MC: How is Corrosion doing these days?

D: Unfortunately, Corrosion is no more. Most of the staff from Corrosion and myself have moved on to another night, Sanctuary (RI) instead. We were actually doing both at the same time for a little while, but two weekly nights in Providence is hard to do, and while Sanctuary’s attendance has been slowly climbing, the inverse was happening to Corrosion. Sanctuary is a little more populist than Corrosion, and I think in the long run, it’s going to build a better scene here overall. We’re all hoping things keep going they way they are, as it’ll allow us to do more specialized events like Heresy again, which was DJ Lovecraft and my original Deathrock, goth, post-punk, and obscurities night. Things are always changing, and right now for the better, so who knows?

MC: I see that you’ve booked bands like Holy Cow, 45 Grave, Thomas Nola et Son Orchestre, Bell Hollow, The Brides, and the Deadfly Ensemble. What’s the “state of the scene” in your area?

D: Sanctuary is an enormous success, so as far as club nights go, the scene is doing very well. Thanks to this success, we’ve been able to start booking bands out of that night, and DJ Lovecraft continues to book bands elsewhere as well. For the most part, Providence has had a great turn around. When the whole cyber scene started to wane, there was a lot of in-fighting between different scene elements. In some respect, I feel a sort of affinity to nights like “Release the Bats,” because amidst that environment, we set out to just make something positive without any strings attached. It’s been working, and I think Providence has regained a lot of credibility it lost in the early part of this decade, and I can go places now and say where I’m from, and people have heard of us. It’s a good feeling, and it’s a lot of fun.

MC: Did you have any difficulties connecting with your “target audience” so to speak?

D: Connecting? Not really. Getting out on a weekly basis? Sure. A lot of our original audience was my age or older, and a lot of them are mostly done with club nights. We’ve had some really good young blood, a lot of music snobs, and I like that. I like to be challenged when I DJ; we have one regular who’s constantly bringing me rips of obscure vinyls that she has, and demanding that I play it that night. I love that; it’s great to see people passionate about music, and between her and I we’ve gotten people dancing to things we both never thought we’d ever even hear played at a club. Of course, I still do plenty of research on my own; I’m constantly getting demo CDs and digging through record stores. There’s so much good music out there, you really owe it to yourself to find as much of it as you can. We also have a lot other DJs on staff now; they all have different preferences when it comes to music, and bring in different crowds. Some of their music I like; some I’m not so hot on. However, it is all legitimately underground, and the extra DJs bring in new people who I wouldn’t otherwise be able to reach. Even when I don’t like some of the music that some of the other guys spin, they’re still good guys, and I haven’t met one of their people that I haven’t liked yet.

MC: The popularity of Deathrock seems to have grown enormously over the past few years. To many people, it seems like the Deathrock scene has begun to be diluted sort of like what happened to the Goth scene when it emerged into the mainstream consciousness, with many other elements creeping in. Do you think this is going to continue to the point where, like the Goth scene, in extreme cases it will become almost unrecognizable? Or do you think the creative centers of Deathrock will remain far enough underground to avoid this?

D: It’s funny you should ask that, because it was something I obsessed over for about two years there. I even made a post to a group on myspace that got re-posted a couple times, so who knows how many people have thought the same thing while reading my semi-coherent ramblings. Hopefully, not too many!

I think what did it for me was a Tragic Black CD release party we did at one of the original Heresy nights. I didn’t really know the band, but a couple of our promoters were really hot for them, so we went for it.Needless to say, when DJ Lovecraft and I got the albums in, we were pretty mortified! I’m still not sure what they sounded like before their last album, but that album successfully drained me of any ambition to find out!

In all seriousness though, I think we’re pretty much in the clear for the moment. I think for a while there was this whole formula that emerged, where everybody was really trying to be Andi Sexgang or Rozz Williams, and it was pretty sickening. There were some pretty big offenders that are still big names in the Deathrock scene today. I think we probably saw the whole thing play out for a while longer, and the biggest offenders either broke up or didn’t make it, so we’re at least temporarily alright.

I do fully expect the next attack to be on the fashion front, however. Don’t be surprised if you start seeing the fake Goth magazines starting to push the Deathrock look, right next to interviews with who knows what gawdawful metal bands. This can be a pretty daunting thing to beat because sex sells, and there’s a lot more people interested in sex than there are people interested in Deathrock. Expect them to come in waves. I’m kind of hoping that the giant internet coma the world is in will save us. Putting your hair into a mohawk isn’t nearly as easy as double-clicking and thinking you’re something you’re not. Maybe by the time they manage to penetrate Deathrock, we’ll have moved on to a new name for super cool dark music. We can only hope.

MC: What are some of the events where you have enjoyed DJing the most?

D: Obviously, this past year’s Drop Dead Festival immediately comes to mind - Dan and Polina really know how to throw a party. Drop Dead 3 was probably better location-wise (how can you resist spinning at the former Limelight?), but this past year was just more fun overall. Another cool gig was at QXT’s in New Jersey. You know, coming from New England, I kind of forget that people are actually friendly elsewhere. New England has something of a reputation of being full of frigid pricks (hey, at least I’m not frigid!), and it seems like each scene here takes a certain level of dedication before people will talk to you. In New Jersey, people were just happy to talk to you, without any strings – what a strange and relieving experience that was! I think to some extent, QXT’s made me think more about how people coming to our night for the first time must feel. I try to make sure I say “Hello” to as many people as I can at the club, and ask new-comers if there’s anything they would personally like to hear. Clubs are meant to be fun, and hopefully by letting people know that they all matter, I’m helping prevent people from segregating into snobbish cliques. Hey - I can dream, right?

MC: How do you view today’s Deathrock in relation to the overall Gothic scene?D:

D: I think that Deathrock today is where Goth could have gone, if it had stayed true to its roots. Sure, I love the Sisters as much as any other red-blooded Goth, but the Sisters ad nauseum a la Cleopatra is something I could have done without. And let’s not even get into cyber… that’s a trend that I’m happy to find mostly dead. In all fairness, cyber did have a real massive amount of potential; it’s just that absolutely zero amount of it was ever realized. As far as Deathrock versus Goth today? That’s hard for me to answer, because I don’t acknowledge a lot of the genres currently being pushed as “Goth” as actually being Goth at all. That, combined with things like the Cruxshadows actually hitting the pop charts at a time when pop music is more wretched than ever really re-enforces the idea that it’s nothing I want anything to do with. To be honest, I wouldn’t even know the names of, or songs by, bands that are popularly passed off as “Goth” right now. I couldn’t possibly hope to make an accurate comparison. As far as I’m concerned, Deathrock today is Goth today, and the two have merged quite nicely. I’m sure if the other camps that are claiming to make “Goth” eventually end up creating something worth a damn, it’ll come into my radar. Until then, I’m happy to keep making sure the only new “scene” albums I buy have some sort of attachment to the Deathrock and post-punk scenes.

MC: A lot of DJ’s are very die-hard about vinyl. Do you have a preference in musical mediums, so to speak?

D: If I could get rid of my vinyl today, I totally would. For that matter, I’d ditch my CDs too. The problem is that the technology to spin off of digital in a way that I consider practical, good-sounding, and reliable just doesn’t exist yet. Some of the more savvy out there might point to the demos by Numark and Vestax at this year’s NAMM, but controlling units (of which Numark’s units look very promising) are just part of the puzzle. Sure, you can spin off of a laptop or small rack-mount computer with the right controller and software, but take that computer and literally throw it in your car twice a night, and do that a couple times a week for a couple years. Oh, and did I mention put tens of thousands of dollars worth of music into it beforehand? Yeah, I don’t want to see what happens when that hard drive breaks, either. Eventually we’ll all be spinning off digital when the technology gets there though; that’s inevitable. Even then, I think that DJs (especially subcultural ones) won’t ever give up on records, although they’re going to have to digitize and re-master them themselves (hell, I already do this). There’s too much music you can’t get any other way, and a lot of it is too good to just let die.

MC: Besides what you spin, what are some of your other musical tastes

D: I’m all over the place, really. There’s a Reggae show on the local college station on Saturday morning that I try to catch whenever I can. When I was in college, I ran a coffee house, so every once in a while I’ll put out some of the contemporary folk or blues CDs I got from artists at that time - not without the lady razzing me about my “tampon rock” at least once, usually. I also tend to listen to Tom Waits, They Might Be Giants, and Godspeed You Black Emperor! a lot. Sometimes I’ll even put on a classical station - in fact, the guy who showed me the best classical station in the area had a huge, bright pink Mohawk. I think it’s important to listen to as much music as possible. It allows us to appreciate other forms of art better (minimal synth practically saved me from never appreciating minimalist art), and it opens our ears to some of the nuances in our favorite music that we would’ve otherwise missed. If we’re going to try to be fans of good music, we should explore it in all its possibilities, not just one specific genre or another.

Let’s face it: as much as we want it to be, Deathrock and Goth probably aren’t going to be around forever. Are we going to just stop listening to music when our favorite genres die off? I know I won’t. Ultimately, it’s about good music more than anything else. Of course, Goth and Deathrock have had a lot of it - and some of music’s greatest innovators - for a long time, but we owe it to ourselves to keep an open mind as much as we can.

I really don’t mind if in the future I end up being “that wierdo in black” at a neo-post-psych-whatever-it-is concert; it’s not like I haven’t done that in the past, or don’t do it now.

http://www.myspace.com/gothikduck/