I’ve probably spun this yarn here before, but the first time I ever saw Life in a Blender was at some point in the mid-80s. They were incongruously playing the Museum Mile festival on Fifth Avenue on the Upper East Side (my home turf, at the time), bringing a little Downtown weirdness to the otherwise staid uptown environs. Squeezed between mimes dressed as medieval harlequins and hammered-dulcimer players with ill-considered facial hair, here was this little rock combo playing strange songs about a host of different subjects (ditties later released on their debut LP, 1988’s Welcome To The Jelly Days). I was pretty much immediately hooked.
For any band whose foundation is steeped in a comedic approach, the albatross of predictable descriptors forever hangs heavily on their collective neck. Rarely will one read an invocation of Life in a Blender without encountering adjectives like “bizarre,” “quirky,” “oddball,” “witty,” “wry,” “satirical,” “skewed” and probably one or two “wacky” and “zany” mentions, if you dig deep enough. Sure, all those words have applied to Life in a Blender, at various points over the years, not least for lead singer/songwriter Don Rauf’s unconventional lyrical tangents, emphatic vocal style and penchant for surreal prop use (my particular favorite being a disembodied sheep’s head puppet named “Rugged Rick”). But to reduce Life in a Blender to merely a “funny” band is a brazen disservice to their finely honed musical chops, their stylistic adventurousness, their wide-ranging field of genuinely emotive songs and their sprawling discography. It may have started off as a gag, but Life in a Blender has evolved into a band that is a versatile force to be reckoned with, if you’re willing to swear off the diet of the insipidly slackjawed soma that currently passes itself off as contemporary pop music.
While I cannot remember the last time he and I were actually in the same room together (although I suspect it was at one of those dusty WFUV record fairs in Chelsea somewhere, wherein we were displaying our respectively idiotic spoils), Don and I have been friends for a while, so when I learned about Life in a Blender’s newest album, the ambitious Satsuma, a lavishly concocted labor of literary love fueled by booze, boredom and books (more about that below) — I figured the time was nigh to add Don to the roster of ignominy that also plagues RB Korbet of Even Worse, Chris Egan of Missing Foundation, Big Paul Ferguson of Killing Joke, Erik Norse Sanko of Skeleton Key and one or two unlucky others. I’m talking, of course, about the Flaming Pablum Interview. Much to his impending regret, Don said yes.
Here’s how it all went down.
Satsuma is something of a departure from Life In a Blender’s normal routine — what prompted the conceptual detour?
It was all a cascading waterfall of circumstances and we were standing directly under it! I had been writing songs for a project called the Bushwick Book Club, in which founder Susan Hwang forces artsts to write songs based on literary works. So the Blenders (Mark Lerner, Rebecca Weiner Tompkins, Dave Moody, Al Houghton, Ken Meyer, and I) had worked up versions of these songs-- “Vacancy for a Bluebird” based on Kurt Vonnegut’s "Man Without a Country," “Soul Deliverer” based on Tea Obreht’s "The Tiger’s Wife," “The Ocean Is a Black and Rolling Tongue” based on Jonathan Ames’s "You Were Never Really Here," “A Party in the Drunken Forest” based on Peter Wohlleben’s "The Hidden Life of Trees" and “Freak of Nature with a Lonely Heart” based on Dean Haspiel’s comic "The Red Hook." Check them out here.
So we had this unique batch of songs plus one just pure original tune. We might have done more but then the pandemic hit. We might have done a full album but here we were with six great basic tracks and we all said, “Fuck you, Universe. We’ll just make an EP.” Still it’s close to 30 minutes, and if you play it twice, it’s really about an hour long. Then, with all this time in solitary confinement, we decided to make the whole physical package more interesting—We all agreed that the most important thing was that it be abnormally tall for a CD…and so it is. We also feature some bang-up recipes for cocktails based on the songs, and there’s fantastic original art inspired by each song – by James Williamson, Gideon Kendall, Carla Rozman, Nancy Howell, Sky Pape, and Pete Friedrich. We wanted people to have something more than just jewel case and flimsy CD that most artists just poop out in the middle of their sleep.
How did the COVID-19 pandemic inform the recording process?
We started recording before the pandemic and fortunately we had a lot of the major parts in the can. I think we all know what “in the can” means, don’t we? Well it means it was all quite satisfying. One of the main things was –we had gotten all the hornplayers in the can. So there we were….basic tracks done… Al Houghton stark naked..and all Hell broke loose with the virus….and people foaming at the mouth. We were suddenly all turned upside down and torn apart. We were sequestered, banging on our little Zoom windows, and yelling, “For godsakes, what do we do?” So we took our six songs and added overdubs from afar.
Physical editions come with a lavishly illustrated book of cocktail recipes. How did that come about?
Goddammit! It was the virus! We were all running out of oxygen and we knew alcohol was the only answer. So we asked our favorite boozophiles if they wouldn’t mind concocting cocktail recipes insipred by the songs. So Henry Tenney, Bill Tipper, Deb Masocsi and Jason Boyd, Ambrosia Parsely, Franz Teeltlebaum, and Justin Lane Briggs from Barbes all came up with spectacular cocktails, which are all surprisingly healthy and almost potable.
We also know so many great artists. They each made an original piece of art (although I think Peter Friedrich may have just torn a page out of an old Boy’s Life magazine) and if you look at the art while listening to the song, it’s really like living inside your own personal Music Television video.
Where do you stand on the ongoing debate between streaming and the physical manifestations of recorded music?
Streaming on all levels is a horrible situation for musicians. What do the artists get from it? The pay rate is absolutely abysmal. In days of old, we saved our money and bought the music and the musician actually made money that was at least equitable. I feel like there must be some other model that would be more fair. Really the only game in town is Spotify. Our friend Chris Butler of the Waitresses gets so many plays from “Christmas Wrapping” and “I Know What Boys Like,” but he can tell you it adds up to “nanopennies.” We need to storm the castle with pitchforks and piñatas. Daniel Ek has become a billionaire off of the creative sweat of musicians. The movement asking for at least a penny per stream seems...a step in the right direction. I am twisting Father Time’s arm and saying, “Take Us Back!’ I want pay telephones, vinyl records, calling in to my message machine to find out who might have called, plastering band flyers with wheat paste on to poles, and advertising live shows by printing up and mailing postcards and sending small teams of jockeys into the night with megaphones saying, “ Show! Show tonight! Come and see the live music show tonight!”
How do you listen to your favorite music?
I stream everything I like for exactly .0000003 cents. The vibrations of today’s latest hits are coming through the tree roots if you put your ear down low. I buy the digital downloads and often the CD or vinyl album. There are still a good number of independent record stores in Seattle –so it’s great to go out, and then go in and support them—Sonic Boom, Easy Street, Silver Platters, Fat Cat Records, to name a few.
When was the last time Life in a Blender played in front of a live audience?
We played January 18, 2020 at Rockwood. It’s a great space with a great sound system and the staff is a group of super nice professionals who know how to repeatedly take a kick in the balls. I think Rockwood is accustomed to having bands play there that have a style of music that the great Josh Ozersky called “glummo.” So I think we’re the proverbial snowball down the back of the shorts. They all appreciate the difference and the up-with-people message we bring.
How do you feel about the concept of returning to the live music scenario?
It’s going to be like swimming in lava. Everyone is going to be severely burned and naked. But they will also be a bit cautious as more clubs open because they’re not all certain about the vaccines and the assholes and how safe everything really is. I can picture a performer who tiptoes out in front of a live audience being more reserved. Is Iggy Pop going to sling his torso into the crowd the second clubs reopen? I’m not so sure. And I feel the same way. So….. I think it will be great to get back on stage gingerly!
You’re originally from Poughkeepsie but started the band in Brooklyn, but you live in Seattle, now, right? How often do you regularly convene with the band?
I’ve been lucky to head back to New York a lot. I am a freelance health writer and can do that from anywhere. So I am thankful for that although, you may look at me and say, “Honestly, how can YOU write about health? I mean, look at the condition you’re in.” I can turn my back on the siren call of Poughkeepsie for only so long, and then I must arch my eyebrows and stretch my arms Eastward and give into the irresistible pull. And, again, I think you know what I mean by “irresistible pull.”
I first saw you guys performing in the mid-80’s at a Museum Mile festival in Manhattan. Do you have any memory of that gig? What were your favorite venues to play when you were starting out?
It’s true we somehow managed to play outside along Fifth Avenue for that festival. I think someone from Museum Mile spotted us when we busked in Central Park. Those were fun events because you expose yourself to such a variety of people. And yes, some people don’t enjoy hearing strange musicians exposing themselves, but several passersby would get into what we’re doing. I think it’s always worth putting yourself out there in ways that are not usual.
But of course we played the New York clubs and they were great and many in the 80s. Our home bar and venue was really McGovern’s on Spring Street and I’m still great friends with Steve McGovern (really Greenberg). Steve just let you run wild all night and do whatever you liked. So it was an ideal venue to try out all and everything. (Steve’s quote: “You want to know how to make a small fortune in the music club business? Start with a large fortune.”)
The next best and possibly equal club was CBGBs. Before we ever played there, I was intimidated. Every major artist played there—Television, Talking Heads, Ramones, Blondie, Dead Boys—and the place looked scary! But Hilly was salt of the Earth, with his big slow bass voice, and the staff were all the best, best people. I am still a friend of Alison Aguiar who was a waitress there. And one day I hope that she will think of me as her friend.
On top of those two venues...I did really love all these: Lone Star, Danceteria, Ritz, Tramps, Lauterbach’s (way out in Brooklyn when there really weren’t any clubs), the Blue Rose (up by Columbnia University). I think Brownies was later but I have major love for Brownies.
At the Blue Rose, the owner was a largish woman who looked like Divine. She had dark hair beehived high atop her head. At the end of the bar was a storage alcove, and the bar owner stored her elderly mother there. Her mother was bed-ridden so the Divine-like bartender set up what looked like a bedroom in the alcove. So when you had a drink at the Blue Rose bar, you’d look down to the end and it almost looked like a diorama or a scene from a museum—there was this old woman lying in bed in a set-up that looked like a cozy bedroom—but inches away from her was all the hooting and drinking and loud music of a dark and—at the times—smokey dive bar. Another great club was Siberia half way down the steps to the subway at 50th and Broadway. There’s a pretty great documentary on the place here . That place was a trip.
Satsuma is your 10th album. When you first started the band, did you expect that you would still be recording this many years later?
The personnel has changed but not in eons. We have probably all been together at least 25 years now.… I can’t stop doing this and I’m glad they don’t have the willpower to stop either. I have been so lucky to play with these super humans, who are just amazingly talented and warm, no matter how or where you touch them or how they look. Sincerely, I am so thankful. I can’t ask for a better, more rewarding creative experience. Everything about the Blender is truly incredible. I know we’re not THE most famous band in the world but having the ability to create with people you don’t dislike and perform in front of people who are unlikely to be violently angry is fantastic. Today, when we wake up and say, “We haven’t wet the bed,” we consider that a major victory.
In 2007, you released what I consider to be one of the finest lamentations about gentrification, that being “What Happened to Smith”? Towards the end of the song, the protagonist (you, I assume) wearily resigns himself to “waiting it out by the Gowanus” and opting for the “stench of the canal” over suffering the changes to the rest of the neighborhood. Since that record was released, Gowanus itself has been “discovered” and colonized, for lack of a better term. Do you ever go back to Brooklyn, these days? What are you feelings about it now?
That song could have just as easily been called “What happened to Alex Smith?” Now the song doesn’t quite work because the Gowanus has been all dolled up and doused with perfume—the perfume of young money! At the same time that Gowanus is getting shined up, Smith may be convlusing and unsure of itself. I know, even pre-pandemic, Smith had seemed to be passing its prime. Retail rents had soared so high that shops were going dark right and left. Then the chain of brand-name drug stores and the top-name apparel shops move in. But may rents dip and the social clubs reopen and everyone be sitting in beach chairs in front of their buildings again.
If/when Life In a Blender returns to the stage in the wake of the pandemic, will Rugged Rick be joining you?
I don’t think Rugged Rick will ever read this, so I think it’s safe to say Rugged Rick is an asshole. I suppose Rugged Rick would think the pandemic is the best thing ever—you know, fewer humans is a concept that Rick would support, but it does seem horribly heartless right now to even say that. What I’m trying to say is, I’m afraid Rick will be back and ready to shout at us all and tell what complete dopes we all are.
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