Six Questions of Death: Jeff Blinder (published Feb '08, G-Vegas Magazine)

There’s a fresh buzz going around the national music scene, a buzz that you don’t hear much in Greenville. We’re the last to know, really, when something big breaks. People from the more cosmopolitan spots are quick to pick on us, the small towners.

But now there’s a paradox. The buzz is about Greenville, specifically, the Greenville underground. In the know, locally, are a few original bands (no cover acts!) and maybe two hundred music connoisseurs. In the know, nationally, are dozens of bands in varying stages of success who love Greenville.

They love the Spazzatorium, they love 21 Eleven and Sociology. People who don’t even know that this is a college town (not making this up) will come back again and again to play the underground, will brave the mindkilling seventy minutes of 264, will knock out their alignment on 14^th for the sake of a homemade stage and the most responsive audience in the state (probably).

The Spazzatorium Galleria is exactly that... an art gallery. It’s not a bar or a club, and it’s run in a fan and musician-friendly way. No one will make a fortune playing there, but it’s more satisfying than blasting a tired old Eagles song over last call at some doomed bar.

Jeff Blinder knows very well that music is art of a most sacred form. He books the majority of the Spazz’s acts and, with the help of a cadre of trusted locals, keeps the Spazz alive. I talked to him at his house one balmy December day. Comedy was in the air as his roommates shouted absurdities up and down the stairs. Coolest thing ever… kind of like giving an interview in the middle of a Mel Brooks movie.

Hawk Season: What is the coolest thing ever to happen onstage at the Spazz?

Jeff Blinder: There's a band, Kiss Kiss, who were pretty rad. It was kind of a more popular band, but they really let loose, and they ended up breaking a guitar and a violin and a guy was swinging from the rafters. It was one of those bands where I really wasn't expecting it because they kind of were this indie band. I knew that their music got pretty hectic, but I didn't know that their actions could be like that. Afterwards they were telling me that it was a release for them because they had some touring problems and they usually don't get that crazy but at the Spazz they felt like they could let loose a little more and it ended up with them breaking some expensive equipment. They were okay with it.

HS: Who, or what, is your biggest inspiration in how the Spazz is run?

JB: New Jersey basement shows. That was my first foray into the do it yourself scene in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and seeing bands that I'd heard about from friends play these little basements...not like big venues where I used to go, and just seeing how they got it done. (I didn't like) not feeling like I was in an environment where I couldn't just relax. At a basement you can do that.

HS: People tell me the Spazz doesn't have enough money. How real is the danger?

JB: Being a donation only place, and not making any profits, it's month to month. We have had excess money in the past, but that has run out, so December's looking real tough because we don't have a lot of shows. Basically it's just a month to month endeavor. We can never be as comfortable as we want to be, but that kind of makes it exciting too, you know? Keeps you on your toes.

HS: Who would you book if you could book anyone?

JB: I would be booking the Avett Brothers, Valient Thorr. Then I'd be looking for some of the bigger acts, maybe the Mars Volta or something like that, but those would be shows that would kind of have to be secret...There's a lot of bands I missed out on, who were kind of under the radar and then they got on the radar...They were in that spot where they would be willing to come through and now they've got booking agents and it's hard to get bands when they have booking agents.

HS: Like, which acts?

JB: Aids Wolf, that's one from Canada that I really liked and then they got a booking agent. Genghis Tron is even hard to get now, they've come through before.

HS: The Spazz wouldn't work in most towns. Why does it work in Greenville?

JB: I would say because it takes commitment from the people who are doing it, but also... I don't know. It really is an anomaly. As long as we can have music coming through and art and all that good stuff we'll do what we have to... even if we have to not do it there. There's a fight for survival, I guess. I don't know why it works, but I'll keep doing it as long as I can.

HS: The weirdest thing is the audience participation being so good and bands hear about it through the touring circuit.

JB: I just think it's, like I was saying, the comfort factor. It's not feeling like you're in an environment where you feel like you have to be kind of stressed out, kind of let loose. I think it has a lot to do with the fact that it's like a house show, but it's at the gallery. I go out of my way to make sure everyone's having a good time and that no one's excluded and say “hi” and “thanks for coming” and all that, so I think they see that we like what we're doing and that the bands like to come here. With those two factors I think it makes them more comfortable and the audience reacts by participating more.

HS: All right... your sixth question of death (and the most deadly question)... the Spazz is Han Solo. Who are the Ewoks?

JB: I don't know who it would be. They'd have to be cute but kind of annoying...Some of the regulars, but not the girls. I don't know, I don't want to call out names.

Jeremy (a roommate -hs): I like to think of Jeff as Yoda.

HS: That's a good one.

JB: Donate, you will!

***

Go to myspace.com/spazzgallery. Check the schedule, yo. You might just find true love.

Anyway, until next month I’ll be drifting down the Tar in a tricked out rowboat and a Larry Bird jersey, drinking PBR tall boys and posting endearing gibberish at hawkseason.blogspot.com. Feel free, nay, encouraged to drop me a line. It's HawkSeason@gmail.com, kids.

Put on that pimp hat, it's going to be a long night. Until then....

Fear of a Peroxide Blonde

Later on that same day, I dropped in on my assistant who was supposedly drafting a new town charter for some obscure village closer to the ocean... fully absent of consent from said town. He was pumping the initial paragraphs full of strange anarchist drivel and belligerence about the entrenchment clause. I was shouting over the Sonic Youth ripoff band that was practicing next door, trying to get the Danger out of my system. A strange and terrible blonde cadaver hovered, following him everywhere and asking me idiotic questions.

Off the top of my head, I think the moon has ¼ of Earth's gravity. Leave me alone.

My assistant whispered with urgency for me not to leave him alone. “I think she's going to drug me and harvest my organs to replace her failing ones! I think she's a salt vampire! I think she's a fucking werebadger!”

I escaped. I could see the terror, the consuming fear of destruction. There was nothing I could do. Mulder might believe the story, but not Scully, and I can't imagine talking them down to Greenville. I'm sure they can smell the alcohol fumes all the way up in DC.

People are getting bitten by the undead that are coming to power through the underground, and it evils up the air. The Deranged are rising to power, and their evil scheme is to put the entire city on a turntable and play it backwards. They're convinced that there's a Satanic verse if you play the whole town in reverse. Welcome signs on back roads have been ripped out by an unholy force, replaced with tin sheets. “Ellivneerg” is scrawled in some kind of farm animal blood, most likely goat's blood. Wild eyed idiots sit outside of Sheetz, analyzing cloud patterns for Satan's face and working out anagrams for Greenville that make full use of the word “evil.” Once bitten, you are lost to the cause. You stagger down the middle of tenth street without regard for the speeding Jeeps. You gorge yourself on dead pigeons and McDonalds' bags. You are possessed with a strange immunity, one that prevents bars from ejecting you. Once bitten you can make an absolute beer menace of yourself without fear of reprisal. Swarms of these ghoulish jackasses can be seen throwing shoes at their terrified waitresses, howling for more beer as they work on their anagrams. No solution yet, nothing that satisfactorily incorporates “evil,” but research goes on tirelessly.

So far, the most common anagrams for Greenville are “Eleven Girl” and “I'll Revenge.”

Underground shows are becoming cathedrals of danger, as the wildest and most unhinged of the Deranged go there to purge. It starts innocently enough, with one lunatic braying along to the guitar and knocking over mic stands, but generally by the end of the night there are people who would otherwise be normal tearing PBR cans in half with their teeth. The Deranged are biting and infecting the populace at a terrible and epidemic rate. The danger is real and we have no Batman to save us.

I fled the peroxide demon that would be consuming my poor assistant, only to find myself in greater danger. Demon death horrible hounds wandered the streets, wrecking mailboxes and throwing pitchforks through screened doors, howling in the shadow of Steel Reserve. This is what I come to expect, since the door of the mental institution came off its hinges a few weeks ago. I tried to do like in the movie... I tried to walk like a zombie... but they could tell.

They can always tell.

It was ugly, some of my hair was torn out, and it ended in my flight back to my assistant's door. “You have to let me in!” I pleaded, “These deranged fuckpistols have tasted blood!”

The strange and terrible blonde emerged, following a thrown brick, gibbering and spinning her head all the way around. I lived only by virtue of quick thinking... I took off my jacket and threw it as far as I could. She charged after it, the human scent distracting her long enough for me to escape. My assistant's huge desk made a prime barricade. I collapsed, my back against it, laughing maniacally. “It isn't the apocalypse,” I said to myself, “but it sure feels like it.”

There was a small sound in the closet, and I knew Fear for a second. The door swung slowly open and my assistant emerged. “Is she gone? Is she really gone?” he asked in a tiny voice. I nodded, sighing in relief. On this particular day in Greenville he was the only non-beast I could find. Everyone else I could trust had fled town for the weekend, or, “until this whole thing blows over.”

“She's a fucking salt vampire!” he wailed. “I don't know how I convinced her, but I played dead and she eventually got the Big Hunger and had to go feed.” A scream sounded somewhere outside and I shuddered. “You know they can unhinge every joint in their body? While I was playing dead she climbed the wall in this bizarre arachnid fashion and started gnawing on the blades of the ceiling fan. Creepiest shit I ever saw.” He had scratches on the back of his neck and his feet were crammed painfully into the wrong shoes.

“All she left was this piece of paper,” he showed me a horribly crumpled and dirty sheet of paper. “They're getting closer and closer to their goal. Regardless, half of these aren't even words... Le Evil Green, Evil Gel Nere, Evil Gree Len, Ren Glee Evil, Evil Glen Ere... it just goes on and on!”

Sunset Over Death Mountain (further insomniac tales from the brain farm)

The biggest problem with being a Doomed generation is that there's never any payoff. We're all doomed... every few generations... but are denied the release of actual destruction. It would just be total glee, the idiot pride of being the generation that gets to see the end of the world and scream "I TOLD YOU SO!" in the last seconds before the planet gets sucked into a huge black hole or pummeled by meteors or consumed in the firestorm of our own exploding sun or even snatched up by angels while God kicks the asses of the unbelievers.

Let me reiterate something I didn't make clear enough in that last passage, yet meant to. ALMOST EVERY GENERATION IS A DOOMED GENERATION. WE'RE NOT THAT SPECIAL. QUIT WHINING.

It's perennial blueballs. It's all the giddy joy of Doom without the snide self-gratification that comes with pure, unadulterated, destruction. Everyone has this in them, it's what drives wars and suicide cults and bad movies. 2012 is the latest end of the world, but so was Y2K (remember that shit? It was only seven years ago!) and so was World War Two and so was 1900 and so was the war of 1812 and to the Native Americans the end of the world has already come and gone.

This has everything to do with everything. Apocalypticism drives so many people. It ties into this whole "peace on earth" myth. By pure physics, there can never be a such thing as an "end" to the universe. Entropy (bastardized as the definition of destruction, as that is its primary property) guarantees that nothing is ever truly destroyed. Matter can only recombine. All things break down, but this breaking down (under the native forces of the universe, Jack) creates strange and new chemical bonds. Each generation of stars is more complex than the last, due to the extreme stresses caused by the basic forces' reaction to extremes of gravity. See, gravity is an expression of mass and mass is immutable. It's pure and beautiful. Nothing is ever truly destroyed.

Only doomed, and doom is a concept for brains. Gravity never counted on accidents of the mind. One of National Geographic's best taglines: "The Mind is What the Brain Does."

***

Disorganization, an essential ingredient to the entropy process, leads back to organization through the recombination of the elements involved. Now, let's work through this. Organization (which, for the sake of this example, we will use as a starting point) fosters breakdown. Any system, like the weather, seeks the impossible (homeostasis, to be anthropomorphic). Homeostasis is death and is only death. It is, in an organism, a point of perfection in which all systems are totally equalized. This, of course, precludes hunger or any variety of desire. It also is impossible for any living being to achieve.

Such is our example, the weather. "Calm" is what happens when one is within the influence of any individual pressure system. No two systems ever have identical pressure, therefore they will force each other around. Thus are created blizzards, tropical weather, downdrafts and tornadoes, drought. These are perceived by the sentient to be "destructive," as the power goes out and things die and water is either in excess or absence. However, weather that is perceived as "pleasant" (a.k.a. calm) will follow any of these phenomena. The release of pressure (a.k.a. destruction), which is endemic to any active system, is followed by a period of renewed growth. It's the same with fire, tectonic activity, stellar collapse, and our own system of organs.

***

Now, take the concepts of Doom, our pseudo-erotic fascination with the end times, and concepts of entropy and apply them to the local music scene.

You'll thank me when you're older.

-HS