RockersNYC T.V. is proud to present an exclusive interview with the Japanese doom metal band Gallhammer. This all-girl group has broken stereotypes of Japanese women with their heavy and apocalyptic sound. Gallhammer has captured the attention of metal fans and critics around the world, and were called “the greatest metal band of all time” by Metal Hammer. We sat down with Vivian Slaughter, the lead singer and guitarist, to talk about the band and their recent European tour.
EVERYWHERE! I am obsessed with visual information & with feeding my Brain. I have an ever growing library of books…books of photography, ethnography, music, underground comix, magick, etc. I constantly listen to music & have a serious Vinyl habit; I interpret this music in a visual way (the covers of the Records are very beautiful, too). I love to go for walks, listening to my iPod - I’ll walk along the canal & through the parks & look at the trees, flowers, animals & people. I watch DVDs a lot & have a Projector for home cinema action… Youtube is great for watching old music videos.
You seem to have an ever evolving sense of style in your artwork? Would you agree with this? and if so.. what do you think keeps it evolving?
Yeah, I conciously try to advance my ideas & technique. I’ve deliberately avoided having an icon in my work or one signature style. I think variety is much more interesting & I’d rather tell my story using different techniques & mediums. I want to build a body of work that makes sense when presented on mass, but includes differing (even opposed) styles. The evolution process is neccessary to stay alive artistically. Just to do one thing over & over again (as so many artists seem to) is stifling. I am curious & enjoy exploring new things - I expect this from my audience, too.
When you started Tonite some years ago, what was the initial concept and drive behind the label?
To present clothing made from the Heart, which would be worn by Hippies, Punx, Metallers, Ravers, Spacemen & Women, Dancers, Artists, Travelling People, etc. To help people Fly their Freak Flag. To build a New Tribe! & this is STILL what I’m trying to do.
FERGADELIC…
TONITE.
Streetwear as such has changed alot since you first started Tonite, and also your involvement with other labels, how has it changed for you, in terms of the second coming of Tonite?
I haven’t changed the ethos behind Tonite, but my ideas about being a brand have changed. When Tonite first arrived, I deliberately made it an anti-brand. I offered each graphic on it’s own merits, that you would buy if you liked. The brand identity, the label, was very much secondary…almost invisible, infact, when compared to the way brands are supposed to work. I’ve now fallen back in love with the idea of being a brand. Of making people belong to something when they buy Tonite. Of telling a bigger story.
RockersNYC T.V. is proud to present…
The premiere of the Sound & Fury episodes!!!
In this episode, Chuck Dukowski, founding member and legendary bassist of Black Flag, invites us into his home to talk about the early 80s punk movement, police brutality and life in general.
Tune in…don’t tune out!
RockersNYC T.V. Interviews Chuck Dukowski - PARTS 1 & 2.
RockersNYC is a Lower East Side streetwear company that its built on originality and music as the foundation of their inspiration. Most of their designs are heavily influenced by Jamaican Reggae culture, Punk Rock, Speed Metal, Hip Hop & Rasta because these cultures inspired them with their rebelliousness and intelligence. Believe me, they cover streetwear culture like it has never been seen before!
Now, HPDC have an amazing opportunity to have a small interview with its founders, which are Marcus Burrowes and Sean Reveron. Here, we’re allowed to discover their ideas behind RockersNYC latest S/S 08 collection, “The Sound & Fury”.
MARCUS.BURROWES.RockersNYC.CREATIVE.DIR.
Hows it goin mate.
MB: Wicked!
SR: It’s all gravy…totally hyphy…smiles kill war!
So, what are you into at the moment?
SR: Fruit smoothies…bike rides…creating epic gear…post-punk…grindcore…taking flicks!
You just released your latest S/S 08 collection, why the name “THE SOUND & FURY”?
SR: Music was the theme of this season…we brought the sound…& killed it with fury!
What’s the philosophy behind the new season SS 08 collection?
SR: Rules are made to be broken…music rules & war kills!
What was the first time you were exposed to the punk/speed metal?
MB: I was exposed to the Clash and the Ramones before, but in 1984 I was 10 and I discovered Suicidal Tendencies’ “Institutionalized” and Black Flag, and it was on!
SR: I was first exposed to hardcore in 1981 in L.A., CA…I got into speed metal around 1983…I really started feeling Motorhead – they were my gateway metal. Then I got into Venom, Oz, Voivod, Exciter, Raven, Metallica, Slayer & Exodus (I saw them perform @ the Mab in SF in 1983). I still love both hardcore & thrash metal!
SEAN.REVERON.RockersNYC.CULTURAL.
And what types of music do you like these days?
MB: If you’re talking current music, right now I’m big into dancehall.
Do you play any instruments at all?
SR: My voice…I guess you could call me a singer.
What’s the biggest obstacle when you started doing this retail business?
MB: That would probably be not knowing much about the business at first, and also trying to keep the integrity of the brand while the money was tight.
SR: I don’t believe in obstacles…whatever you perceive you can achieve!
You move a lot as a child (Kingston, California, London, New York). What did your parents do for a living while you were a child?
MB: My mom is a poet/folklorist/historian and my dad is a painter.
SR: Traveling is in my blood…my dad was a rolling stone & my mom is a chef!
Do you like travel a lot?
SR: Yep yep!
What are some of your favorite cities?
MB: I would have to say Kingston and New York because of the non stop inspiration!
SR: Saturn, the ocean, the moon…Ethiopia (but I have not been there yet) Tokyo & Rome!
Well, don’t forget to visit Jakarta next time. So, any last words for all the RockersNYC lovers in Indonesia?
SR: Expect the unexpected…we could be in Jakarta at any time!
….thanx for all of the support styles!
A, Kingston, New York & London”, repeated like a mantra Dr.Israel in his Inna City Pressure. Marcus Burrowes and Sean Reveron experienced these cities on their own skin like many other places on our little earth. Now they stopped, in New York. “Find a girl, settle down” as Cat Stevens would sing? Maybe, but this is about much more: working on your own, having fun with a fashion project which challenges the established business, starting from the underground. This is the way Rockers NYC was born.
In the last two years the brand blasted: now Sean and Marcus also produce a women’s line, jewellery and skate boards.
They run everything by following their personal aesthetics, summarized with the expression “Clash of the Seventies”: cocktail mixed by a crazy barman, consisting in Jamaican sun and English mohawks, social and politic claims, egalitarianism, reggae, punk and some early hip hop. And this is how we explain psychedelic colors, animalier prints, the sampling of icons of that time like the illustrations and tattoos of “Mad” Marc Rude.
MARCUS.BURROWES.RockersNYC.CREATIVE.DIR.
Waiting for the new collection, we had a chat with the dynamic duo. Here’s what they told us.
First question is actually the most obvious… how did it all get started? Some among you are graphic designers, others come from the underground music world. Why did you decide to step into the arena of fashion business?
MB: Rockers started with me not being able to get freelance gigs designing for magazines. I wanted to do something creative, and I have always loved fashion. Sean was in London making music, and when he came back to New York he joined up.
Is what you are doing right now exactly what you want to do, or just a part of a longer journey?
SR: Yes yes this is exactly what I want to be doing right now…I would have to say we all love working and creating for ourselves… it’s really epic!
You have recently launched an independent record company. What do you have in mind?
SR: We started RockersNYC Records this year, and our first three releases were Vol. 2 and Vol.3 of the completely genre-bending RockersNYC Mixtapes, and A GUN CALLED TENSION’s 2nd album, The Sub Sonic Sessions. Basically, we wanted to start a label as an outlet for our friends & ourselves to release music!
Why is ROCKERS NYC different from all other streetwear brands?
SR: The aesthetic of Rockers comes from our worldview & our life history… we are only being true to ourselves……
RockersNYC is the hot new streetwear line to hit the market. This may sound like a redundant term around these parts, but fresh color palettes and screamingly loud punk designs, give RockersNYC that undeniably staying power.
Marcus Burrowes, is the Creative Director and Sean Reveron, the self-proclaimed “Cultural Engineer” to the brand. These guys have a knowledge of self and worldly cultivation that clearly shows they’re not just about a pretty line of t-shirts.
As part of the business process, Sean and Marcus fly across the world to Japan for production so often, it’s like they’re riding the New York transit. For inspiration, travelling around the world on the regular is a necessity. If this is not considered massive movement, then what really is?
GoodHood is an Independent concept store, sitting comfortably in the surroundings of Hoxton, East London. I managed to catch some time with the owners, Jo and Kyle to talk more about it.
TheClones:So, the launch party for GoodHood kicked off with a bang causing a road block and creating an amazing buzz around one of the most exciting stores to open in East London for quite some time now. How does it feel?
It’s a really good feeling. It was a real buzz to see all the London heads come out to support.
TheClones:So When did you first come up with the idea for GoodHood and how long did it take to get to this point, from start to finish?
Jo has been thinking about this set up for years but it was never a real possibility until recent times. We have seriously been planning the store for a couple of years but really working on it full time for just over a year.
TheClones:What made you want to make the move into owning your own retail business especially with how the market has been over the years?
It just seemed like the natural progression to make. We are going to start our own brand eventually and we wanted to start a shop that represented the culture and ideals of where we wanted to head.
TheClones:You’re both designers by trade and have worked for some of the most prolific labels out there. Did your experience and knowledge help you choose the designers that you’re stocking in the store? Where did you go to find the labels or was it a case of getting in the labels that you both liked but couldn’t obtain over here?
Our experience as designers gave us an insight into niche brands around the world. We were always travelling picking up the best bits from around the world. The fun in that was getting the stuff you could only get in specific places and weren’t widely known yet.
We wanted to select brands that understood the aesthetics of modern streetwear without falling into the clichés of it. Brands that were not scared to take risks and produce products that showed a love of product and are not merely sales or cash driven. Brands driven by true passion, talent and the ability to be successful while avoiding corporate strategies and manipulation. Also, brands that distributed through global independents and stayed away from the department stores and high street. Therefore, in turn helping to keep the independent retailer alive.
TheClones:GoodHood isn’t “just another shop”, it also encompasses a gallery space and a design studio in the basement. What kind of shows will we see being held in the gallery and what will we see come out of the design studio?
Out of the gallery space we want to showcase the best creative talent that suits the aesthetics of the shop. We don’t want to get caught up in clichéd attachments like urban art so we want to keep doing things that surprise people. In a sense that’s why we opened with a collection of playmobil, we just felt the designer toy thing was so mainstream we wanted to take it back to the old skool. We hope that future shows will see exhibits from Ben Frost, Fatsarazzi, House of Gasface, Ben Radcliffe, PAM. We’d also love to exhibit some more well known artists such as Geneveive Gauckler and Grotesque in the future…but we’ll see!
Out of the studio you will see the creatives working independently and collaboratively in the future.
Our specialist areas all compliment each others work so we can be really flexible with jobs that we take on as there is always backup available from someone else if needed. We do Branding, Graphics, Illustration, Clothing design, Denim design, and web design…what more could you want !!!
TheClones:I also hear that you’ll be doing monthly music events hosted by the lovely Katie Skills. Can you tell us some more about them and what events you have coming up?
Yeah, we want to keep it fun and have regular events instore. On Friday evenings after work customers can head down to the store, have a couple of beers, take in some art and listen to some good music. We had Ohmega Watts play a dj set on the 19th October and then next month we are going to have Eskimo disco play to launch their most recent single. Hopefully for December we’ll go a bit “Christmassy” and have a brass band in the street!! We want to mix up the styles a bit so that we aren’t a “streetwear cliche”. Ultimately, it’s important to us that we continue to promote all things independent and we hope that these events will help promote the ‘unheardofs’
TheClones:I can imagine that you both feel relieved now that it’s all up and running. Are you already planning your next projects? Will you be opening up GoodHood stores around the world or possibly an online store to reach out to your worldwide fans? Tell me more about what the future holds for GoodHood….
Absolutely, this is only the beginning…the first step!
We are going to launch our brand very soon, which is really exciting.
The online store is designed and being built as we speak and we are aiming to open another group of stores around the world, possibly Daikenyama in Tokyo, Los Feliz in LA, and Brooklyn NY…who knows, maybe even Iceland!!
1. When did you start Frontier and what gave you the idea to start a punk label?
Though I took the Flyboys in the studio in 1979, I set the official start date of Frontier as March 1980 as that’s when the record came out. I was very “into” the LA punk scene from the beginning but didn’t have any funds to even consider releasing Screamers or Weirdos 45s. I was working at Bomp at the time so I knew all the steps to releasing a record so I just decided to try it out for myself. I wish I could say it was kind of a business plan but it was just something I decided to do for yucks. I never intended it to be a punk label exclusively; it just worked out that way since those were the best bands at the time. There was nothing else going on here except shit like Van Halen, believe me!
2. Where’d you get the money to start Frontier, did you just save it from working at Bomp?
You got that right! I had zero money and even lived with my parents but I was working at Bomp and would get like six paychecks at once. And then nothing for another two months. Suddenly I’d have big chunks of change so I would pay off the recording of the Flyboys little by little. Not that it cost much because we basically snuck into Leon Russell’s studio in the middle of the night. I made no money off of that record as the Flyboys broke up before it was released but I managed to scrape together enough dough to buy the Circle Jerks masters from them in 1980 as well. Then things were dramatically different but I still didn’t give up my two day jobs (the other was Vinyl Fetish) for about two more years.
3. How old were you at the time?
I was 20!
4. Did you live on your own or with your parents at the time?
At first with my parents, paying rent was not an option with the sporadic paychecks but as soon as I got paid back from the cash outlay of the Circle Jerks in late ’80— I was outta there!
5. As someone who bought almost everything that Frontier put out in the early 1980’s, I always felt that you must have had some type of art background. There was always a very polished feel to everything that came from Frontier, as opposed to the generic confetti covers that Posh Boy used for a lot of his releases. Any art classes?
Wow, thanks! I always thought that the LP jacket should be as good as the music inside. Of course a lot of my contemporaries thought that lousy artwork made the record “punk” and it totally worked for Smoke 7 et al. (Even Posh Boy had a couple good covers like Beach Blvd and Rodney on the ROQ.) I can safely say I have no academic background due to my hatred of formal schooling so all my art knowledge was picked up from being a music fan and a pop art fan.
I think any really good band from any era always has a sense of style: how they look as a band, the gear they play and the way their packaging should be presented. I always gave the bands artistic control but I would never make the artwork purposefully bad. The first dozen or so Frontier albums were designed by Diane Zincavage after the bands and I put the concept together. Diane and I got along really well and she always “got” what I was trying to put across, or at least I hoped so! She was the art director at Bomp and I paid her to do my jackets, posters and print ads when she wasn’t doing anything else.
6. What was the Epitaph deal? And why is the Dance With Me album not listed on the Frontier site?
It’s a long, ugly story that I will tell all about someday. The short version is that I was seriously on the ropes after two disastrous distribution deals first with BMG, then with Rykodisc’s in-house distributor, REP. Brett basically tried to take the top sellers away from me, then I shamed into coming around and licensing them. Understandably the bands were upset as I was behind on royalties but I always paid them eventually. Anyhow, it was three years of me not getting any money. Suddenly my top sellers sold nothing! I had to close up my office, fire everyone and get a day job.
Then when the deal with up, I couldn’t get my packaging back. It was actually a pressing and distribution deal, not licensing but it’s too hard to explain. I had to battle to get my films and stampers back for two years, then I had to save up enough money from my DAY JOB to start pressing the top sellers again. It was such a disaster that everyone thought Frontier was done for. They tried to kill me off but it was impossible, like the lowly cockroach, I’m mighty hard to kill.
What me– bitter?
As for TSOL, I sold it to Brett because he—I should say his lawyer– made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. I basically never saw the record in print for a few years, then Dexter/Bryan Holland bought it off Epitaph and now I’m seeing it again. No reason to list it on my site as it’s not for sale…
7. Do you own the publishing rights for the early Frontier recordings?
Some yes, some no.
8. What is Frontier Records biggest seller?
Suicidal Tendencies by a landslide. Thank you, MTV!
9. Are you amazed that 20 plus years later, people are still buying these records?
Hell yeah. I only put out the Flyboys as a way to entertain myself, I had no idea there would be a demand for the subsequent records that I put out. Feels pretty good though, this is the kind of surprised that you want to be!
10. Where did you get the name Frontier from anyway?
I was going to call it Frontierland after my favorite section of Disneyland, plus it was a comment on the Orange County punk scene. I ran it by a few people and one of them was a lawyer who said, “Are you out of your mind?” I cut the “land” off and Frontier seemed like one of those super-generic south western kind of names. There’s a Frontier everything out here– I only wish the airline and the bank were mine!
11. How did your involvement with American Hardcore come about, and are you happy with the results?
Paul or Steve probably called to ask me to be interviewed. I was skeptical about it but I took them down to the Masque and they filmed me there. Also I brought a ton of materials that they asked me to, like my Posh Boy gold 45 for “Amoeba” and lots of flyers. Big surprise after Steve Blush’s book that I didn’t make it into the movie. The west coast is just a big nothing and Frontier never existed. Frontier literally did not appear in his American Hardcore book!
How does that work? I got into the DVD extra for the documentary. I wasn’t even contacted for the latest documentary, Punk’s Not Dead, that’s just because the filmmakers are pathetic idiots who don’t know what they’re doing. Not my problem!
