Saccharine Trust - The tightrope walkers of free-core

The true “black sheep” of the SST catalogue, Los Angeles' Saccharine Trust theorized a tightrope-walking, jagged and atonal free-prog-funk-hardcore, reviving the old-school tradition of “punk with a guitar solo” and decisively influencing post-hardcore and math-rock. On the eve of a much-talked-about European tour, announced but sadly never launched, we reached guitarist Joe Baiza via Skype to find out what went wrong and retrace the obscure story of this cult legend.

Hi Joe, thanks for agreeing to this interview. Among fans there was a lot of anticipation for this tour, which fell through, as I understand it, due to organizational problems…

Yes, the person who was organizing it couldn't find enough dates, so we had to scrap the whole thing.

I had the chance to talk to him, and we're both convinced the problem lies in a kind of "fear" that your music generates in club bookers: it's never going to be a punk night, or a noise night, or a jazz-rock night, but a Saccharine Trust show, something that captures all those shades and pushes well beyond them. Have you ever had problems with the hybrid nature of your art, which is obviously fantastic but can confuse lazier listeners?

Sure, it's always been like that. Promoters say "I don't know what to do with these guys" and I get it, I'm not even sure there's an audience for Saccharine Trust! We've never known, and we still don't know even now when we play in Los Angeles: sometimes people show up, sometimes they don't. There's interest in the band, but promoters aren't quite sure where to place us or how to handle it, maybe that was the case with this tour too, but I'm not sure. I wouldn't call it laziness, I know a lot of people are willing to make an effort up to a certain point and then they stop, as if to say "Okay, that's enough for me. These guys are too crazy, I don't get it." Either way, for those who appreciate us, we're definitely a fun band to watch live!

Would this have been your first-ever European appearance?

We've played a few times in Germany. In 2001 we recorded an album with Hazelwood, a label from Frankfurt. I'd gotten in touch with them after the first breakup of my side project, Universal Congress Of. The bassist, who had moved to Germany, ran into the label guys. They were really excited about the idea of producing a new Saccharine Trust album, so we went over there and did it, squeezing in a couple of shows along the way. Ten years later we played in England at the ATP edition curated by Pavement, and since we were in the area we went back to Germany for a mini-tour of about ten dates, where I performed with both SST and UCO.

Many bands from the SST roster became cult acts, if not outright "famous" (starting with the sacred triad of Black Flag–Minutemen–Hüsker Dü), while Saccharine Trust have remained a strange and obscure entity, even today. I think the main reason is the different texture of your music, both complex and unhinged (someone called it "anti-rock"), more "adult" and less "adolescent" than the bands mentioned above. Do you agree?

I've never thought of it as "adult", in the sense that you'd first have to figure out what being an adult even means… But yes, we've always been pretty unconventional, we wanted to do something different. When Jack (Brewer, singer and lyricist, ed.) and I formed the band we had different ideas about what Saccharine Trust should be, and we tried to combine our visions. That produced music for a listener with no fixed label, I couldn't tell you whether to call it punk-rock or not, it's simply what came out at that moment. Music that's certainly difficult for most people: you know, there have been various periods in our story, but all fairly "extreme"… Most of the people who liked what we were doing came from an "extreme" listening background, others maybe pushed themselves because they saw us opening for Black Flag. At that point we'd only been active for a year, we were still learning to play, it was a huge opportunity to open that tour. Those shows were a somewhat rough mix of energy and ideas, and maybe to the audience we weren't cool at all, if anything they saw us as just strange guys. Even in our "heaviest" moments we were never a real hardcore band, so it's been a struggle from the very start. I never thought about what people wanted to hear, maybe now I pay more attention to that and look for a compromise, but back then, no. Even today we remain outsiders, even within the revival festival circuit there's little room for us. We live in Los Angeles and we have a small following there, also because the current lineup is really excellent on a technical level. At some shows the younger kids seem interested, but they listen to us like they're sitting in a college class, they seem to study us from a distance, itching for the bell to ring so they can go outside for recess. Their expressions seem to say "Something here isn't quite landing." No, it's not easy music, but I'd say: this is what we've always done, and we've done it to the best of our ability, if you don't like it you don't have to listen to it.

Is that the reason you've called SST the "black sheep" of the SST catalog? What was your relationship with the "bosses" like, starting with Greg Ginn and Joe Carducci?

Yes, I've always had the feeling they treated us like something strange and difficult. It was always along the lines of "Okay, we're accepted, but we're still a different thing." Either way, I have to say I've always respected the label guys, all of them. Sure, we weren't like Minutemen, Meat Puppets or Hüsker Dü, we were complicated and less pleasant to listen to. We often found ourselves pushed aside, maybe someone would call in offering us a gig and the label would answer "Look, I think this other band might suit you better." It was all a very local thing after all, that's how it goes with these small labels. So yes, we were the "black sheep", but I say that jokingly: there's irony, not bitterness, in that description.

Is your music entirely spontaneous, or do you mix your influences consciously? For instance, in your work I've spotted scattered traces of Captain Beefheart, Red Crayola, Henry Cow, Stooges from the "Fun House" era, Pere Ubu, Pop Group… Do you recognize these kinds of ingredients in your own recipe?

I like a lot of different music, so of course there are lots of different influences in what I do. It's an unconscious process: I listen to something and somehow absorb it, it's like something inside me says "Let me take a piece of this and a piece of that." It's not something I think about, it just happens naturally.

Your sauce also has persistent free-jazz spices, especially the radical kind from Cecil Taylor or Albert Ayler. How much of what you play is written, and how much is improvised?

There's a lot of writing, but also a fair share of improvisation. In the current Saccharine Trust, which I consider the best lineup (not by chance, also the longest-lasting one), there's this idea that anything can happen within the songs. It's a free form, the music is charged with a kind of vibration, like an open chemistry. The songs have a structure, but from one moment to the next something different can happen, though it never completely destroys that structure. We always know what we're doing, and the improvisation is built on that feeling. As for me, I was certainly influenced by free jazz musicians like Ornette Coleman or late-period John Coltrane, the first time I heard that stuff I thought "Wow, what a sound!" I wasn't a jazz musician, but I wanted to make that idea my own, it wasn't necessary to sound like them. As a guitarist, I remember being really struck by James Blood Ulmer, and I was intrigued by the idea of adapting that approach to punk songs.

Speaking of your playing style, you're definitely one of the few guitar heroes of punk… I've always seen it as a kind of secessionist cell: ever since Tom Verlaine broke the taboo on guitar solos, a small but tenacious commando unit was born, with pioneering figures like Greg Sage and future alternative icons such as J Mascis, Duane Denison, Doug Martsch and a few others. Do you feel in any way part of this exclusive club?

Look, being a guitarist isn't that important to me. I consider myself a non-musician, in the sense that when I started playing, I didn't approach it with the intention of becoming a musician. I was never interested in chords, scales and things like that, I've always used the guitar to express something. When I started with Saccharine Trust, the guitar was simply a tool for giving shape to my ideas, it could just as easily have been a piano or a saxophone. In that sense, mine is an artistic approach in general, more than a musical one. I listen to a lot of guitar music, but I don't emulate anyone in particular. Aside from James Blood Ulmer, whom I already mentioned, I don't have any reference guitarists. I don't fit into any category and I wouldn't feel comfortable comparing myself to other players. There are a lot of great guitarists in Los Angeles, but that's something I pay more attention to now than I did back then. Thanks, obviously, for including me in this "club", it's very cool, but I'd never go around saying "Wow, I'm one of them!"

Are you a self-taught instrumentalist?

Yes.

Who's the main composer in Saccharine Trust?

The music is sometimes a group effort, other times it's built on individual contributions. For instance, it happened that Chris, the bassist, wrote guitar parts so complete that I didn't have to adapt them at all, I just played them exactly as he'd conceived them. That's another way we've always been a very open band—when you're collaborating there's no room for individual ego. The lyrics, on the other hand, have always been Jack's department.

Let's talk about these lyrics. Even though you've never been a militant band in the strict sense, especially in the earliest songs you can spot a political message. I always find it fascinating when an artist injects an aggressive lyrical charge into an adventurous musical format, the way the Rock In Opposition bands did, or the British punk-funk bands of the early '80s. Two violent assaults, one lyrical and one musical…

When I met Jack, he was really deep into this lyrics thing, so as soon as we started playing together, words immediately became an important element. What he wrote was always a very personal expression of what was going on in his head, coming from some dark place… I wouldn't call them political or anything else in particular, they were often lyrics that were hard for me to understand too. I asked him several times, "What the hell does this line mean, what are you getting at?" and most of the time I had to settle for my own interpretation. And I'll tell you, I like that—in general I appreciate it when art leaves room for personal interpretation.

There's also a more hermetic aura, with almost biblical touches…

Yes, those images fascinate me too. Have you heard our last album for Hazelwood, "The Great One Is Dead"? The lyrics there are really excellent. They're not political songs, or love songs, or whatever else—whatever they're supposed to mean, I find them fantastic. Recently a small label from San Pedro reissued it as a double vinyl, and they asked us if we wanted to include a lyric sheet, but Jack said, "No, we don't need that. You can hear the words in the recordings," and then he asked me, "Actually, why don't you do a drawing for each song?" I agreed, working from the song titles and a few lines, and I realized just how many ideas were packed into those lyrics—it was really stimulating. That extends to the music too: every song tells a story, and underneath it you have to build a convincing foundation for whatever Jack is narrating. For instance, if the lyrics are about a man falling into a hole, we try to underline that passage musically too. Words and music follow the same mood.

Every Saccharine Trust album boasts very striking, carefully crafted artwork, which isn't surprising given that you're also a visual artist. How important is that side of things?

It's very important. SST always gave us a lot of freedom with the covers (as long as they weren't too expensive to produce), which was a great thing. Hazelwood, on the other hand, has its own designer, so we didn't get exactly what we wanted, but it still turned out fine. I started out as a visual artist, I wanted to become a painter, and only later did music pull me in—it was an experiment. So it's inevitable that my artistic background has shaped the visual concept of my music.

"Surviving You, Always", which many consider your creative peak (and which, speaking of what we were just discussing, has a simply amazing cover), has never been reissued: how come? Are you thinking about it for the future?

That depends on SST, it's under their control… I don't know, maybe Greg just doesn't like that album… You know, it's fantastic that he has a label and has put out so many spectacular records, but as a person he's a difficult guy, a bit selfish I think. I don't know what's wrong with him, but he's not someone who enjoys sharing what's his. For some reason he's never wanted to reissue "Surviving You, Always" on CD—according to Jack it comes down to some technical issues, but when I brought it up with Greg he just said, "No, it'd be too expensive," which doesn't really make sense. And obviously he's never let us reissue it ourselves! It's become our lost record… By the way, if you ask me it's actually pretty rough! (we laugh) It's really extreme… maybe he's afraid to reissue it because it's too extreme? Or because it's too good? Honestly, I have no idea! What's certain is that it's a very tough record, the sound is aggressive, and it's also all completely real—there's nothing fake about a work like that. It was partly the result of touring with Black Flag, we were influenced by that chaotic, wild world. There are some live recordings of that material that are pretty good, others that are terrible. Even now it remains a cursed album: recently we played in LA with the original line up and we were all unsure about the idea of digging up the songs from that record, so we decided to work out a "gentler" version, with less dissonance, played more quietly…

Musically speaking, within the SST galaxy your closest relatives were undoubtedly Minutemen. There was also a very tight personal bond between you: I'm thinking of Mike Watt playing bass on "Worldbroken", or you and Jack collaborating on the writing of the monumental masterpiece "Double Nickels On The Dime", or the cover of "Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat" that you drew. Can you tell us about this wonderful friendship?

Yes, definitely a very strong bond. I met them in San Pedro, I was living with the other members of the band. D. Boon lived in the apartment above mine. In the early days of Saccharine Trust, Jack and I had a hard time finding other musicians to play with, so we just rehearsed by ourselves in my living room, with two small amplifiers. One day we hear a knock and we immediately think, "Maybe we're playing too loud," but instead we open the door and there's D. Boon standing there with a military jacket and long hair, and we think, "Who the hell is this corndog (a term literally referring to hot dogs on a stick dipped in corn batter, used to mock the "hicks" of Southern California, ed.)?!" He'd heard us playing and wanted to chat, and when he told us he was the guitarist for the Reactionaries, his pre-Minutemen band at the time, we let him in right away, because we'd seen them live and they were amazing. We talked for hours, and that's how we became great friends. He was a truly great guy, we shared so many beers and burritos together! Later on I also met Mike Watt, who was always over at D. Boon's apartment laying the groundwork for what would become Minutemen. Mike was a whirlwind, he had tons of ideas, it was constantly "Now I'll do this, now I'll do that", truly a determined person. He helped us a lot, he's the one who found us a bassist after several failed attempts, and it was also thanks to him that we played our first show: he told us, "I've organized a party, and you're going to play it," and when we said we weren't ready he teased us so relentlessly that he finally talked us into it. That's also when our name was born: he asked us, "What are you guys called, so I can put it on the flyer?", we told him we hadn't thought of one yet, and he told us to come up with a name fast or he wouldn't let us play! Jack and I spent a whole night thinking about it, and at some point, talking about a David Bowie lyric ("The Bewlay Brothers", ed.), he asked me, "Joe, what do you think 'sugary trust' means?" I hadn't understood what he was talking about and replied, "Huh? Is that supposed to be the band's name?" and he said, "Actually I hadn't thought of that, but it's fine by me"… Mike was an invaluable connection, and he still is now. In general we always had a wonderful relationship with the whole San Pedro scene, which we came from too.

Having excellent fans like Sonic Youth, Melvins and especially Nirvana—did that help you become a more familiar name outside of hardcore circles?

Yes, Sonic Youth in particular helped us a lot. It's always nice when a well-known band mentions you! They even invited us to the edition of ATP they curated, back in 2002. If I'm not mistaken, "Surviving You, Always" is mentioned by Kurt Cobain in his diaries (the album in question is actually "Paganicons", ed.). All these things allowed us to reach a lot of new listeners. That doesn't mean we're not still struggling to break through! (laughs) The truth is I've always thought of Saccharine Trust as a family of collaborators more than a band of people trying to build a career. Paradoxically, that's what keeps the band from ever really dying: we all have our jobs and our lives, we can go without seeing each other for months, then someone offers us a show and just like that we go and play. It's something that sits there quietly and pops back up now and then, with no stress attached. We've got tons of songs in our repertoire that we still haven't recorded, I hope I'll manage to put them out sooner or later.

Now I'd like to talk about your side project, Universal Congress Of, which I find a really interesting band, even though it's quite different…

As I told you, I've always been interested in jazz, and I tried to bring even more of it into the later Saccharine Trust material, especially on "We Became Snakes", with Steve Moss on saxophone. In hindsight it was a somewhat abrupt move, but it contained the seeds of something else. That line-up broke up shortly after, and it became the chance to develop my punk-jazz idea with other musicians. It all started because drummer Jason Kahn and I lived in the same building and began talking about playing Ornette Coleman pieces with a punk attitude, that kind of "I barely know how to play, but I want to do it anyway!" spirit. It was an irreverent way of approaching that music, the opposite of what you'd do at jazz college. It was an exciting time for me, those musicians were on my same wavelength, there was a lot of freedom. We recorded a couple of albums for SST and played a lot around the United States, often in absurd places like Richmond or Salt Lake City. In 1989 we also played in Europe. They wrote an article about us in Spex, a German alternative magazine that was very influential at the time, I don't know if you've ever heard of it. That generated a lot of interest around us. Unfortunately the original line-up broke up right around then, but we started again shortly after with other musicians and a different label. Right now I'm focusing on music built around improvised solos, which isn't easy for me at all! In LA I play with four or five different groups, I try to stay active. I believe the music someone has in mind matters more than individual personalities: if I feel like doing something different, or I have a song that doesn't really fit a band's sound, I simply form another one, without pretending to have one single outlet that can contain everything I have to say. It's something I understood late, though — if I'd had a side project like UCO back in the early Saccharine Trust years, everything would have been different, and maybe they wouldn't have broken up. Now I feel like I have more options and can express myself better.

Saccharine Trust were a powerful example of courage and consistency, two rather rare virtues. Do you see another band with a similar attitude among the new generation? What do you think of the current alternative scene?

I can tell you about the situation in Los Angeles. I don't follow the new scene all that closely, but where I live there are several bands that are fantastic, not very well known, but made up of excellent musicians. You can feel a creative atmosphere, a positive attitude. I keep making discoveries from that angle, strange stuff on the border between rock and jazz. There's a band led by the son of a friend of mine, Mr. Me, they're really good! Often young kids I don't know ask me to play at their shows and I always go gladly, and that's how I discover a lot of original stuff. In Echo Park, the neighborhood where I live, they hold a three-day summer festival called "Echo Park Rising", with all the venues putting on live music and even stages set up in the street, you can hear a lot of great stuff just by walking around. So, there's hope, and I imagine it's like that pretty much everywhere. Maybe it's partly thanks to the Internet too, which helps people make connections and share what they do.

Ok, we're done. What can I say, thank you so much for your time. As for the tour, I've heard there's a second attempt planned for spring, I really hope things go better this time, so I can finally see you live!

Thank you, it's been a great chat. Hope to meet again soon!

Chris Stein, bassist in the last line-up, died of cancer a month after this interview was recorded, and we dedicate it to him.

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