Good evening, my fine friends -- it is I, Juan the Gardener, speaking. Yes, I am still shacked up in this filthy closet. How did I get here? How did I go from my beloved mother country and its ancient fields of green to this icy hellhole at the top of the earth? Truly I do not know, although in dreams I am told it has much to do with Mad Dog 20/20. Be that as it may, it has fallen to me again to trouble some unsuspecting musicians with probing questions. This time, I fear, the victim is one Patrick Hambrecht, the leader and singer in red for the NYC band Flaming Fire. I approach with fear, for their mystic pagan voodoo is a powerful one; fortunately for me, Patrick turns out to be not only harmless, but quite friendly. Observe, my children....
JUAN THE GARDENER'S QUESTIONS FOR FLAMING FIRE:
DA: How and why did Flaming Fire, the soul-searching entity, come into being?
PH: Well, I love pop music with a heavy spirituality to it. There comes a time in every young person's life -- when you see a couple Kenneth Anger films, or run through a thunderstorm, or reread your old Steranko comics, and realize that life is really a big beautiful horrible freakout. All my art really comes out by instinct. I'm a Christian, and so I believe the Holy Spirit possesses me and guides my life, but I sometimes think I'm a pretty lousy host. I'm just grateful. Other folks in FF are Jewish or aren't religious at all, but I think we're all coming from the same place. Flaming Fire is our big love poem, to our white-light too-bright Wolf Angel World. There's something creepy going on, and that creepy thing is existence, and we -- you and I and everybody else -- are what's creepy about it. And that's beautiful.
DA: Your new album, SONGS FROM THE SHINING TEMPLE, just came out. How would you describe this one in comparison to the earlier one?
PH: On the first one, "Get Old and Die," I was really interested in creating a heavy, dreamy drone. Like when you've been up for a couple days and haven't eaten, and things start to get a little hallucinogenic in the New Testament fasting / sleep-deprivation sense, and everything starts to seem really groovy and beautiful.
But "The Shining Temple" is about the bloody beauty of sacred aggression, rage -- it's meant to be listened to REALLY LOUD with the bass way up, so that your speakers are a little distorted. [TMU: Oh, good; that's the way I listen to everything, even John Denver.]
So much of pop music is this giddy death-cult, Thanatos message -- people singing about how sweet their pain is in this happy, masochistic way. How they're dying from love, or alternately this fascist, "my love will consume you" thing. And both of those are very religious sentiments -- pagan / Christian / whatever Joseph Campbell stuff. Abstract ritual human sacrifice.
Britney Spears, Manowar, and DMX have a lot in common, and all their music reminds me of some sort of Baal-worshipping or Aztec human sacrifice ceremony. But there is a really humanistic, positive thing in that sort of death drive, too. A desire for something real, for sacrifice of yourself to the human race, to create something larger out of your own ritual act, maybe even your own ritual death. You're going to die anyway. I think that's why Christ thought it was so important to make sure that his followers understood why his death was THE sacrifice, so his followers wouldn't feel it constantly necessary to nail themselves to crosses just to get closer to him. Not that it stops them from doing it anyway.
DA: When did Kate decide to step up to the drum kit? (Whenever it was, this was a good idea.) How did that come about, since she was originally just singing?
PH: Kate is great at playing drums, and she just stepped up one day because we needed a drummer, and we keep it in the family. It was pretty surprising how great she was, instantly.
DA: Before you were Flaming Fire, you were Rock Rock Chicken Pox and recorded an album with cartoonist / legendary eccentric Dame Darcy. What was that all about, eh?
PH: Darcy's one of my best friends in the world, and that album came about over many, many, many bottles of champagne. The grungy cement nature of New York City used to really get her down when she lived here, and she'd come out and stay with Kate and me for days at a time when we lived in Queens, because we had a backyard and she could hang out there all day and draw her comics when we were gone. So we'd drink a lot of champagne in the evening and make up these songs over spaghetti dinners, and then go record them.
Darcy and I both connect on a hysterical Americana level -- guns, murder ballads, Jesus, barn fires. Of course, she's got that whole witchy-girly thing going too, but I think most guys have figured out you can't win by embracing that. You're going to look like some sort of dippy Satin Wizard, and no girl really wants that, no matter how pagan she says she is -- unless she has a big crush on Doug Henning or something.
DA: You recently established an intriguing ezine, GODMAGAZINE... care to illuminate us on what it's all about?
PH: God Magazine is a lifestyle magazine for people who have caught on that there's no difference between counter-cultural psychedelia, killing Moabites for Yahweh and going to church with mom and dad -- it's all the same thing. H.P. Lovecraft, Psychic TV and Sunday school ARE ALL THE SAME THING. It's not pagans versus Christians, it's idiots versus those who can read for themselves. You can't really take the paganism out of Christianity, or vice versa.
DA: I understand you're on a mission to create the most thoroughly-illustrated version of the King James Version of the Bible and the Apocrypha online. How did that come about and how's it going?
PH: Well, I always draw Bible verses, and the other folks in Flaming Fire got a kick out of them -- mostly because they're all professional artists, and my style is really naïve and dumb-looking, compared to theirs. Lauren is a nationally syndicated cartoonist and does these great psychedelic stories called "Vineyland." John M is a professional illustrator, and Johnny A is an animator, and I did a bunch of illustrations to accompany our lyrics in the Flaming Fire Song Book, which we hand out at shows so people can sing along.
So, I was talking to Adam Mayer one day, about how it would be really cool to illustrate every verse in the Bible, and create a website for it -- And Adam built the site about ten minutes later!
And now Kate and I spend about two hours every day scanning in Bible illustrations that people mail from all over the world. It's more fun than it sounds. So many of them are really mind-blowingly beautiful or weird. It's pretty surprising how the project has caught on. We have parties where everyone comes over to Lauren's house and draws Bible pictures for 14 hours straight -- and all these famous cartoonists show up! It's really fun. The New York Times and the New York Sun have both written stories on it, I guess because they think it's so weird that a bunch of jaded hipsters are drawing Bible stories.
DA: Given the band's penchant for irony and the copious religious references on the albums, I'm kind of curious as to the band's views on religion... care to elaborate?
PH: In terms of irony, I don't understand art that's completely humorless, without self-knowledge or artifice. Which I think sums up poetry jams and emo music. The Pogues and classic country music and Flannery O'Connor can make you sad and laugh at the same time -- why can't you, young emo musician? Being able to see the absurdity, the ridiculousness of the human condition makes songs sadder, makes them more serious. So why are you such a drip, young hardcore musician? What's your problem? That's what I say.
I blame it on Bob Dylan, who had a sense of humor, but a pretty lousy, self-important one. And now we're listening to his dumber, dour children on the radio today. It's sad.
I don't know if anyone out there has heard much modern Christian music, but it's equally stupid. It all sounds like a series of lobotomized car commercials. If King David wrote one of his Psalms, or Jesus told one of his brilliant, blood-curdling parables in a church today, Christians would throw them both out for being secular because they didn't have a "positive message."
DA: The Flaming Fire sound encompasses a lot of influences and spirals out in many different directions at once. What kind of music (or other influences) pushed you toward this sound in the first place?
PH: The big musical influences on Flaming Fire are ancient vocalists, like the Greco-Roman chants you hear in Fellini's "Satyricon." Also Gregorian chanters, Ratt, Korean Pansori music, traditional Baptist hymns, the Magic Pacer, the Beatles song "Tomorrow Never Knows," Johnny Cash, Gary Glitter, Cobra Killer, the Butthole Surfers, Judy Collins, Hawkwind, Greg Cosgrove's Clark County, Glenn Danzig, Daniel Johnston, Metallica, Morrissey, Galaxy 500, Miles Davis, DMX, DJ Skrew and DJ Markski, Roland Kirk, Ram Jam, Lynyrd Skynyrd, the Cure, Faun Fables, Gordon Lightfoot, Psychic TV, Eddy Arnold, Neon Hunk, Kylie Minogue, the Four Seasons, Shizuo vs. Shizor, Magic is Kuntmaster, the Hangovers, Warlock with Doro, and Elvis Presley.
DA: There's a distinctly pagan outlook (and visual image) happening here -- is the Flaming Fire down with paganism?
PH: Yeah! In the stuffy collegiate sense. Although I am much more pro-human as opposed to pro-nature. I hate raves, and will probably never get anything pierced. But I was a failed Greek student in college. And still am. I love Classicism; reading weird translations of Babylonian prayers, stuff like that. I love Greek plays, Homer. I wish I could learn more about Aztec mythology these days. If you meet me a party, feel free to talk my ear off about your doctorate in Latin or Greek or whatever, I really enjoy hearing about stuff like that.
But I don't see a big difference between paganism and Christianity. I think God reveals himself to everyone.
DA: I have this vision of the live performances as explosions of chaos and color. Am I wrong?
PH: The ritual aspect of performance is a big deal to us, we really enjoy it. I try and be as close to what I love about Greco-Roman theater, mostly from Fellini's SATYRICON and Nietzsche's BIRTH OF TRAGEDY, as I can. The chorus, the entrance, the exits, the ritual screaming, the bells, the gongs, the strobe lights, the fog, the chanting -- you know, the idea of religion and art, before they called it religion or art, and it was both the same thing.
DA: Does the band have a goal, a burning vision? Or is it all just about playing loud and drinking beer?
PH: Martin Luther and C.S. Lewis were both converted while drinking beer. The first and last thing Jesus did for his friends was give them wine. Drinking can be a very beautiful thing, conducive to all sorts of burning visions.
In terms of new stuff for Flaming Fire:
a) We're celebrating Lauren's "Tales from Vineyland" book release at a big party next month at CBGB's Gallery. It's REALLY good.
b) A short animated cartoon of "The Sun is a Snake" done by Cynthia Mitchell, Jonny A and Richard O'Connor will be coming out soon, on our website.
c) We're working on a comic book and video game about the 30,000 year sorrowful, bloody saga of Cuniglius Cronk, the astral-traveling Dixie warrior.
I) Hope to release the comic book this year (drawn by John Mathias, written by me, edited by Tim Hodler)
II) and the video game (designed by Gabriel Walsh, character design by Louis Underwood)
d) we're going to play on WFMU in the next month or so with the material from "Songs from the Shining Temple," plus one or two new songs composed for bells, gong and vibraphone.
DA: Feel free to leave the message of your choice at the beep....
PH: Doris Lessing's "Archives of Canopus" is amazing! Everyone should read it.