Exene Cervenka

Yes, it’s a Sinners show. Before that I’ll be doing my taxes.

At 1 o’clock I have a dental appointment.

Nothing.

There are some songs that have that.

It’s an opportunity to play with my husband, Jason. I really like playing with him. We can write songs together and tour and whatnot. Then I found a really great band, called The 7 Shot Screamers, out of St. Louis that can play my songs the way I want them played. So we kind of married them. It’s just fun and it’s different from X or The Knitters. It’s harder because it doesn’t have the recognition that X has, but it’s still really fun.

Yeah, people just love X so much that it has to be really separate from that, you can’t compare it. It’s just a totally different world. I need a lot of stuff to do.

Because life is short.

I don’t find anything about it real difficult. We played our first show on this tour last night and it went fine. So I don’t know about people coming or not coming. I don’t know what to expect from this tour. We’re doing the whole country so anything can happen. I love going on the road.

It’s great.

Sometimes. Most of the songs on these two Original Sinners records I wrote myself. But I work with John still. We’re working on an X record right now, so we’ll see if that works out. We haven’t sat down with the bass yet and really worked on vocals or anything. I’m really excited that there’s a possibility that we’ll be making an X record this year.

No. That was just something I said. You reach a point in your life where you’re the front person and you have this rockabilly band playing behind you. It’s just fun. I didn’t mean it like I was comparing myself to Chuck Berry musically or anything. I just meant that you reach a point.

Not really. I’m from St. Louis so I just happened to see them. Do you go to a lot of shows?

Who have you seen that you really liked that’s kind of newish?

What about that band Arctic Monkeys that everybody’s talking about?

Yeah. We get a lot of records from people.

We listen to them. I like stuff that’s really original. I don’t like anything where you can go, “Oh, that band’s from Orange County. Or that band obviously listened to this.” I’m not a big fan of the revival of 60’s garage rock. I think it’s good but I still have stuff that I have in my record collection from the 60’s. I want to see something totally unpredictable.

Never.

Yeah, that’s part of the fun of touring because The 7 Shot Screamers are opening for me. They’re more rockabilly and they have an upright bass and stuff. When they switch over to our stuff, it’s like a completely different style. I really love that band so I’m not going to get tired of seeing them every night. Then there’s usually a local band so at least you get to see some of the scene. People do give you their records and that’s really nice too because sometimes there are some really good records.

No, not since The Blasters.

1980 but I really did fall in love with The Blasters. Literally. It takes an awful lot to fall in love with a band and that only happens like a few times in your life. I think Dexter Romweber is also someone that I just love and I would love to see him play live. He’s been around a long time with the Flat Duo Jets and all that, but I don’t care. I still love him.

X plays a lot of shows every year. The Knitters just put out a record last year and toured a lot. I’ll probably do some touring over the summer with The Knitters and X.

Yeah, it’s funny. When I was a kid, I couldn’t understand why older people couldn’t act their age. I was 15 and these 40 year old men would hit on me. I’d be like, “God. Yuck. How can you be that way? How can they be like that at that age?” When you’re 40, you don’t know you’re 40. You don’t feel like you’re 40. When you’re 50 you don’t feel like you’re 50. When you’re 70, you probably don’t feel like you’re 70 because you still like the same stuff, you still appreciate the same things in life and you still try to do the same things but not hit on young girls. Why wouldn’t I want to play music until I was 80? People do it because it’s something they love and you don’t want to stop doing it for any reason. So you feel like you’re really lucky when you’re in your 40’s and 50’s and you can still keep going. I think the age thing in rock and roll doesn’t really matter any more. I think U2 and the Rolling Stones and all those bands have kind of proven that. People just love what they love and they don’t care. I consider myself really lucky to still be alive and still playing music.

I’m the same person. I wear the same things. I sing the same songs. I act the same. I’m the same. I haven’t changed. It wasn’t a false persona. That was me then, that’s me now too.

Me and Jason produced both records. What I really like is when the band is really tight and you get together and you play the songs and you work for about three days and get all the songs done and then they leave. They trust you because you can’t have five people asking you to change the way things sound. They have to trust that someone else is going to make it sound the way it’s supposed to sound.

I have been asked a few times in the past but I’m not really interested in doing that. It’s not my thing.

They listened and watched more than they would in an X show because they want to hear what the songs are. So it’s not as pandemonium as X. But people bop around. It’s different everywhere. I like all ages shows the best because I like it when kids come.

Some of them are, some of them aren’t. I like when they are because there’s a lot of young kids that are just finding out about X and want to come see us in whatever form.

Sure. I’ve done everything I wanted to do in life. You go through life and you accept challenges and you rise to the occasion or you don’t and then you pick up and move on. I’d like to make another X record, but other than that I can’t think of anything that I don’t have that I want.

Well you can write a song when you’re having the worst day of your life and it’s really depressing and make this really depressing song. Then the next day just bounce back and be fine for six months. I usually write when I’m sad or mad. That’s X songs. We wrote a lot of stuff when bad things happened. It doesn’t mean you were desperate or that you that’s all you could think about every minute of every day. It just means that you looked around at everybody and went, “Wow. Life is hard. I’m going to get kicked out of my apartment if I don’t come up with the rent” and wrote a song. Those songs aren’t something you live every day. They’re moments that you get inspired by and then they become songs. But happy or sad doesn’t last. You’re always up and down.

No, we’re not going to try to recreate the past, but musically I want it to sound like the first four records. Lyrically, it’s taken all different forms so we’ll see what happens when we get more into it.

Yeah, he plays. He does a lot of different things. He’s 18 and he’s about to graduate from high school and go off to college. He’s got a million things going on. I’m very proud of him. He’s a great student. That’s another thing that worked out. I have things that don’t work out sometimes, but most of the time I push things through.

Little things. Having more money would be nice.

What I’d really like is a gold record for Los Angeles. We don’t have a platinum record for Wild Gift. We don’t have any of that. I know we’ve sold at least 450,000 copies of those records because people have told me a million times that they wore out their copy. I don’t understand where that fucking gold record is because I want one. I can’t believe Los Angeles isn’t a gold record. It’s been around forever. I think I’d be happy with that.

Yeah. I feel differently about it. I’d go. I think it’s an American thing. Being in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is being like The Ramones or Chuck Berry. I love all those people so I would want to be with them.

Yeah, after we’re dead. Why do they wait until everyone dies before they do that? Why don’t they pick people that are still alive sometimes? I know they do, but it’s not fair.

Yeah.

Yeah. I did a bunch of art shows in the last eight months and I’m still doing that. I have a gallery in New York that shows my stuff. It’s really fun. I really love it. Making collages is just like gambling because when you’re gambling all you’re thinking about is the next card or the next roll of the dice. You can’t think about your taxes. You can’t think about your cat. You can’t think about anything else except if those things are going to line up. It’s a wonderful mental break from reality. It’s the same thing with making collages because all you’ve got is millions of little things that you’ve collected and all you’re thinking about is what to glue to the next piece. It’s this wonderful respite from reality. All that matters is this thing you’re focused on and making this beautiful piece of art. Generally it works out. Sometimes you make stuff and you go, “Well, that’s not so great.” But I’m really addicted to it because it frees my mind from other things.

It used to be stuff I found on the street but America’s garbage has changed in the last 30 years. Now all you find is McDonald’s wrappers. The stuff is all the same. I remember going to Philadelphia or Chicago or someplace like that and finding these weird gypsy fortune teller fliers and stuff from the 70’s that now looks so cool. Now it’s more like building things out of what I already have. It’s hard to find stuff that’s distinctively weird. Also things that are really mundane, can take on this other aspect when it’s juxtaposed to something weird. Collages are neat because all the elements can be meaningless, but once they’re put together, then they can constitute something else.

I’ve been collecting things and waiting. I started about five years ago, but last year I finally sat down and put everything together, which is really fun. I knew I would do it someday but I just never got around to it.

It’s at DCKT Contemporary. I also had a show at this international art thing that they do every year in New York. After that I don’t really have anything up anywhere else, but we’ll see what happens.

Yeah. I ran over in the street. It says something but I’m not sure what. You should try it. It’s really fun. Go to some thrift stores and find some weird stuff and start gluing it together. You’ll see what I’m talking about.

No, I didn’t. Did you?

We did a little CD where I read some of the stuff from it, but it was inconsequential really.

No. He had a retail store that I was kind of part of but it was more in name than anything else.

No, I don’t want to do that. I think that that sounds really horrible actually.

Yes.

Yeah, I think it’s destroyed any chance women have to build on the Feminist gains of the 60’s and 70’s. I think it’s really sad that women have decided that they’ve given into the whole sex object thing and have decided that that’s the highest level they can reach in life is to be in a porno film. I’m not a Feminist per se because I think it has bad connotations and I don’t believe in segregation. I think I’ve been an example of not having to do that and I’m proud of that. But on the other hand, perhaps that’s all women are. Maybe they’re just sex objects. Maybe that is the highest level they can reach in our society. As far as popular culture goes, maybe Paris Hilton is the most important thing to aspire to and maybe having a porno film of yourself and your boyfriend on the Internet is your goal in life and that’s a total accomplishment for you. Maybe men are just voyeuristic adolescent idiots. Maybe that’s who we really are. So if that’s the case, then fine. I’m not participating in it, nor would I if I was young, but it’s not my problem. My problem is making art.

No, I know that billions of people tune into that stuff. I’m the oddball. I’m the one that’s not in the mix. I don’t care if other people get naked. I’m just not going to.

I’m not against it, if that’s what people want to do. I don’t care what other people do. I’m just saying like in terms of the popular culture and me as Exene, I’d rather see women in bands writing really good songs and playing music and writing books and making art and being these really interesting creatures who do all of this wonderful stuff rather than being famous for taking off their clothes. It’s a little too easy to do that. It’s hard to make it in the world. I think people have a lot of fun with pornography, I just don’t.

I do feel that. I also feel that since it’s been projected onto me by so many women over the years, I decided to go ahead and adopt that role. It wasn’t something I set out to be. You hear about this with sports figures all the time. When they get in trouble, they say, “I never wanted to be a role model for your kids. Don’t put that on me.” Or you take the responsibility and go, “Jesus. I’m a fucking role model for these kids.” It does give you some thought about what you do. People expect a certain level of integrity or something. It’s kind of who I am anyway. But when you know that people expect that from you and they’re very young, you figure, “Well, someone’s got to be there for those kids.” You don’t all want to be porn stars.

Yeah, I’ve seen him live too.

He didn’t get the irony. Right.

It was a long time ago. Punk was founded on this whole different cultural model than what we have today. It was against the excesses of rock stars and it was against the wealthy and had all these ideals about anyone who could get on stage and play an instrument. There was no sexism and there was no racism. That was the model. When the Go-Go's went on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing just towels, I think that model got skewed. I’m from a different time. I’m a time traveler and I come from a time when abortion was illegal. When the civil rights happened, I was around. When rock and roll started, I was around. I respect all those people that broke through some of those sexist and racist barriers because it was really hard to do and a lot of people died doing it. So I still have that model and the punk rock model that I live by and self-respect to me is really important and respect for other people is really important. Not objectifying people is really important and not degrading people is really important because it makes for a better culture and a better society.

by Daniel Robert Epstein

SG Username: AndersWolleck