Document and Eyewitness: A conversation with Joey Casio on 5-23-03 in Olympia, WA

My connection with Joey was electric and dynamic from our very first conversation.

In early 2003 I was involved in anti-war organizing and going to a lot of events in support of Rachel Corrie and trying to find a way to connect that with punk in the local music scene. I deliberately sought Joey out because after I saw him at a bunch of political events/protests alone in the rain, I saw him play a show in the basement of the Red House and I was intrigued - like, woah - there's not only a new generation of punk kids doing something completely creative and intense, but they are also maybe radical politically.

I was propelled to get to know him. I tried to "interview" him for a magazine I was writing for in England. That "interview" turned into a conversation that lasted for four or five years, up-all-night style that expanded and enriched both of our lives immensely.

Joey is one of the best friends I have ever had and one of my favorite punk artists of all time. Like many of you, I miss him so fucking much. I hope to give back some of what he gave to me by sharing some of our conversation even if it's only a few sketches here and there and continuing to make and share my own work (something that is hard for me).

Here is how our first conversation started, via email:

TOBI VAIL: Hi. I saw your show at the red house and was intrigued. Do you have any records or tapes out? I would like to review it, maybe.

JOEY CASIO: I’m flattered, really. I don’t have anything out right now.

TV: Ok. You really don’t have anything recorded? I’m writing for this magazine in the U.K. and they probably won’t let me do a feature unless there is a record or something, not sure. I thought it would be cool to write about your group, along with some other ‘bands without acoustic instruments’ in light of electro-clash hype. When I was in D.C. recently, there was a WIT show that cost $17.50. There were DJ’s and some groups that were mostly karaoke or whatever it is (singing along to pre-recorded songs). We couldn’t get in but a friend was on the guest list. There was a VIP area roped off. He was ushered back there and set on a red velvet couch, which was then, itself, roped off as “special red velvet couch in the special VIP area” and given a bottle of very expensive champagne - funny, because he is straight edge! While this was happening, another friend was being thrown out of the backstage area because she didn’t have the proper “credentials”. When I got back from D.C., friends here were talking about your show with Anna Oxygen last weekend. It made me appreciate Olympia even more and think about how things are different here than they are in New York or London, or,whatever. I'm wondering how Joey Casio fits in to this trend? Also, you have a good punk singing style and there are elements of chaos to what you do! What are some of the ideas behind the work? 

JC: hi....

No one ever asks me these kinds of questions. I guess what I do is the intersection of several things.For a long time I had this idea that kept stirring: a guitar-less, drummer-less punk band. I grew up listening to punk but the only “instrument” I played was electronics and a little keyboard. If punk is supposed to be such progressive music, why do bands keep using the same tired old sounds? After a few timid incarnations, I started my dream “band”. I began to, if nothing else, play the exact kind of music I would want to listen to, regardless of whether anybody else liked it. But that’s just aesthetics.

TV: Sorry if that is too much analysis, I want to sort of explain how I'm viewing your work in hope that you'd have a response to some of these ideas. Perhaps you just do your band the way you do it because you enjoy working with synthetic sounds and that's all there is to it.

JC: I’m fascinated by the concept of subversive dance and pop music. In contrast to the singer/songwriter mold, people rarely stop to process the words they are hearing or even singing along to. This puts the person singing in an interesting place. The ideas put forth may (in theory) go directly to the subconscious. or, if the song is more catchy, even become stuck in the listener’s head. Of course, Kathleen Hanna spoke of {this} at length in regards to Julie Ruin/ Le Tigre and it was the impetus for Gang of Four.

TV: I’m interested in solo work made by feminists in the one-'man'-band format that utilizes multi tracking, samples, keyboards/fake drums - such as tracy and the plastics, anna oxygen, nomy lamm, julie ruin, the blow etc. and contrasting this mode of solo work with a male singer/songwriter tradition that equates authenticity with the stripping away of layers to get the 'real self' via confessional autobiography. Right now, in the underground, feminists are rejecting this mode of expression and replacing it with work that focuses on the negotiation of many 'selves' via persona (julie ruin, tracy and the plastics), found objects via samples/appropriation of pop forms and lyrics (nomy lamm, anna oxygen) and that this works to expose and possibly subvert socially constructed narratives of traditional femininity... I’m wondering where this leaves “male” artists. will they explore masculinity as part of their work or will they continue to be drawn to the lone wolf blues man/folk hero myth that bare bones acoustic music seems to represent?

JC: I have a lot of ideas/philosophies I would like to share but the question arises - how? I could write them out, but nobody reads essays and manifestos except people that write essays and manifestos. If the music was simpler and less distracting people would stop listening due to lack of subtlety. Therefore, dance music becomes the perfect medium.

{On} the nature of solo work - one of the things I like most about this newish solo medium is that the individual can occupy the same space as a group. This contrasts both with the old singer/songwriter model, where the performer is seen as somewhat alone and incomplete, as well as the band model where the front person is elevated to a hierarchical leader position. But the “new” solo performer can present a project that has been constructed from beginning to end, that is complete and full, but comes from the mind of one individual. This allows, as you said, the performer to create/present multiple selfs or - multiple sides of one self.

So…does my calculated attempt at juxtaposing a slow, vulnerable sounding song with a cold, analytical noisy song really challenge the culturally construed concepts of masculinity? I can’t really say for sure but it’s worth a try.I think my favorite single lyric out of any song I’ve written is “what you create defines the boundary of your identity”. That pretty much sums it up.

Best of 2011 by Joey Casio

The musics of 2011. In this post bloghouse infosphere its hard to pick out what's great from the landscape-our ears are so full of songs they turn into sandgrains and the whole place is an even wash. So you go with what you know and what you've seen:

-TRACEY TRANCE provided the soundtrack to many a late night, in person and on the stereo all over the west coast. Heap some hot oil onto a tape of a rollerink organ player, leave it in the sun next to a dirty magnet, and over dub a fading radio from an indeterminate island in south asia at quarter-volume through a mesh of cardboard, and you'd be halfway there. Transcendent sub-dumpster psychedelia at its finest. Me n' Tyler T.T. made some sounds for the sunrise at thee Mojave Rave' this year. Hands down a high point of the last 365.

-RENE' HELL: I saw Terry Riley play at the art museum on his 90th birthday. It was pretty great, but he has clearly been eclipsed by a generation or three of up and coming composers like Rene' Hell's Jeff Witcher. In his work, interlocking patterns of hypnotically shifting timbres combine to create truly moving instrumental music. Imagine an android letting out a slow, sad sigh as it becomes self aware. Rene Hell is kind of like that. Contemporary as fuck.

-RIND is a new sound echoing from a circuit-laden cathedral where the bomb-holes let you see the stars to gain hope. Lee Relvas layers her voice into in an ominous chorus, and combines it with a backing track that would even the scales on the Melvins or Earth...but this is music from a different century. RIND is utterly transfixing live, as you know if you were lucky enough to catch her on during her epic solo greyhound bus tour.

-HYSTERICS- Sometimes, if a politically-oriented band is truly great, they pull the curtain to the side, and call bullshit on the whole world. Hysterics do this; Not just with their lyrics, which are brilliant, but with the energy they carry in their collective cacophony. It is a thrilling, terrifying and inspiring thing to see and hear. Hysterics are the best hardcore band to emerge in years.

-SEWN LEATHER-Griffin Pyn's SEWN LEATHER is underground dancehall for postmodern times. SEWN LEATHER is an industrial performance art troupe consisting of an unwitting audience and a tape player.
What Technotronic is to hip-house, SEWN LEATHER is to harsh noise. A cult leader without a cult, hopping into the backseat of your van, SEWN LEATHER made the best record of 2011-Sikknastafari Slash Crasstafari.

-Primary Colors- Full disclosure-primary colors are my friends, roomates, colloborators and comrades.
Its a great expirience to see artists you know truly succeed at sharing their aesthetic and idealogical vision with the world. Primary colors unleash a set of totally new tones jumping from tape to synthesiszer and back again, aranged in heavy handed rythms, and then and then and then lock them in with the most manic of percussion,(all metal/ no skin) distorted beyond recognition. Near perfect music. We played togerther on cement strewn trash heap of a beach this year in the shadow of twin smokestacks. Its hard to imagine a more appropriately dystopian setting for this duo.

If I had to choose one “best song” of 2011 it would be this: Lonely Sea (ecstasy mix) by Alexis Blair Penney. Alexis is a singer/artist/performer/dj who blurs a lot of lines when it comes to art, gender and pop music. In this perfomance, Alexis is backed by members of avant-garde house ensemeble MIRACLES CLUB, one of the years best groups in their own right. Sad dance music is a difficult thing to create, but when it is done well, allows us to share in the most intimate and human of experiences.

Alexis Blair Penney - Lonely Sea (Ecstasy Mix Live) from Experimental ½ Hour on Vimeo.

Joey Casio's Now

Japanther, Joey Casio Show Review 9/18/08

photos by joaquin



I don't really like japanther, but they are an objectively good band, meaning they are really good at what they do....ha. they played with joey casio at hall of the woods on september 18...ira djed...we drove out there to see the spectacle...hall of the woods is located where tumwater and the westside meet. i'm convinced you can only get there at night. i don't know where it is during the day and couldn't explain to anyone how to drive there but we looked on three maps and drove up and down the road and then walked for awhile in the pitch black wooded highway without anywhere for pedestrians to hide, fighting off dogs and racoons and bears and dodging on coming traffic speeding by.

once finally there, here are some things i noticed:

1. during japanther. i counted 20 young guys with shirts off. women were wearing clothes. it made me miss tribe 8. where did all the boobies go? remember scream club 4th of july party where everyone got topless???

2. ian vanek, olympia high ex pat and japanther drummer made some comment demanding some girls get down in front to shake their asses, then self-consciously but with attitude as if to prove he has balls spieled on about how in olympia they don't like that sexist shit but that he doesn't care he's from brooklyn now, da di da di da bla bla bla and then mumbled something about ass shaking. the girls who were wearing clothes screamed and got in the front to dance for mr. drummer boy

3. they still sound like pop-punk to me, and not the good kind either --good kind being fyp and the grumpies--oh and pinhead gunpowder!

i see why people like it but i don't like it. i was kind of into the energy at first (except for 1,2 and 3) but then i just was waiting for it to be over. i think they are pop punk kids who tried to get arty but just ended up playing what they love, which is cool.

i go see them play when they come to town because i remember when ian vanek was 12 years old and played drums with karp at the backstage of the capitol theater. he was a chubby little geeky kid who looked like he had no friends and he beat the shit out of his drums. it was like augustus gloop turned into the hulk. if you are wondering why scott maniac wasn't drumming, the story i remember goes like this. karp set up a show and forgot to tell scott. scott said, i can't play that show, we aren't playing, i have to work. jerad and chris were like, you work at the state tri it's a block away, you can come over and play the set and then go back to work. he said nope, we are not playing, i have to work. they started playing without him, drums were set up, of course he doesn't show up. the drum stool being empty, ian vanek sees his big chance and seizes the opportunity. of course scott refused to believe this show was actually good. little did he know, it was a great show. well he might have been able to hear it from down the street, but it was one of those things you have to witness i think.

it was one of the coolest moments at the capitol theater ever, watching this dorky little kid become monstrous. there isn't much of the little kid monster left in his drumming--snare bashing is about all we get-- but he was certainly ambitious and genuinely gutsy as a little kid, so it's kinda neat to see him living out his dream or whatever, even though it's not the kind of music i like. too bad he's not more of a feminist! maybe if riot grrl had been more inclusive of young male perspectives we could have had more of an impact, it's hard to say. but i digress.

here's another photo.



basically the show was like riot grrl never happened until joey casio came on. not that joey is a girl or said anything feminist but his songs are political and his vibe is inclusive. joey got some less than dudely action going on the dancefloor. either all those shirtless men put their clothes back on or they left, i'm not sure if you can tell by looking at the pictures, but check out all the energy ghosts:





We left towards the end of the set because we wanted to catch Shearing Pinx at le Voyeur but alas, they had played early hoping to catch Joey Casio at Hall of the Woods. Oh yeah we missed the Mean Beanz. Again. Gotta try harder to see them.

Two Shows on Thursday September 18th

JAPANTHER

JOEY CASIO

MEAN BEANZ

DANCE!! ATTACK!!

THURSDAY SEPTEMEBERER 18TH 9PM SHARP

5 BONES HALL OF THE WOODS
(Olympia)

also this night: Shearing Pinx w/ Wisdom Teeth and Octagon Control at le Voyeur (21+)