I’ve been doing this blog for a little over a year and a half now, and it recently dawned on my dumb ass just how many people I have interviewed in that time. At the current count, the number is 42. Sort of shocking. It’s a combination of old friends, new heads, and strangers I reached out to because I thought we could have an interesting conversation about music. That final bracket has been the most tricky: try to explain to an artist or publicist that you run a generically-branded Substack called “John’s Music Blog,” and see if you get an email back. Thank you to everyone who emailed me back. I almost never “spotlight the archive,” so I guess that is what we are doing today. Below is John’s Guide to John’s Interviews for John’s Music Blog.
SPORTS ROCK
One of the major goals of this blog is to look at the “chaotic contemporary music landscape” from a variety of vantage points. That has meant talking with hardcore rave producers—more on that later—but also someone like DJ Shawna, the in-house DJ for the Milwaukee Bucks. She explained to me the ins and outs of an undersung craft: that of the sports DJ. (On a similar tip, I spoke to Benny Drawbars, the organist for the NHL’s Seattle Kraken.) Keeping things in the arena, I interviewed Kid Cut Up about his run touring around the world as the opening DJ for P!nk.
RAVE ON
Over the past few years, New York’s frenzied neo-rave community has been one of the more inspiring things happening in the city. Though I am too washed to go out every weekend, I’ve enjoyed the output of the scene’s major movers, and I’ve gotten to chat with some of them: Kilbourne, Lexxy Jax, XXHARDBIT3S, and Helltekk. The latter throws renegade parties in the woods in far-flung parts of the city. Outside of New York, I talked with the breakcore legend Doormouse, whom I have known since I was just a tween shopping for indie rap 12 inches at his old Milwaukee record store. (Don’t sleep on my interview with the brains behind Mixtape Magic, one of the best archival rave mixtape accounts on YouTube.)
Not unlike Doormouse, a good portion of the electronic music people I’ve interviewed have had careers that have crossed over with punk or DIY. Miley Serious told me about her youth booking hardcore shows in the south of France. I Zoomed with Container about his roots in the Providence freakout scene and the weirdness that comes along with being a noise dude playing at Berghain. Machine Girl’s brand of aggressive electronic music has led them to tour with 100 Gecs and play hardcore festivals in England—both of which we touched upon. Blu Anxxiety does freestyle music at punk shows. Deathbysheep is a label born out of DIY but is now focused on wild rave music.
RAP CITY
Milwaukee rap has been in an inspiring place over the past few years, and I’ve been lucky to speak to some of the people driving that scene forward: Certified Tapper, AyooLii, and the collective Run Along Forever. I also had a conversation with the Atlanta producer FearDorian, who has been working with a lot of these Milwaukee heads. It’s hard to understate how exciting it has been to watch the city create a signature sound and attitude. Certified Trapper showing me one of his Logic sessions was one major blog highlight. Other rap talks: the influential cloud rap producer Chlorine Mist; Larry Madrigal, who made an entire documentary about hyphy music. To all the rappers and producers I have tried to reach out to for interviews—I’ll give it another go in the fall.
ROCK ON
We love guitars over at John’s Music Blog—I have to say we do—and we’ve chopped it up with more than a few real rockers. There’s Nebraska’s David Nance, who has a new record out on Third Man and told me a story about playing a minor league baseball stadium with Jack White. There’s Wisconsin hero Graham Hunt, who makes music that sounds like Odelay, as sung by Paul Westerberg. There’s Voyeur, a proper New York City rock and roll band with attitude and songs. I went deep with Stephen Pope of Wavves and Jay Reatard about 2000s garage rock. I talked to Judy And The Jerks about the punk scene in Hattiesburg, Mississippi. Mary Jane Dunphe currently makes electronic-driven music, but we got into her time fronting the vicious punk band Vexx.
On a more mellow note, I interviewed F.G.S., which is the singular new Americana project from Flannery Silva, formerly of Odwalla88/1221. I linked with Dusty & Stones, a country duo from Eswatini, Africa, who are the subject of a recent documentary. JER explained to me the state of ska in America. Paper Rad house band Extreme Animals and I mulled over all things rainbow rock. Macula Dog aren’t a rock band, but they are the closest thing we have to a contemporary take on Devo—without any of the egg-punk trappings. Ghösh and Tricky Youth push juggalo aesthetics into a DIY container. Hot Leather is synth punk for Myspace lovers. Marcia Bassett talked with me about three decades in American underground music.
NO RULES
What else? I chopped it up with the rapper Fat Tony about supporting Wheatus right as “Teenage Dirtbag” was blowing up on TikTok. Speaking of the app, I did quite possibly the first interview with Liz Stippell, a Zoomer currently slogging through Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Albums and documenting it on TikTok. My chat with Dances wasn’t about music at all. It was about beverages, and in particular a certain kind of expensive, sophisticated non-alcoholic drink he refers to as a “Silly Sip.” DJ Detweiler is the genius producer behind those legendary “flute drop” memes. Roctakon gave us all some insight into what it was like to be a bottle-service DJ in the 2000s. The first interview on John’s Music Blog was with neo-electroclash flashpoint The Dare. Just last week, I talked to the DIY incubator Temporary State University.
In my time stumbling through music and culture, I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of scenes exist on a somewhat horizontal plane. My taste is eclectic, but there’s plenty of parameters; within those, I’m trying to talk to heads that I think are doing something exciting. My own music didn’t make a lot of sense to a lot of people. In programming this blog, I might be falling into similar conceptual traps. Hopefully, though, the form is more generous to some of my more convoluted ideas, but that’s not for me to decide—dig into the archives.