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Interviews  Greg
Segal
by Chris
Barnes
 Greg
Segal is a hyper-talented multi-instrumentalist and songwriter. He's perhaps
best known for his work with Paper Bag, a band focusing on improvisational
music that was part of the SST label heyday and his current project Jugalbandi
with drummer Hyam Sosnow. The music that Segal creates combines the best
aspects of space/Kraut rock, pop, jazz, heavy rock and prog, but is it
distinctly his own style that defies category. If music that challenges
is your bag, Segal is for you. Hellride Music's Chris Barnes catches up
with Greg Segal.
Hellride
Music: Thanks for doing the interview, Greg. I have
to say, you are one interesting dude. Multi-instrumentalist, graphic artist,
both a solo musician and one that works in several groups and project
collaborations. This kind of paints a picture of someone that has a high
need to create. As a child, do you remember when the creative urge hit?
Was there a time when you remember putting a pen to paper or picked up
a guitar, or a pair of drumsticks and said "Hey!! This is for me!!".
Greg
Segal: Yeah, actually there is one moment I can point
to. I was in first grade and it was getting close to Halloween. We were
turned loose on easels with brushes and tempera paints. I told them I
didn't know how to paint a picture and was told, "just make something
up. What would you like to paint a picture of?" I painted a house
with a ghost-child in front of it, very morbid stuff. I fell in love with
the colors and the act of creation. There was this intensely satisfying
feeling of making something from nothing. I never forgot it. That was
my first pure experience of art and I've been a ruined man ever since.
Of course I was lucky in that I had another multi-artist in the family,
my older brother M. He was the drummer in Paper Bag, he's also an artist
and a writer. He was the trailblazer for a lot of what I later got into.
He made sure I got exposed to a lot of amazing stuff at a very early age,
and it never occurred to me that I shouldn't try to pursue any art form
that appealed to me because he never held back either.
Hellride
Music: Can you give us a brief timeline of
the Greg Segal experience? Solo and group projects? Also, what instruments
are you currently competent at?
Greg
Segal: The quick answer to the first question
is, "No". Every timeline I've tried to work up in the past is
one page minimum and that's a skeleton- a lot of shit happened in 20 years.
However, this shit included: Paper Bag (1983-1989), all improv all the
time, 4 albums on SST between '87 and '89: "Ticket To Trauma",
"A Land Without Fences", "Music To Trash", and "Improvised
My Ass"; my solo albums recorded during that period, "Night
Circus" ('84-'85), "A Man Who Was Here" ('85), "Water
From The Moon" ('87); Cold Sky, a band formed to play material from
these albums and my first project with drummer Hyam Sosnow ('88-'89);
Dog Neutral, an instrumental semi-improv band that sounded like a cross
between Cream and Gabriel-era Genesis ('89-'93); "Darkland Express"
('91-'93) and "A Real Human Being" soundtrack ('92), more solo
work; Jugalbandi (the early year! '93); Antiworld, with me on drums (part
one, '95-'96- tape and live video released); Jugalbandi rides again ('99-
present); Antiworld also rides again ('99-'01); "Experimental Guitar",
a tape compilation of previously uncollected solo stuff, ('00); Antiworld
CD, "The Horror of It All" ('00); the Jugalbandi 2000 discs,
"The View Is Better From The Top From the Top Of The Food Chain",
"Yellow Star Mailing List", and "The Cram And Stuff Method";
and last but definitely not least, a long overdue CD sampler of my solo
tapes, "Always Look On The Dark Side Of Life". That's about
as brief as I've ever been able to make it and I left plenty out, those
are the highlights. There's a ton of unreleased recordings from probably
everyone (except Antiworld) and I think that may change eventually.
Back up there somewhere was another question...what instruments am I currently
competent at? Unless we define competent maybe I should take the 5th.
Oh, what the hell. Guitar, drums, vocals, bass. Despite the passable keyboard
work on the recordings I think I suck at it and wouldn't really call myself
competent. I think I'm as good a drummer as I am a guitarist, I'm equally
comfortable with them. Over the years I've screwed around with just about
every instrument you can think of but so far these are the only ones that
have stuck. One of these days I'm going to get a cello and the world will
truly know fear. Or at least my neighbors will.
Hellride
Music: Tell us a little about the improvisational
group "Paper Bag" - you guys had several albums in the 80's
on the SST label. What was that like? Did Greg Ginn (Gone, Black Flag,
SST label head) have any influence on the band's output?
Greg
Segal: Paper Bag improvised according
to a system we developed, it was almost like playing a sport. We had enough
equipment for two bands and we used most of it every time we played. We
had a guitarist (me) and a bass player with huge pedalboards, a drummer
with a giant percussion set-up, and a keyboardist who also lugged around
tape loop machines, cassette decks, a turntable, his own percussion rig,
and any number of other instruments.
Paper Bag was like having sex with a woman with multiple personalities.
One's a nymphomaniac and the best lay you've ever had, one's a prude who'll
slap your hand away or turn stiff when you touch her, another is totally
confused and doesn't know up from down, one giggles uncontrollably, and
another shrieks at the top of her lungs without warning. You never knew
from one moment to the next which you were going to get. Things could
go from amazing to horrible in seconds, and then right back again. It
was very satisfying and very frustrating at the same time. (I've just
read that back and realized that this was true whether I mean playing
or listening to us.) This may sound like a negative assessment, but remember
that nymphomaniac part- when it was good, it blew every shred of doubt
away. We did things that I think were nearly impossible, especially considering
how they were created. At gigs many people did not believe the music was
improvised ("Improvised my ass!" is an audience quote.)
As far as working with SST, it was a mixed blessing. They helped us out
with that first album, after we tried to release it ourselves and got
burned by a thief posing as a record pressing service. He got us and about
40 other acts. All the money was gone and we were lucky to get our master
tapes and half our finished cover art back. We were screwed until SST
stepped in and picked us up. On the one hand they were very good for us
because at the time being signed by them gave us some name-brand respectability,
and also because they put out a lot of product- 4 albums in 2 years. On
the other hand they weren't so good for us. They stopped paying us around
the 1st quarter of the first album. We were owed $2100 and we got $1400
of it, after that we never saw another dime. They refused to help us tour,
even when we lined up an opening act slot for Bill Bruford's Earthworks,
all across Europe. Bruford himself OK'd it, we would have secured a huge
audience and a lot of sales, but I have a suspicion they didn't actually
want that to happen. By the time of the 3rd album they weren't promoting
us or distributing us much in the US, and by the 4th album they weren't
doing anything at all here. But we were pushed over in Europe. My girlfriend
at the time was German and after the 4th album was released she went to
Tubingen for a visit. We hadn't been able to find a copy of the album
anywhere and friends we called across the US couldn't either. Meanwhile
she goes into a shop in Tubingen and there it is. Eventually, long after
Paper Bag broke up, it dawned on me that the way the contracts were written,
we were only supposed to receive the high royalty payments on domestic
sales, and European sales were basically company profits. This meant they
could write us off as a loss here in the states and keep what was coming
in from abroad. The lack of money, the lack of domestic exposure and distribution,
the strain from all that, really helped kill the band.
As far as Ginn's involvement in the band's output, he liked the idea of
a lot of product coming out. But it seems to me all the other decisions
had to be his as well. Musically I thought he was very good, but he was
never an influence on any of us, we were all prog-heads with tastes wide
enough to encompass punk. All of us liked some punk. My taste was for
the British stuff rather than the locals, although ending up on bill with
so many of them did help me appreciate them. Not an influence though.
The band's sound was developed very early on, and redefined within the
first few rehearsals with any new member.
Hellride
Music: Now Antiworld is an interesting
project. You were the drummer for a bit, correct? Tell us a bit about
this.
Greg
Segal: I helped form the band in 1995
with Granny Fiendish and Forty Five Frank. I hadn't been doing anything
for a while and they were looking to start a band, I was introduced to
them at their New Year's party, my roommate knew them. They didn't want
a guitarist, Granny was going to do that and Frank was going to play bass.
So I offered to play drums. I knew that I'd be able to get in some really
aggressive drumming, which I enjoy. Eventually Granny dropped the guitar,
I gave her a few lessons but we were having trouble finding a vocalist
and since she'd done that before she decided to handle that, they figured
correctly that a guitarist would be easier to find. All 3 of us really
liked the idea of a theatrical show- makeup, props. They wanted to do
something based on horror movies and I liked that too, that was probably
the main thing we all had in common, we all loved horror movies. I thought
I'd take a pseudonym, which they liked, I think it was already on their
minds. We just seemed to click right off. The music is old style punk,
sounds like it could have been done in '77. My kind of stuff. I always
enjoyed that aspect of the band. I had a hand in a lot of the arrangements,
wrote lyrics for one song, and tried to come up with really distinctive
drum parts. Frank was the song machine, great bass player, he cranked
out riff after riff. We did well together for about a year and a half.
Eventually though there were just too many differences between us and
after a road trip I was dropped from the band pretty suddenly. I was very
pissed off about it and didn't talk to them for a few years. One day in
'99 Granny called me, strictly to make peace, and she was so genuine about
it that I went for it. I had no intention of working with them again but
a few months later they found themselves in need of a drummer and I decided
to give it a shot. I'm not sorry, we did some great music and put out
a CD I'm very proud of. But by the end of last year there were tensions
building again and I just had too many other things that needed my attention,
so I left. They weren't too happy about it and we have not been in touch
since, but they are completely devoted to what they do and I had no doubt
they'd do just fine. And they are.
Hellride
Music: What brought about the
release of "Always Look At the Dark Side of Life"? This is a
compilation of your solo projects. Give us a run down of the albums that
are in this collection and what they mean to you.
Greg
Segal: "Always" is my calling
card for all those people who never got to hear what I do outside of Paper
Bag, which prior to this was what I was best known for. If you've heard
Paper Bag you know what a difference that is, it's like Ornette Coleman
vs. Steppenwolf. I put it out because I thought it was high time this
stuff had a proper release. It's intended as an overview of my solo work,
a retrospective, and it's gratifying to see that in the reviews so far,
yours included, people get this and accept that it's not supposed to sound
like it was all done at the same time. And you're right, not everyone
will like all the tracks. Good. For the people who understand and accept
variety, they'll get it and possibly enjoy all of it; for the others,
they desperately need their noses shoved in it because they've been spoon
food sameness for too long. Then they learn to like it and won't accept
anything else. Fuck sameness. Sameness is brain-rot.
The albums and what they mean to me...let's see...
Night Circus is, on the surface, a nice little story about evil
spirits bringing about the destruction of civilization. They then keep
the survivors spread out and at a low enough level of subsistence that
they can't fuck up the world any more. Beneath the surface it was inspired
by real events in my life, and inventing a fictional framework for them
was one way to come to grips with them and try to understand them. The
music and lyrics are some of my earliest and in some cases it really shows,
but there's a lot of stuff on here I'm still very proud of.
A Man Who Was Here was modeled after albums I grew up loving, the
kind of stuff that would have been put out between '68 and '72, where
you've got one side of shorter songs, and a side of longer songs. The
music is hard but it has soft spots; it's psychedelic and progressive,
it's pop and it's headbanging noise. In many cases with albums like this,
people use to take their favorite drugs and listen to the trippy parts;
but me, being weird by nature, found the trippy parts fun with and without
the drugs. There is no thematic thread tying the album together other
than that- a certain feel. It was recorded over two days, so right there
in its recording it has a very unified sound and feel. The individual
songs mean different things to me but that would take too long to get
into here. Many of the lyrics were not personal but based on characters,
the songs were from their points of view.
Water From the Moon, on the other hand, is very personal, and was
based mostly on dreams. This was recorded when I was going through a very
rough time internally. There is a unified feel to this album too, and
I think it captures a certain distance, a feeling of sinking beneath the
world while still going around in it. In many ways musically it's a soft
album, but I have also probably never done anything which was so soaked
through with despair and resignation, which bordered so closely on death.
I actually find quiet music does that better most of the time. There's
an intentionally allowed roughness to the recording that helps give it
that "unconscious on the surface" feel. People who demand technical
perfection dislike this but they miss the point, it's like reading Kafka
and expecting Hemmingway. Wrong. The song that got the most airplay, "The
Taker", isn't about me. I had an experience one night which was similar
to what happens when someone with a loud CB radio drives by while you're
watching TV and their voice suddenly comes over, drowning out the audio,
very startling and loud. I had an experience during recording one night
that was the psychic equivalent of that, and instead of trucker Bill passing
through I got somebody more like Richard Ramirez. Seriously scary shit.
Thankfully nothing like it has ever recurred. I wrote the song inspired
by that, by that type of person and their outlook on the world.
Darkland Express is a continuation of Water From The Moon
in the sense that a lot of the themes are the same, and were based on
dreams that could be grouped together as all feeling and looking like
they took place somewhere real- even if it was someplace I'd never been.
Take the town you live in and then imagine that somebody was seeing through
your eyes when they dreamed. They've never been to your town but every
time they tune into you, they see a little bit more of it. They're going
to know they keep returning to basically the same area. It's kind of like
that. As for the underlying themes, it's mostly about the pressures of
modern life and how people deal with it- adapting or being destroyed,
the things they do about it and where that takes them. Musically this
is probably the most diverse album; it's also probably the best, at least
that's my opinion. The cuts on "Always" don't come close to
showing the scope of the album. It's a worm's eye view. I ended up choosing
tracks that I thought would have the most immediate impact. The material's
a mix of songs written for the sessions and older but previously unrecorded
material, in fact "What Gives You The Right", the last song
on the compilation, is actually the first complete song I wrote back around
January of '80. And that came to me in dream, note for note, lyrics and
all.
Experimental Guitar was actually released last, but the material
was mostly from '86, pre- Water From the Moon. These are abstract
pieces with the guitar and they are an example of a kind of thing I've
been doing for years. I've had people tell me it sounds more like keyboards
than guitar. I'm a big fan of abstract music like early Tangerine Dream
(before they went New Age, when they still knew how to disturb people)
and I thought there was no reason I couldn't do things like that with
a guitar.
Hellride
Music : Are you more comfortable as
a solo artist or in a group setting?
Greg
Segal: I guess it depends on the
situation. Certainly I enjoy having creative control because it means
less bickering. Recording by myself allows me to appreciate and participate
in the music in every way- this is one of the things that drew me into
being a multi-instrumentalist, I like listening to something and being
the drums or the bass or the guitar or whatever. Having been in Paper
Bag I developed excellent group skills because 3 out of 4 pieces in the
set you were taking direction from someone and trying to help them realize
their idea- it was like we were all each other's studio musicians. I think
I prefer being a solo artist because I always seem to be drawn back to
it. I do enjoy collaboration, but it seems I like it best in the short
term, more project-oriented. If I could find a band that covered all the
bases I might be less tempted to stray, but that hasn't happened yet and
I don't imagine it will. My future is probably as a solo artist. Jugalbandi's
a different story because it's like breathing, all I have to do is show
up and play. So like Jello, there's always room for Jugalbandi. Speaking
of which....
Hellride
Music: One of your current projects is Jugalbandi with percussionist
Hyam Sosnow. One of the most interesting aspects of this collaboration
with Hyam is that you both sat in a studio four days in a row with four
microphones and recorded everything live to DAT. What was the vibe in
the studio like those four days? What makes Hyam the choice as a collaborative
partner in musical improvisation?
Greg
Segal: The vibe was both charged and laid back at the
same time, because we're so used to each other. Hyam and I worked together
in Cold Sky, Dog Neutral, and the early Jugalbandi days. We'd probably
played hundreds of hours together, if not thousands, by the time we recorded
these discs. And the majority of that time was spent improvising. The
very first time we got together back in '88 we clicked, I've listened
to the tape and it's not too much different from Jugalbandi. It was just
the two of us and it completely kicked ass. But back to J2K...both of
us were really excited to be doing this and we got very focused immediately.
We know when we work that we're not just jamming, this is spontaneous
composition, you have to listen and react sharply because there's no fixing
it in the mix. The tape's rolling, this is it, go. I think many musicians
placed in that situation would run screaming from the room but for us
it was a very, very good time.
Aside from the obvious fact that Hyam and I have so much history together,
what makes him the choice is that he's an amazing drummer, a first-rate
improvisor, and we think very much alike. We approach the music with an
equal level of seriousness. We appreciate similar music, which comes in
handy- if I throw something at him that sounds like we just went from
cool jazz to the Yardbirds having a rave-up, he's right there. We can
follow each other through the weirdest turns and scarcely think about
it. And he has a good head for arrangement. If you doubt the power of
drums to completely steer the course of a piece, listen to "The View
Is Better". There's a section in it where I've put down something
very spacy. First the music gets quiet, then the tension builds a little,
then there's this sudden killer fill and the whole things take off. The
secret is, I didn't do anything. I was just standing there making the
same sounds. All the changes came from him, and when he kicks it up a
notch all I do is push the volume pedal down a little bit; but it sounds
like the whole piece has changed direction. And it has. But he was the
one that made it happen. The discs are full of things like that, Hyam
is fully as active as me in creating the music. People are very use to
thinking of drums as passive or just keeping the beat. Nope. But it takes
someone with a lot of talent and a head for arrangement to be creative
like that when the situation calls for it. With the wrong drummer this
absolutely would not work. Luckily I'm working with the right one.
Hellride
Music: Three albums came out
of this, correct? As you look back, was there a day or time or even piece
that you felt you and Hyam really clicked on? Also, could you give us
a brief rundown on how you classify each piece on the album? I found that
extremely fascinating.
Greg
Segal: Yep, 3 albums. There was
more material but only about a half a disc of good stuff, and we didn't
feel like going up to a 4th CD just for that. I don't know if there was
a day we specifically clicked on. I do know that the 4th day seemed to
be the weakest but we still got "La Bionda", "Dreaming
In The 9th", and "Previously Disenchanted" out of it. Things
went well immediately, the first thing we played for the sessions was
"Yellow Star Mailing List". I don't know if there's anything
in particular we clicked on, although I think the interplay on the track
"The View Is Better" etc. is really something. There are little
rough spots in just about every piece, but the majority of each is something
we felt was first rate or we wouldn't have put it out.
As far as the classification, here's the story. When we were putting together
the covers and liner notes, over and over again it kept coming up, how
much of this is improvised? And everyone I told about what we were doing
or played a preview for asked, at some point, "is this improvised?
How about this part?". And it occurred to me that there really ought
to be some kind of simple way to get that information across to people.
So I drafted up a rough version of the Improvisation Level Classification
System (ILCS for short), dividing up the points where I thought you could
draw a distinction and giving each a number, from one to 5. I then passed
it on to Hyam to get his input. We hashed it out for weeks until we arrived
at its present form. We then gave each piece its classification number,
based on what we remembered about the sessions. IL1 is a totally improvised
piece, no discussion or forethought, we just started playing and that's
what came out. IL2 is a short step up from that, where we either started
off with something like a title to improvise an impression from ("Moving
Towards Kyoto") or one of us started off with a definite idea that
the other hadn't heard. I suppose we could have split these two but we
thought going above 5 levels would get messy. IL3 pieces are based around
newly composed riff or chord structures. These are still barely formed
and more importantly the arrangements for them are completely improvised.
Continued playing of these, or following a recorded version, bumps us
up to IL4. These are composed pieces with improvised sections or solos
clearly marked off, you know exactly where things are gonna get weird
and you know how you will eventually come out, these things are all rehearsed
and planned. The weird stuff can go on for the majority of the piece but
if the framework is established it's IL4. IL5 is a fully composed piece,
something you'll probably never hear Jugalbandi do, but in order to make
the scale complete and useful for musicians in general (which was the
intention), it had to be included. One of the thing I'm most happy with
about these sessions is that some of the very best pieces are IL1s- absolutely
pure improv and they sound very composed. I like noise as much as the
next guy- what am I saying, I like it a lot more- but I believe there's
nothing wrong with music many people can relate to and enjoy. I love melody
and I love good structure and arrangement, and the idea of improvising
a really daring but solid form is a very exciting challenge for me. To
me, even good free-form music has this. Pure chaos gets boring really
fast and the best abstract pieces in any art form still have something
to pull you in- a mood or design that suggests something, or enough differentiation
of form that your mind can somehow participate, add its own information.
Hellride
Music: What's next for you?
Greg
Segal: Next up is the remastering
and release on CD of "Experimental Guitar". I'm aiming at having
it out early next year. It'll be minus a few tracks, the tape was a 90
and so at least 10 minutes of it has to go. Luckily there's stuff on there
from other albums that can be cut no problem, including "Introduction"
which was just remastered and put out with the "Always" compilation.
I'm doing this one next because to my surprise I found that there were
a lot of radio stations and web sites covering this kind of harsh abstract
music, in other words there's a market for it. I'm also doing it because
it represents a pretty different aspect of what I do from my standard
songwriting or with Jugalbandi. And right now getting people to understand
my range as an artist is really important to me. It also maximizes the
amount of exposure I can get. Something I think about often is the fact
that at one point Ray Charles had hit songs in the rock, country and jazz
charts, all at once. I've always thought that was cool and good thinking
too. Most importantly, he wasn't selling out; he was making music he enjoyed
and marketing it appropriately afterwards. Smart guy.
I am also working on a duets project with experimental musician Bret Hart.
He's released a whole series of these CDs, duets with other underground
musicians. Very off the wall stuff and I'm looking forward to it, it should
be fun. That may get released before "Experimental", we'll see.
I would really like to record an album of new songs soon, I think that's
important. Hyam and I need to get the masters together for "Jugalbandi
Classic" and "Jugalbandi: 1999!". No current plans to record
for us but he's putting together a home studio now which should be ready
sometime next year, we hope.
In the long term I am looking at remastering all the solo albums for CD,
putting out some compilations of previously uncollected solo pieces, and
getting discs out for Cold Sky and Dog Neutral- there's no lack of recordings,
given a budget I could easily assemble a large catalog. There's been some
talk of reissuing the Paper Bag stuff ourselves but at the moment that
isn't going anywhere and I don't know when it will, everyone is really
busy with their own projects and of course there's the little problem
of money. We'll see.
Hellride
Music: Thanks for the interview
Greg. Any last words to the readers? How can they get in touch with you?
Greg
Segal: You're very welcome. Anyone
who's interested in learning more about me or these other bands should
check out the following web sites: www.gregsegal.com,
www.jugalbandi-music.com,
and www.paperbagtheory.com
I can be reached by e-mail at: gregsegal@gregsegal.com
or through the mail at:
Greg Segal
PO Box 82525
Portland, OR 97282-0525
USA
Purchase
Greg Segal's Always Look On the Dark Side of Life (Selected Recordings
1984-1993) at the Hellride
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of Greg Segal's Always Look On the Dark Side of Life (Selected Recordings
1984-1993)
Copyright 2002 HellrideMusic.com
Interview by Chris
Barnes
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