For anyone who's been reading this ezine for a while, Scott Ayers should need no introduction. For the neophyte, however, a few words of wisdom: Pain Teens. The Mike Gunn. Truth Decay. Walking Tmebombs. Bewildering loops, disturbing samples, Tejas swamp voodoo guitars, demented behavior... like a ten-year landslide on some powerful grim acid. Scott formed the Pain Teens with Bliss Blood in the mid-eighties and released a pile of cassettes on the Pain Teens' label Anomie, followed by several albums on Trance Syndicate, before packing it in a few years ago. In between he produced and played on albums by the Mike Gunn and others, and has shown up with releases since then under the guise of Fortunes of Vice and Walking Timebombs in addition to playing in Truth Decay. At the moment Walking Timebombs is his most active pursuit; he's released several singles, a full length album (WALKING TIMEBOMBS) on Charnel, a collaboration with Tribes of Neurot (STATIC MIGRATION) on Release, and will soon appear on a collaborative live album with Subarachnoid Space. To get the lowdown, we go now to the psychedelic riff pad in Houston....
DA: Well, the first thing I wanted to ask was... [attempts to decipher notes] ah... I heard the thing you did with Tribes of Neurot [tmu: STATIC MIGRATION, available from Release]. How did that come about the whole collaboration with Walking Timebombs and Tribes of Neurot?
SA: Well, I used to know them from being on tour with the Pain Teens -- we did some gigs with them, and then I'd always run into them when they were on tour and stuff, so we had always talked about collaborating. Yeah, they have a happening machine -- tape deck -- like I do, so they sent me some reels they had recorded. There was space on there to overdub guitars, and then I just mixed it down and sent it to the label they're on. That's basically it.
DA: You just traded tapes back and forth with them?
SA: Well -- no, they had these reel to reel tapes... I guess they bought the reels, and then they put some sounds on there -- not real structured stuff, just ambient kind of stuff, and they sent them to me and then just said "Hey, do what you want with these." (laughs) And then one time when they were on tour with Gwar they came by and spent like a day and a half here just putting down a few things and talking about what we should do with these tracks. But basically they just said "Take these tapes and try to make some music out of it. " (more laughter) It was really non-structured stuff, so....
DA: I think it turned out pretty well.
SA: Yeah, it turned out pretty well, but you know, the live gig I did with them turned out even better.
DA: When was that?
SA: It was about a month ago [tmu: The interview was taped in April; you can figure out the rest]....
DA: In Houston?
SA: No, it was in San Francisco. I just went out there and took some delays; I didn't even take a guitar. They had an amp and a guitar for me to play through. That was a blast, that gig. It was a sold-out show. We had like one rehearsal and... it was great!
DA: Well, given how well the whole thing turned out, do you think you'll be doing it again?
SA: Well, I'd like to.
DA: But you don't have any plans in the works or anything....
SA: No, no definite plans, other than they seemed happy with it thought we should do it again sometime. But I haven't really talked to them again since that gig, so.... Yeah, they're fixing to do another Ozzy Osbourne tour, the Black Sabbath tour, I think.
DA: You can hardly tell the difference between the two now.... With the Walking Timebombs, I'm of the understanding that you actually had a live debut with that?
SA: Oh yeah, that was big fun.
DA: Just you and Frank [Garrymartin, former Pain Teens drummer]?
SA: Yeah, and I had like a prepared tape.... Yeah, that was a blast, and I'll start doing that more, probably.
DA: So you're thinking about doing more of that?
SA: Yeah, right now it just seems incomplete.
DA: [Whines about having the same problem with Autodidact]
SA: Yeah, I really miss having the musicians feed off each other. The problem is that there's so few people who are really good enough to know the language of music improvisation, which is what I'm really into. It takes a lot of learning and listening to the right stuff to be able to pull that off. That's kind of what that gig in San Francisco was like -- everyone was listening to everyone else. There was a potential for a lot of chaos because there were like seven people and everyone had a big rig, like a Marshall, but it never really disintegrated into nothing (laughs). That's because we were able to play off each other and listen to what everyone else was doing. But it's fun playing with Frank, and we need a bass player, I think.
DA: Are you thinking about doing his Hundred [tmu: Frank's noisy hip-hop thingy] live?
SA: We've talked about doing that, too. That's kind of like a joke at this point, but... I'll do it.
DA: Cool. So how does it feel to finally have the original Pain Teens album out on CD?
SA: Uh... well.... (laughing)
DA: It's taken a long time! (both laugh)
SA: Well... yeah, it's fine with me that it's out. It's just kind of funny... it's a funny piece of work to me, looking back at it. Just looking back at that whole time kind of reminds me of... it's kind of punk in a way, but it's almost deliberately bad too, you know. (laughs) You know, just to get a rise out of people. So it's kind of funny to hear it now, ten years later.
DA: It sounds a lot different... I understand you remastered it?
SA: Yeah, out of necessity, really. I had to.
DA: The original was all four-track cassette stuff, wasn't it?
SA: No, it was a four-track quarter-inch reel to reel. And most of it was mixed down on an analog two-track. So those first Pain Teens albums were all analog, all the way. But those tapes, they really... they don't age too well (laughs). So I had to go back and pretty much remix everything.
DA: Well, it sounds good!
SA: Yeah, it's fine. It's a little bit of an ordeal having to sit through all that stuff (laughs). Anyways....
DA: Where did those bonus tracks come from at the end? Because I have just about all the cassettes Pain Teens ever released and the only one I recognize is "Tapes."
SA: Some of that stuff we just never put out. We put out a lot of stuff on those tapes, but it still wasn't everything. You know some of the stuff got kind of reworked for the Trance albums. Kind of "there's an idea" on one of the old tapes, and we'd rework it for the albums on Trance. I mean, I just have piles and piles of this tape everywhere... which will probably never ever be played again! Just being a big tape recorder junkie like I am, you know, taping everything and then saving everything... it's a pain....
DA: What's up with the "mystery track" at the end? Is there anything significant about that?
SA: You mean that Mexican radio thing?
DA: Yeah.
SA: I... just kinda liked it. (laughs) I just remembered back then sitting up at night really late trying to tune in these faraway radio stations and hearing the Mexican stations and stuff -- Del Rio... it was always kind of fascinating to me. Also, they used to have just wild stuff on the radio back then, little hick town stations and stuff -- like speaking in tongues....
DA: Oh yeah. [tmu: Yah, we know all about the speaking in tongues thing, brutah. Believe it.] Do you have any plans for any of the other cassette material to come out on CD? Or is it just all going to go back in the closet and you'll never look at it again?
SA: I don't know. If I thought there were people interested who would buy it, I might do some bootleg type release or something. We have this really good live recording -- it was a sixteen-track live recording and it came out really good, so I'm thinking about putting that out. But you know, it'd be really cool to just do it like bootleg style, put that "Strawberry Fields" thing on there, 'cause there's a really good version of that on there. Oh, speaking of which... are you familiar with Culturecide?
DA: I've heard of them....
SA: The infamous Houston band from the early eighties?
DA: Oh, okay. [tmu: Little -- very little -- light bulb comes on]
SA: They're probably the biggest influence on Pain Teens. That band, they have a new CD out, and they're reforming... and I'm in it.
DA: Oh, you're in it?
SA: Yeah.
DA: Oh, I didn't know that!
SA: That's really exciting. We have our first gig on May 15.
DA: And the CD's already out?
SA: Yeah. The CD's something they've been working on for a long time -- they have their own studio and stuff. They broke up like ten years ago. The songs on that CD are old songs, but they're still really relevant.
DA: I'll have to go out and look for that one then. [tmu: Alas, it has yet to show up in Austin.]
SA: It's called HOMEMADE AUTHORITY. They did an album -- the last album they did was like old records that they sang over, weird industrial bands... do you remember that kind of stuff? So that was kind of a wacky thing to do. Just straight punk.
DA: So it's just you that's in it with them?
SA: The bass player and drummer from Truth Decay are in it too. The bass player from Truth Decay wrote a lot of their songs back in the old days with Culturecide.
DA: Speaking of Truth Decay, are you all planning on putting anything out sometime soon? I know somebody had mentioned to me once that it was kind of in the works....
SA: We actually did just put out this six-song, homemade CD thing that's really cool.
DA: Is it out yet?
SA: Yeah, it's out.
DA: I haven't seen that.
[festivities are momentarily interrupted as Scott fields another call from someone with the wrong number]
DA: Well, let me wrap this up so I don't keep you on the line much longer. I wanted to ask you how you liked worked on the POSSESSION soundtrack.
SA: Oh, it's fine. That song that Frank wrote, as with most of that Hundred stuff, most of that was already done and then Frank would play all the track and say, "Well, maybe I can do something with this or something with that," so it was something that was recorded a couple of years ago and Frank turned it into the theme song. You know that song at the end...?
DA: Yeah, "devilmademedoit."
SA: And as far as all the other stuff, it was just some tracks I'd given to him. I always give him tracks of what I'm doing just thinking maybe he can use some of it. Because that's basically how I spend my time, just sitting around trying to come up with music and ideas and getting them down on tape.
DA: A recording junkie. Like me.
SA: Everything is like a work in progress....
DA: Oh yeah. [tmu: moon unit knows "work in progress." And "just one more version."]
SA: ... until it actually comes out and then it's finished. (laughs) That's kind of how I look at it. It's all raw material until it's released.
DA: Do you end up doing like a million versions of the same thing?
SA: Well....
DA: I'm real bad about that.
SA: Not usually on the multi-track. I'll do one version, and then have a million different mixes. But as far as on the multi-track, I tend to stick with the first version unless there's some reason to scrap it.
DA: Yeah, I've gotten bad about doing multiple versions of the same thing that all sound totally different.
SA: What do you record on?
DA: A four-track. I'm planning on moving up to an eight-track before much longer, but it's all on a four track. [tmu: That move has indeed been made since then.]
SA: Cassette?
DA: Yeah. it's not enough. (sardonic laughter)
SA: Yeah, that's why you do all the different versions, because tape is cheap (laughs). I can't afford to do multiple versions.
DA: Yeah, the tape is cheap, and I can only squeeze so much on it, so if I get a different idea I don't have any tracks left over.
SA: Right.
DA: Which is why I want to go to the eight-track. [tmu: Of course, that's opened up a whole new can of worms....]
SA: That's like when I had the quarter-inch machine, I had a quarter-inch four-track, and then I got a quarter-inch eight-track that I worked on a long time. That tape... it's pretty cheap, it's still like ten dollars for twenty-five minutes, but on the half-inch tape, it's like $45 dollars....
DA: It's obscene for the half-inch tape.
SA: It seems like maybe ADAT, something like that, might be the way to go for the future. I like analog, the way it sounds. Analog machines sound really great.
DA: The little digital workstations are getting cheaper by the minute.
SA: I've got one of those CS-880s. It's really cool.... It wouldn't really do what a multi-track does, [mumbles], but it's really great for editing stuff and it's just like a super high-quality tape recorder is what it is, really. But I like it.
DA: Well that is about all of my questions... is there anything else you'd like to say?
SA: Uuuuuhhh... well, happy net-surfing!
[Degenerates into discussion of the net, web pages, Skullflower, the Flaming Lips' ZAIREEKA, Culturecide, etc., etc.]