The Blag Man Comes Clean

At a time when punk rock was real (the early 1980s), in a place where punk might have been the only thing that signaled real rebellion and — more importantly — real fun (a garage somewhere in Illinois), a guy named Blag Dahlia discovered this music and started a band called The Dwarves.

Often lumped in with the media-hyped grunge movement despite the fact that they’d been around much earlier, The Dwarves were far uglier than any of the faces appearing on MTV at the time, and they still are. Throughout a career that spans two decades, the band has released a slew of full-length albums with titles like Free Cocaine, Thank Heaven for Little Girls, Young and Good looking, and Blood, Guts and Pussy (the cover of which got the album banned from most large retail chains), each as racy as the previous, and each pushing the music in a new direction. In fact, the Dwarves latest release, The Dwarves Come Clean, is a boundary-busting offering that features new Dwarves songwriting ideas, techno beats, guest producers and guest musicians like Swingin’ Utters, Queens of the Stone Age and Sacred Hoop’s DJ Marz and rapper, Luke Sick. ("Luke’s my buddy, man, he’s a good guy. Yeah, and he’s a dirty fucker.")

The latest album has brought the band under some fire by punk purists, but Blag and his compatriots — HeWhoCanNotBeNamed, Vadge Amoral, Wholley Smokkes, Mr. Everything, Trevor Whatever and Spike — don’t really give a fuck, and continue to make music their way. The group’s well-know propensity for furious and short (like, five minutes) live shows has earned the members a questionable reputation among concert promoters and a concrete love from hard core fans. What’s more, Blag’s tendency to get naked on stage is just as famous, though he says that he’s a bit too out of shape to be baring it all these days.

We caught up with the Blag Man at his house in San Francisco. As he was preparing to go on tour, he spoke candidly about the state of punk rock, why he likes hip-hop much better, and what makes techno music more punk than punk rock.

Well, it used to be fun, believe it or not, before it was a repository for T-shirts and stuff. There were some fun shows, and people went off, and I just had a great time with it. I always liked the music and I still do, I just wish some folks would try to be a little more interesting with their approach, but I guess that’s, you know…

Well, it’s a genre. It used to be that anybody who had a band that was doing anything that wasn’t really mainstream, was doing punk rock. But now it’s a "genre" of music, so it’s really easy to figure out what you’re supposed to do and then go do it. You can say, oh, ‘here’s my punk band.’ There’s a little cardboard cutout and you just act on that.

Yeah totally, and restricts other people who are trying to break out of them.

Yeah, man, I mean, I still like everything that was on Blood Guts & Pussy, but I just didn’t want to do Blood & Guts parts two and three.

I think so. I think we’re trying to drag it, kicking and screaming, into the future. I don’t know how much support we’re getting for it, and I don’t know how many other bands feel the same way. I think a lot of people are on the gravy train, so why get off, you know? They can just make the same record over and over, but I get bored and I can’t do it like that.

Hey, man, techno beats are more punk rock when you figure it, because the guy who’s got nothing, no instruments sitting at his house, still has access to records and shit and he can still make a techno beat. Whereas if you want to be a rock band, you’ve got to have a space and a drum kit and place to set up all your shit. In my mind, that techno shit is more on the wave of where things are going, for better or worse. I mean, you can’t beat a great drummer, but then again, I’d rather hear a good-sounding drum machine than a shitty drummer, you know?

Yeah, because when I hear somebody who’s good, I want to try to get them involved with my thing and see if we can make it better and make it more interesting, and things like that are how you keep it fun. And, there’re people who know shit that I don’t know — Luke’s a rapper, I’m not a rapper, so I got him on my record. Some guys are great producers and some guys are great songwriters, and you just to get them all in there to do what they do.

Yup, a lot of insanity.

No, absolutely not because it gets in the way of people buying your T-shirt. You wouldn’t want to do anything that gets in the way.

Yup. [laughing] Yeah, they’re all-ages shows so I guess I can’t be naked. I don’t really mind though, I think I need to do some sit-ups before can be naked on stage again.

I love looking out and seeing a bunch of teenage girls with braces on, that’s my thrill. We have a great time on the road. You know. Sometimes it gets a little heavy on the partying scene, but we just gotta scale it back.

No, man. I don’t give a fuck about punk bands at all. I only listen to hip-hop records. That’s what helps me produce punk records and make ‘em sound good. If I sat around listening to punk records, then I would make more punk records that sounded just like the ones that I listened to.

There’s some cool stuff coming out on that label Rawkus. I like Kool Keith records, some turntable records. I’m not an expert though, and I don’t pay a lot of attention to it all or buy all the new records. It’s just if a good hip-hop record crosses my path, I’ll go pick it up.

I think the lyrics are a lot more interesting most of the time. I think the tracks are a lot more listenable; you can move your body to it. Sure, there’s plenty of mediocre hip-hop too, tons of it, but overall, I get more ideas listening to it, I hear more interesting things, I hear more weird sounds and more weird instrumentation. I pretty much know what a guitar, drums and a bass are going to do, so it’s not all that fascinating to hear it anymore. I try and see what happens if you take the base of guitar, bass and drums and try to throw some curve balls into it to make something happen.

Yeah, it isn’t a form of heavy metal because it comes from punk rock, and it isn’t a form of hip-hop because the beat is way different. It’s what happened when I took the elements I liked from those things and really tried to make something new. I think we succeeded in that with this record.

That’s this book that I wrote, and it was illustrated by this friend of mine, Mark Rude; kinda’ like a detective novel. But you know, it’s some pretty fuckin’ esoteric, weird stuff, not exactly totally readable. It’s a not-terribly-readable novel about interstellar detectives and a bunch of crazy shit like that. I’ve been writing lots of short stories now, and I think I’m going to do a book of short stories within the next year or so.

I started writing around the same time I started the band. I mean, I was in high school, I must have been 15 or 16. I’ve been doing it a long time, and I’ve always enjoyed writing and reading. I think it’s similar to listening to music.

Well, you know, I like producing records a lot. That’s a fun thing for me, to try and get on somebody’s record for a couple of weeks and try to make it good. I’ve been doing punk bands for Epitaph, trying to stay busy with that. But mainly it’s going to be touring. Now that this album’s out I’m going to have to go hit the road for the better part of a year. I haven’t even started yet, and I’m ready for a rest.

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