Enemies of good taste

Joshua Mohr, Barry Gifford & five years of Message from the Underworld

I didn’t believe it when I did the math: I’ve been writing Message from the Underworld for five years. How the hell did that happen?

In the fall of 2019 I was working on the final proofs for Do What You Want, getting interesting assignments from the Los Angeles Times, and dabbling with screenplays. Earlier that summer I’d experimented with the newsletter Tiny Letter to document my residency at the Curfew Tower in Cushendall, but I didn’t stick with it. Then

Ryan Bradford

started up Awkward SD here on Substack to promote live music in San Diego. I thought I’d do something similar with literary events and Message from the Underworld was born.

The desire to start a newsletter stemmed from a feeling of disconnectedness that I’ve always wrestled with as a writer. It’s what prompted me to write for punk zines and start the reading series Vermin on the Mount. By contributing to zines and bringing writers together I hoped to sustain a feeling that I wasn’t alone in the things I was passionate about. I didn’t have the words for it then, but I was looking for my people. Maybe Message from the Underworld could do that, too.

Then COVID happened. To paraphrase James Joyce: disconnectedness was general all over America.

An early unfocused attempt at a header that was never used.

It was a confusing time. As the pandemic got longer and our collective despair deepened, this newsletter became an essential part of my locked-down life. I discovered that I loved writing it every week and I looked forward to the comments and conversations it started in this small but dedicated community of readers.

As the newsletter has grown—MFTU now has 1,575 subscribers—it’s changed. How could it not? Initially, I hoped to document my adventures with Bad Religion when the book came out in August 2020. Obviously, that didn’t happen. The literary events I previewed also went away.

So I adjusted. I wrote about music, I wrote about books, I wrote about books about music. This dovetailed nicely with the research I was doing for Corporate Rock Sucks. Last year, I reported on my adventures on the road when I started doing events for that book, as well as for my novel Make It Stop. Travel writing has become a part of the newsletter in ways I couldn’t imagine during the lockdown.

So what’s next for Message from the Underworld?

Good question. This is always going to be a place where I reflect on what I’m reading, watching, and listening to. I’ll continue to share my creative life with you no matter what shape it takes. But the media landscape has changed a lot in the last five years. There are fewer places to review books, interview artists, and champion work worthy of attention. I mean, what is a newspaper in 2024? It’s a really frustrating time for artists and it doesn’t matter if you’re a hardcore band that’s just starting out or a writer in the middle of your career. We all feel like we’re in a vacuum.

You know what doesn’t feel like that? Substack. For all its problems, things are happening in this corner of the Internet. My feeling is that I should stop searching for new places to champion artists and do more of that right here. That starts today with an interview with my friend Joshua Mohr whose book Saint the Terrifying came out yesterday. Next week I’ve got an interview with Thurston Moore about his memoir Sonic Life, and the week after that I’ll have an interview with Keith Rosson about his terrific new novel The Devil By Name about a punk rock song that brings about the end of the world. There won’t be interviews every week, but there will be more voices, more conversations, more connectedness.

Of course, I couldn’t do this without you. Maybe all 1,575 of us can make a tiny dent in the technocracy’s glacial indifference to art. Right now 4% of you are paid subscribers and I’d love it if we could get that number a little higher. You’re probably burnt out on campaign ads begging for money—I know I am—but I want to point out that an annual subscription is just $40, the lowest amount that Substack would let me charge five years ago. I have no intention of ever raising that, but I may continue to experiment with paywalls. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you from the bottom of my twisted little heart.

From Tim Armstrong’s vision board, probably.

Interview with Joshua Mohr

Last week I was in San Francisco celebrating the release of Joshua Mohr’s excellent new book, Saint the Terrifying, the first in a trilogy of novels that spills over into multiple genres: junkie punk scumfest, bizarro ultra-violence, speculative heart stomper, satirical hilarity that sends up anyone who takes themselves too seriously. (I’m looking at you, Billie Joe.)

The day after his book launch, we wandered around West Oakland, Emeryville, and Berkley, talking about life, art, and Saint the Terrifying and these questions came out of those conversations…

Jim Ruland: When we were driving around the East Bay last week, you pointed out some spots where you used to hang out when you were playing in bands. Can you tell me a bit about your scene and what it was like?

Joshua Mohr: I played in so many awful punk/rock/indie/metal bands! I was super promiscuous with the musical genres I’d abuse. There’s a quote from Saint on page one of the new novel where he says, “I wish you could’ve seen how happy it made us to pollute the world with those broken songs.” That pretty much sums up my relationship to music.

In the part of town we were driving around in, there’s a rad rehearsal space in West Oakland called Sound Wave, and I spent months of my life there, ostensibly for band practice but we sure played a lot of ping pong. Of course, you and I were just a few miles from 924 Gilman Street, and that place gave me a real-deal education. I learned that I want to make art like my ass is on fire, that I want to be an audacious animal questing for joy.

You’ve described Saint the Terrifying as a punk rock Viking saga, which kind of puts a clean sheen on the violence and the grime that’s in store for the reader.  

Saint is bare-knuckle character, and since the trilogy reflects his very damaged human heart, the work needs to capture his volatility. I know you and I are both cinephiles, Jim, so I liken Saint to The Man with No Name: If he happens to blow into your town and you need a problem solved, he’ll do it in a wonderful pageant of violence. He’s an untamable Viking.

I don’t diagnose Saint in the book, but he’s bipolar like me, and that was the best part of building his consciousness, his cadence, his inner-life. The language that he talks to the reader in is what I call The Broken Baroque. His sentences are all over the place, reckless run-ons and tangents for days. He sees and hears glass birds that may or may not be around to help him. I’ve never loved one of my characters as much as I love Saint.

You’ve put out a record written through the lens of your protagonist. Name a singer you’d love to have cover one of your songs and one you would say no to? 

Rancid has always been near and dear to me, so if Tim Armstrong wants to gloriously mumble his way through a Slummy song, that would be a dream come true. Now, that I think about it, they used to practice sometimes at Sound Wave, too.

I’m so thankful that the powers-that-be are even pressing a record that belongs to Saint’s music and it was such a blast to write his songs, I’d be happy if anybody wants to cover a track. Wait. That’s bullshit. I really hate the band Third Eye Blind (who also used to practice at Sound Wave with us). If I heard that Third Eye Guy sing one of Slummy’s songs, I’d have to put him in a blood choke.

I don’t want to risk spoiling it, but there’s a fascinating scene that evokes the tragedy at Ghost Ship. Do you feel like that could have been your fate? 

Definitely! I certainly feel a kinship to the people who died in that fire. I’ve seen so many shows at sketchy warehouse spots over the years that I knew immediately that I wanted to honor the thirty-six people who died in that fire. The thought experiment was simple: What if Saint was able to save all their lives? What if, in this book, nobody burned up?

The Ghost Ship sequence in the novel is an act of reclamation. I even go so far as to use the first names of everyone who died in real life, and I’d love to ask a favor of the people who are reading this interview: If you decide to read Saint the Terrifying—please please please recite all of those thirty-six names out loud when you come to that moment in the book. Let’s make sure those angels live forever in this work of art by speaking their names!

Last week I wrote about how you were a big part of my inspiration to write a book that’s ambitious as it is personal. Who or what was your inspiration to write these books? 

I thought a lot about Butthole Surfers. I knew I wanted to write a raucous Viking/punk trilogy that didn’t really have a precedent. Saint, for better or worse, is his own genre mashup. And I couldn’t really think of a better spirit animal than Butthole Surfers. They are a sideshow shit-show, and I mean that as a total compliment.

I also read a lot of Icelandic Viking sagas, and they gave me the other half of the permission slip/blueprint to let the Saint Trilogy be bananas. So these books are love stories, crime stories, family sagas. They’re surrealism and fantasy, horror and comedy. They’re a celebration of bent and wonky stream-of-consciousness. Most of all, they’re a love letter to punk rock culture, the way we find one another and build gritty kingdoms.

You’re one of the most fearless writers I know, but it has to be a little scary having the first book come out while you’re editing the second one and revising the third? 

It’s a bit of a mind-fuck, no doubt, but I also recognize that these are really great problems! LOL. Matt Weiner of Mad Men fame says something to the effect that if what you used to dream about is now causing you stress, you’re living a very good life. I love that idea so hard.

My plan all along was to have a rough draft of Saint 3 done before the first one publishes, and I made it with a few days to spare! I didn’t want any of the review coverage—good, bad, or indifferent—from Saint the Terrifying worming its way into the culminating piece of the trilogy. That artifact deserves the same hermetically sealed laboratory that the first two books got to cook in.

I wear a tattoo from Picasso that says, “The chief enemy of creativity is good taste,” and that aesthetic philosophy has served the Saint series well. It’s allowed the work to be wholly its own thing. I set out to make Saint as human and sloppy as I could. He’ll stick his nose into situations that are none of his business because he so badly wants to fight the good fight. He’ll get bloody for the causes he believes in, and if you’re not careful, he’ll get you bloody, too.

Order Saint the Terrifying and Slummy’s six-song EP The Wrong Side.

Lunch with a legend

What brought us to the East Bay in the first place was to have lunch with one of our heroes: Barry Gifford.

It was a birthday celebration of sorts and after reading a short story to us in his studio, Barry regaled us with boxing tips, stories from his past, and the news that he has a new book coming from Rare Bird—the same press that put out Make It Stop and Josh’s new record.

Afterwards, Barry and Josh traded signed copies of their latest books. After digging around for a copy of a book I didn’t already own, Barry came up with his poetry collection New York, 1960, which was published by Curbside Splendor in 2016 and had completely escaped my attention. It’s full of unforgettable lines and poignant imagery. I’ll end with my favorite of the lot.

Harry Dean and Vinnie at Dupar’s

Lunch breaks we’d go to Dupar’s Diner
across the street from the studio.
The producer and I would sit in a booth
with grilled cheese sandwiches
and Ginger Ales, the director
would usually join us later,
after he finished meditating.
Harry Dean and Vinnie sat next to
each other on stools at the counter
discussing the state of the world
and religion, mostly religion.
Harry Dean told Vinnie that after
a person dies, there’s nothing.
That’s it, he said, just nothing.
Vinnie, a devout and practicing Buddhist,
disagreed and offered different scenarios
each of which depended on how things
transpired in the present. Harry Dean
didn’t buy it, and they carried on
this conversation every day over lunch.
The producer would pay for all of us.
After we’d been coming in for a few days
the counter waitress asked me what Vinnie
and Harry Dean did for a living. One’s
an actor, I said, the other’s a plumber.
The way they talk, the waitress said,
I took ‘em for philosophy professors
or defrocked priests. The producer and I
laughed. Why defrocked priests, he asked.
They sound like sinners in need of an
audience and forgiveness, she said.
Doesn’t everyone? I asked. Not me,
said the woman. I’m comfortable with
my troubles and I keep ‘em to myself.
Outside Dupar’s the producer told me,
Write down what she said. We might want
to put it into the script.

If you liked this newsletter you might also like my latest novel Make It Stop, or the paperback edition of Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records, or my book with Bad Religion, or my book with Keith Morris. I have more books and zines for sale here. I hope you’ll consider ordering my latest collaboration The Witch’s Door and the anthology Eight Very Bad Nights, which came out yesterday and features my short story “The Demo.”

Message from the Underworld comes out every Wednesday and is always available for free, but paid subscribers also get my deepest gratitude and Orca Alert! on most Sundays. It’s a weekly round-up of links about art, culture, crime, and killer whales.