT: Never heard 'em.
K: I think kinda cute.
JF: I think of Berlin. We saw them in Berlin.
K: The band? Oh we did see them in Berlin. Which makes me think of The Flaming Lips which is a really really fond thing.
The Flaming Lips-
K: Wait let me think. It makes me think of so many cheesy happy moments. Like driving down the 101 freeway and singing at top volume to Flaming Lips and being in Berlin when I hated San Francisco and had to go to Berlin and Flaming Lips were my anthem.
JT: Okay sometimes.
JF: John Bonham.
K: Oh and then there was a really bad time. I think there new album is kinda boring. I was staying in New York this summer and I lived in this evil woman's apartment for a week and it smelled so bad there. She had the worst hygiene and her cats had diabetes and I had to inject them everyday. For some reason I feel like the insulin was making their pee smell really bad...and they peed so much. It was so horrendous and this woman totally psychotic. Even when she came back in town, she yelled at me for leaving her apartment in such a disgusting state when the fact is I left it way cleaner than when I got there. And I blindly purchased the new Flaming Lips record when I was living in that apartment and I was dreadfully let down.
JT: Did you also buy some Juicy Fruit gum when you bought that album by any chance?
K: I didn't. And I ended up staying in the apartment for the entire week and I got really sick and disappointed and everything was smelly.
Q: So now when you hear it you think of being sick and smelling bad smells?
K: Being sick and staying in an evil woman's apartment who I'm afraid to ever see again.
JF: I like the Soft Bulletin.
K: Zaireeka rules as well, that album is really really really cool. But they went somewhere else recently that I don't really know what they're doing.
JT: If you had that triangle shaved into your chest like how Nicolas Cage did in Valley Girl, which we watched last night.
K: It kinda sounds like they wrote that record while reclining on a Lazy boy.
JT: Do you know if that's about Yoshimi from The Boredoms?
Q: I have no idea.
JT: Could you investigate that?
Q: Okay.
JT: That's our question for No-Fi.
Mike "Sport" Murphy-
JT: Never heard it.
(are we noticing a pattern here? I wonder if he's heard The Pattern.)
K: Okay. The same time I was living in that evil woman's apartment, Slim (from 5RC and KRS) sent me four Sport Murphy CDs and I gave 'em all sort of, I don't know...
JT: You rifled through them, Jeff?
K: You know, Sport Murphy I had a really pleasant correspondence with because I was making a musical this summer and I thought he might want to help with the orchestration and he was indeed into that, but God I'm such an idiot. At the time he's like I'm going through too much family stuff right now and then I just heard about this latest record that he put out which is a total homage to his nephew who died, who was a firefighter who died on fucking September 11th. Sport Murphy I'm impressed by because I think he just does shit by himself and, like, does what he wants to do.
JF: He goes for it too, I've never actually heard his music but it seems like he's pretty naked and honest about what he's doing which I can respect.
K: Yeah. It wasn't something that made me want to listen to it all the time immediately and rock out and stuff, but it's kinda like maybe I was reading a book at the wrong time or whatever. But I am impressed with what he does. Sport Murphy.
Sebadoh-
JT: I kept their "Smash Your Head On The Punk Rock" album because I have a sentimental attachment to some of those songs from when I was 18 years old.
Q: Brand New Love
JT: That song I think is good, and I'm not a David Crosby fan but I think their version of Everybody Has Been Burned is pretty damn good.
Q: They got that Pink Moon cover on there by Nick Drake, which sounds nothing like the original.
JT: I'm not familiar with the Nick Drake version but...
Q: It's the song in that Volkswagen commercial.
JT: Oh, I only remember there being a Stereolab song in a Volkswagen commercial, but I do like the song Pink Frost by The Chills...which has pink in the title.
JF: I was just in San Francisco with my old band mate and he and I were walking down the street and he was like there's Eric Gaffney over there and he's like 'I hung out with him last week' and I said 'Oh, cool.' Then we talked about "The Freed Man" and about how we used to get stoned and listen to it and that brought us closer together.
JT: I used to get stoned and listen to Sebadoh as well. I used to get stoned a lot back then.
K: When I was in seventh grade and living in Nashville, my really cool relatives, my aunt and uncle who live in Memphis, and are rock stars, they started making me mix tapes and there were some Sebadoh songs on there and that's a really good memory.
Violent Femmes-
JT: I fucking love their first album.
K: I never owned any of it and my friends would listen to it all the time so I sort of knew it from afar and I never saw them, but yeah it kind of makes me think of driving around in high school smoking pot.
JF: Bare bones, visceral living...right on, high school.
Q: Have any of you seen them live though?
JT: No, I never have seen them live. Although I will tell you an anecdote about the Violent Femmes...there was this one time, remember how they had that one song American Music in like 1991? I was in high school then and like these Jehovah's Witness skater guys that I was sort of friendly with put it on in the quad at lunch time in school and I think they meant it to be some sort of a front to like the latinos having charge of the DJ's set up in the quad and they played American Music and then they played Guilty Of Being White by Minor Threat which was kind of taken out of context and that was a little funny, but I like that Minor Threat song as well.
Q: You gotta check out that Dischord box set...
JT: I will, I would like to hear that.
JF: Is the new stuff good.
Q: Well yeah, a lot of it is...one of their newer bands The Q and Not U is amazing. So we're now at the end of our interview, are there any words of wisdom you have for the No-Fi readers?
JT: No war, man.
JF: Invest in some thrift store vinyl, go buy some 50 cent records and have yourself a party...listen to perfect pop.
Q: Damn good advice.
JT: Oh, and watch On Dangerous Ground directed by Nicholas Ray, it's a fine film.
Q: Oh, did you see the Ray cowboy movie with Sterling Hayden and Joan Crawford?
JT: Yeah.
Q: It's like the weirdest most offbeat western...
JT: Did you ever see Bigger Than Life with James Mason where he has some sort of ailment and starts taking cortisone and he gets Megalomania and he tries to kill his own kid, it's fucking amazing. Walter Mathau's in it too.
Q: I have not seen it.
JT: That's the one he did, I think right after Rebel Without a Cause.
Q: And of course that's genius.
JT: Yeah.
Q: Jim Backus in an apron.
JT: I love Jim Backus just in general.
JF: You should note in your interview like in parentheses or something that when you talk about film with Jarrett he gets all sweaty.
(Jarrett gets all sweaty when we talk about film)
Q: Cause he's studying film.
JT: I'm perfectly dry...actually I'm not studying film right now except for watching a lot of them. I like westerns.
Q: (To Katie) Are you ready to...
K: Give my words of advice...I don't know, I just hope that people take their time and try not to drive and just, yeah...take your time.
JT: And don't be embarrassed about your bodily scents.
K: Well, Lindsey told me that she could smell me when we were playing today.
JT: Lindsey seems like one of those girls that has like the mom thing of being able to smell everything. My mom can always smell things. I'll go over and visit my mom and I will have had a lot to drink like two days before and she'll be like I can smell that liquor on you.
Everyone: Awwwwww.
Q: You said 'try not to drive'...there's that great line of dialogue in Repo Man..."The more you drive the less intelligent you are."
JT: Oh I love Repo Man. That movie actually got me into punk rock. Because of all the music in that movie like the Iggy Pop song and Black Flag and Circle Jerks song it's like I went out and bought Black Flag's "Damaged" and Circle Jerks' "Group Sex" even though those songs weren't on that album. Someone stole my cassette of that soundtrack but I happened to find it again on vinyl, so I was very happy about that.
K: You have the vinyl soundtrack?
JT: I do. I have the vinyl soundtrack to Repo Man.
Q: That's awesome...well, I guess that's it. Thanks very much, you guys, this has been great. And good luck with everything you do.
K JT JF: Thank you.
Q: And always remember No-Fi "Magazine".
JT: Wait...remember what?
Young People will be going on a major tour through the U.S., Europe, and Japan this year. If I were you I would make sure to catch them. You can get Young People news and tour updates (as well as new mp3s not on the album) at www.ilikeyoungpeople.com. Special thanks to Young People, Todd at Sea Level Records, The Centimeters, and Jim at The Smell.
Interview by Quin
no-fi "magazine" staff writer/no-fi "radio" program director
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