The Make Up
INK BLOT TEST
http://www.angelfire.com/punk2/walktheplank/makeup.html

PSC: What does this inkblot remind you of?

Michelle Mae: It looks just like if I'm looking down upon one of...you know those cow skulls? A cow skull. I know that's probably the most obvious answer! But, then again... it has these big fleshy elephant ears.

Michelle: Alright, this one looks like two women in turbans dancing a weird dance. See? Like, here's the turban, and there's her face and her arm. And there's her knee, bent like that...

Ian Svenonius: I hate psychology. I can't answer that.

Actually it looks like that horrible artist -Georgia O'Keefe.

PSC: I thought it kind of looked like the emblem of the S.L.A. You know, that cobra with the seven heads?

Ian: Actually, it looks kind of like a menorah.

PSC: The underground music scene is sort of notoriously stand-offish. And the Make Up are a lot more touchy-feelie and in-your-face. Do you feel like you're succeeding in breaking down some of the barriers between the audience and the performers?

Michelle: I really hope so! I really hope we're breaking down some of those barriers -because that's what we're trying to do. I'm so sick of the underground scene...I mean, really, it makes me sick.

For one thing, its disappearing. Its disintegrating. Because everybody's going looking for the Big Gold Coin (or whatever). And secondly...the punk rock scene -the underground scene- used to be really more congregational and really more of a meshing of the band and the audience in years past. I don't know if its 'hardcore' or what it was, but something really built up this physical barrier -like you said. And we really are trying to disintegrate that.

That's why our whole gospel idea is that...one of the aspects that we try to take from gospel is that you've got to include the audience as sort of a fifth member of the ensemble during our show. [To] sort of involve them.

PSC: Do you get mad when people try to dismiss what you're doing as 'being ironic' or people who say that its all just tongue-in-cheek?

Michelle: Not to sound elitist -like, I want to be this elitist sort of thing- but its obviously NOT for everybody. People who make those kinds of comments obviously don't get it, or don't feel included -or don't wish to participate.

I mean, its obviously...to ME its obvious that its NOT tongue-in-cheek. Its not campy and ironic or all those things that people accuse it of. I mean, it feels real to me. It feels very spiritual to me. And I don't think that the people who are having those kinds of thoughts...they don't get it. They don't need to get it.

PSC: Isn't Yeh-Yeh a kind of French music...?

Michelle: Yeh-Yeh is this 60's French pop music. And we kind of blended that with the aspects of gospel, which are: the oration; and the congregational thing; the audience participation thing; and the raw kind of dirty sound... Shitty amps and all that.

PSC: What were some of the bands that you looked to for inspiration in creating that sound?

Michelle: Well, in terms of Yeh-Yeh music... [garbled] and Franz Gaul are two really big ones. Also [garbled]. All of those.

Our inspirations musically are vast -obviously- but in terms of gospel its just like... we -me and Ian- both grew up with a million different... like, going to churches and experiencing that. Ian grew up near a gospel church. You know, things like that... T.V., living in D.C.-being around it all the time.

But there's nothing really particular, like a band that I could name.

PSC: What is the role of fashion within the band? Every time you play, you all wear matching suits...

Michelle: Well, the suits -in terms of our stage uniforms- are, um...

This represents the unification. Destroying individualism. Instead of there being this person (or) this member, and them having their separate personalities, or having them as separate entities. We're trying to create a unification. A one-ness. That's basically what it is: they're uniforms.

PSC: As far the political message of your lyrics...maybe this is just me, but it seems like nowadays when people try to make a statement, or talk about revolutionary ideas, it isn't taken very seriously. People think that its a joke.

Michelle: Politics aren't taken very seriously anymore. America is so de-politicized that its actually grotesque. Its really sad.

I know a lot of bands...well, some bands are even political in a way that's supposedly like 'Oh, well, we're reactionary now.' That's about all it is. Obviously, there are a lot of bands who take politics seriously, but the way that... -well, that's what this is about. (Michelle holds up a copy of her zine.)

Ian Svenonius: Well, the PROBLEM is the way people think about politics. And the way politics are fed to us in a capitalist society.

Capitalism is an invisible ideology. Democracy is a veneer. Kind of a mask, right? The one person/one vote, blah, blah...

The governmental and political arm of life is this really abstract thing. So when people do talk about politics, it sounds like this really odious, boring thing that deals with white men in suits, old men in suits -and its completely divorced from their actual lives.

But in a capitalist society, industry constructs roads. (Industry) constructs the architecture that we have to live around. It constructs the kinds of transactions that we make. Everything, right? So that's why democracy is such a sham...it has nothing to do with what actually creates the conditions around us.

So when people are political, they have to subvert the idea of politics -as they exist today...Its like Raoul Vanegeim said in The Politics of Everyday Life, because everything that we do is political.

That's really an accepted idea now (the politics of everyday life), but the problem is people don't understand...they misuse that a lot. They use it to better one-another. You know? By saying 'Oh, you're allowed to say this,' or 'you're allowed to do this,' or 'I'm essentially more oppressed than you, because of my gender/sexual orientation/class/race/etc.' -but that's not the way that phrase is supposed to be used.

The revolution of everyday life is supposed to be used in the sense that you undermine the assumptions of everyday life that are fed to us. Like psychology, for example. Psychology -which we're taught to subvert any ideological tenet that we have. To sort of subvert any intentions that we have, by saying that everything is actually perverse/ulterior/ sexual/etc.

That's another thing: when people are political they put it in this humorless realm.

PSC:Is it safe to say that the bands' ideology is based on the Situationists?

Ian: Well...I mean...its obviously a really relevant critique to modern life.

I think one of the things about punk rock, the underground, and political people now, is that everyone has been subjected to sort of democratic -or capitalist- brainwashing in the sense that everyone finds communism -the idea of communism is anathema. And therefore, they associate themselves with anarchism.

I understand that there's all these different ideas of anarchism. From anarcho-syndicalism to sort of a neo-fascist anarchism.

Well, as far as I'm concerned, anarchism -in its typical sense- is kind of like SUPER CAPITALISM. Its sort of like laissez faire. That's what G.E. would love to exist: its a non-regulated state.

We almost live in an anarchistic state in the sense that corporations run wild. There's no regulations on them. And they basically hire the police or the army to do their bidding in foreign countries -or domestically.

So, anarchism isn't really an interesting idea for me. To me, what is interesting is what happened in Nicaragua, or something that happened in Cuba -where the people rose-up, and now they regulate business so that it doesn't regulate their lives.

All you have to do is look around you on this street. (Ian points down the block.) You see the cars, and you see the street -all these things, they dictate our life. They are the machine which dictates our life, more than we dictate what the machines do. Humanity may have invented the car, but now the car controls us -to the extent that we have to live within a labyrinth.

The thing with anarchism -it seems like a cop-out.

But I understand that anarcho-syndicalism is supposed to be the consummate communism. That's cool.

Really, the point is: critiquing culture as it exists. Everyone has basically given-up on that idea. Everyone's sort of on a junior rock circus: its essentially really boring. A big problem is that music is so LOUD.

Music is the affordable art, but its so loud and alienating that it really doesn't have much content. And when it does, its kind of boring. That's why we invented Gospel Yeh-Yeh, because we wanted to make a dialogue-based music.

People think that we're like John Spencer. We like his band, but that's not at all the point of our music.

Our music is gospel-based. Its rhythm-based, with a subverted guitar. And that's because the guitar exists at the same tone as the voice. Its the same frequency as the voice. We don't want those things to compete. We want to make a gospel, oratorical, sermon-based, ad-libbed form of music. And that's what we try to do.

That's why a show like tonight is so frustrating, ultimately, because the P.A. isn't loud enough. Its hard to get any sort of dialogue going.

PSC:You sort of touched on this already, but what are the basic tenets of the Gospel Yeh-Yeh?

Ian: The thing is, politics now -they're very into ESSENTIALISM. Like, WHO'S allowed to say WHAT?, and WHO is sort of entitled to DO what? Its very sort of Balkan. You know? The balkanization of politics in America. Its all this idiotic kinds of squabbling about...

You know, someone came up to me and said that playing 'Wade In the Water' was very "insensitive" without some sort of preface about its origins. Bullshit like that.

Its like folk people. You know, hardcore people always remind me of folk [music] people, 'cause they're little purists who think too much about the symbols that are used in constructing music. They don't think about what the music is, or what its saying. The way hardcore people like Maximum Rock n' Roll critique music reminds me of Bob Dylan being booed at Newport.

You can get-down with the ideas of the folk purists. They were probably all right-minded socialists. But, on the other hand, they're afraid that someone's going to steal their toilet paper.

Everyone's talkin' about "preserving the scene", or "'preserving a form of music"'. Isn't that what hardcore is? Its really antiquarian. Its people tending the shop. Its bullshit.

Right now, rock music -this whole underground scene- is being destroyed by A: corporations and B: Dance Music. Dance music because its cheaper.

Its like Karl Marx said, there is an economic dialectic wherein fewer people make more money, and it will culminate in revolution. I don't know about the revolution. But its obviously coming true in America.

There are fewer and fewer artisans. The Middle Class is a total myth. And this is even reflected in music.

Think about the symphony orchestra. 60-or-so artisans constructed music, without any of whom the symphony would not have been complete. Or opera, or ballet -that's an even larger and even heftier amount of people involved. That was down-sized to jazz. Jazz music had 20-or-so artisans and musicians constructing it. And that was down-sized to hard bop, or the small band... (the) quintets of the 40's and 50's. And then that to rock n' roll.

Buddy Holly's stated intent with the electric guitar was make three people sound like an orchestra. So rock n' roll got rid of jazz. And that wasn't because of popular taste so much as it was because the industry dictated that rock n' roll would be THE MUSIC by playing it on the radio all the time. Why? Because it was cheaper to produce; the people were easier to exploit; and rock n' roll bands accepted way-shittier conditions at clubs, etc.

You know, in the 60's the whole country was dotted with jazz clubs -thousands upon thousands. They were all put out of business because rock bands would accept these horrible conditions: sleeping on the floor, being denigrated all the time, etc., etc. Right?

So now, they're going one step further, and that's the DJ culture that's taking over. Electronica is taking over because A: all the rock n' roll is so boring. But also B: because...its just the nature of capitalism. The cheapest thing will prevail. That's why corporations that use Mexican slave labor will always prevail over corporations that use union labor.

My point is: that Gospel Yeh-Yeh utilizes the entire congregation. So its kind of going in the inverse of the modern trend toward [utilizing] one person.

PSC: I was asking Michelle earlier about what you think when people try to dismiss your stuff as being ironic. There's that whole post-modern rock critic mentality, where everything is treated like its some sort of really clever inside joke.

Ian: Well, you know, that's funny -because that's what our new song is about. Its about a particular rock critic in Washington D.C. who doesn't know anything about rock n' roll.

But irony isn't a bad thing either. Irony is given a bad name because of the way its misused. You know what I mean? Irony is used by cowards, sort of couching themselves in it. But when its used properly its very funny. The problem is that its misused-used by cowards who are afraid of being caught in any kind of meaning. We're obviously not. We're CARD CARRYING IDEOLOGISTS.