Scene Point Blank: How has the music business changed? The Dwarves have been around for 40 years or so. Is it just a harder game? Musicians don’t make money off the recordings anymore? It's off merchandise and ticket sales and stuff like that, I believe.
Blag: Yeah, you're right. I mean…where do I even start with a question like that?
The internet was very democratizing in some ways, but democracy can be dangerous, right? Yes, it's democratized, but every idiot is putting out a shitty album and there's no one to vet it. When I started making music people very rarely kind of put out their own stuff, so you needed to be out there in the clubs playing to anyone's attention. Now people just sit in their bedroom and do shit. So if you sit in your bedroom to do shit, there's one of two things that's gonna happen. Ninety-eight percent of the time you suck and nobody is telling you that you suck and you just keep sucking, you know, but 2% of the time you get some home genius shit like, like Bo Burnham. The little kid, that was 15 and doing these incredibly funny, like, raps and different things and he goes on to be a big star because he's so interesting. It only could have happened at home on the internet as he wasn't gonna be out at the clubs. So it's like the old winnowing down that you used to get that the clubs gave and it got rid of the people who couldn't play, didn't have any fucking stage presence. These fucking people just sit at home going, “Yeah, I'm great. I just do this at home.” And it's like, “No, you're not fucking great. You suck.” As I said, there's a small percentage of them that do well and are interesting. They would have gotten winnowed out of the club scene anyway because they didn't fit in and people wouldn't like it, but as it turned out they were creative and interesting and they reached people in a different newer way, essentially.
Scene Point Blank: It seems like a lot of clubs are closing down in major cities. So that makes it harder for bands to get out there and play or ply their trade. I can appreciate that some kid can create a record on their iPhone but I prefer seeing a band live. I can listen to a Dwarves record 10 times in a row but nothing will match the live show.
Blag: When I started playing music, if you wanted drums, you needed a drummer. You know you didn't own a drum machine that you could program your drums with and then play with it. So the whole idea of needing a fucking band has kind of evaporated and a lot of the most talented people now wouldn't be caught dead in a fucking band. All that means is somebody else, less talented than them, is trying to get their licks in so it's a much different scene. It's much more based on the old kind of producer thing. A producer is the person who makes all the music. He made the drums and the bass and the keyboard and wrote the song and then they'll be like the artist is whoever comes in and puts a vocal on it. That's much different than the world that I came up in. In the world that I came up in, if you wanted drums, you better know a drummer. If you wanted bass, you better know a bass player. Now that's changed. So I don't blame young people for not giving a fuck about bands or not wanting to join a band, not wanting to deal with it. That's probably what I would have been like if I was their age, if I was even two or three or four years younger, I probably just would have been a rapper and had no interest at all in rock bands and all that bullshit. I'm a lyricist and a singer, and that's what I do. I never was a great musician. I mean, I played clarinet and saxophone in school and I wasn't very good at it. However, that had not entered the consciousness of white suburban people when I started playing rock'n'roll, you know?
Scene Point Blank: Except for maybe Dee Dee Ramone. When he released that one album, which was a little ahead of the curve. I had that album and now. It's actually worth quite a bit of money.
Blag: It’s not surprising though as Dee Dee was a real genius.
Scene Point Blank: As I said earlier, some kids sit at home and can record a whole album on their iPhone, and they're releasing stuff and they're getting lots of hits on Spotify/YouTube or wherever they have uploaded their stuff. So that's kind of wild. When I played in a band for a very short period, we didn't have a drummer, so we recorded a demo with the metal table legs and a suitcase because we figured we needed a drummer. So we got a little inventive. I'm sure drum machines existed but we didn't have the money for them in the ‘80s. So, yes, as you illustrated I think the music business has changed a lot for better and for worse. On that note, do you own most of the rights to the Dwarves' music?
Blag: So I'm sort of unique among people and bands in that I stuck with it and I went back and obtained the records I didn't own. All my shit is mine and I own the copyrights that's something that can have value or it can have no value, depending on how many people want it and how you utilize it. For a lot of people in bands, it probably wouldn't do them any good to have their copyrights anyway -- although in terms of what you write, every musician should have the copyright on their shit. In terms of practicality, it's a lot of work to put out your record and figure out the manufacturing and distribution of it. It's just way too much work for the average person to make it worthwhile. But for me, I loved my music. These fucking asshole labels took it out of print, so they were saying to me, “Yeah, your shit isn't worth even being out.” And I was like, “No, fuck that!” It's a hard road, I wouldn't necessarily recommend it, but I wouldn't have wanted to do it any other way.
Scene Point Blank: I was talking to another musician who went back and acquired most of the rights for the stuff that they didn't have. I don't think he has everything, but that's how he explained to me that he does OK financially. It's the people who are complaining that they're not doing too well might be the people who don't own the rights and I guess the money is going to someone else, like a record company?
Blag: For me, what was important was not having my shit be out of print and not having people be able to say, “Yeah, this just doesn't exist and it never existed.” I couldn't stand that. That was very hurtful and aggravating to me and I didn't think it was right. So I went back and got that shit for that reason. The way it worked out monetarily, I'm happy because I just sit and I get royalties for shit and I don't have to worry about it. If you did a cost/benefit analysis of what a pain in the ass it was and how much work it was on my part the math doesn't work. However, I wouldn't have wanted it any other way because I don't want some asshole from a label from Seattle that doesn't like me and doesn't think about me having control over whether other human beings get to hear my music or not. You know, they're like little petty tyrants running the fucking scene, and they can suck my dick as they didn't write that song. They didn't fucking rehearse that.
Scene Point Blank: Yeah, there's plenty of instances where people get screwed right from the beginning, and I think, going back to what I just said about when they were young, they didn't know what they were signing on the dotted line. You hear that all the time, every band that you talk to, they all have that story, right?
Blag: Yeah, we all have the same story. We signed a shitty 1980s-1990s fucking record deal. The label owned everything. They didn't do anything for you and then they said, “Ohh fuck you. You're not selling enough. So goodbye.” Then it was like, “Oh, fuck, they threw us away and you can't even get our record anymore.” Then invariably when the internet came along all these people rediscover your shit and go, “Wow, this man was pretty fucking brilliant!” However, then the only people that make any money on it at that point are record collectors selling your first single for $90.00.
"I've been getting cancelled in various ways for various reasons. You know, some of which I just deserved. People just have to make up their minds about what they think is fair and what isn't. I don't want to just be an old guy saying everything was better back in the day as it wasn't. I've been getting cancelled all along. There's always been some form of that bullshit out there."
Scene Point Blank I just saw something online about the Cro Mags. They were on Profile Records and they made absolutely no money from it and it's still being released to this day. They got screwed. There's another Canadian band that was on the same label, the Nils. The same thing happened to them but like you said: the same story with almost every band. “We were young and we didn't know and we signed and we got fucked.”
Blag: Well, and here's the thing. You shouldn't be able to feel like that, right?
For instance, in our society, at a certain point, we were smart enough to say slavery is bad, right? So even if somebody wants to hire you and pay you nothing, right? You know they're not supposed to be able to do that -- they still find ways around that. With internships and shit like that, but basically every once in a while, our society gets together and says like, “Oh, this shit ain't right.” You can't do this or you can't do that, right? So you know at some point our society needs to say you just can't sign someone to a record deal because record deals are bogus and you just can't do it. What you can do is license a song or a record for some time. If all of those stupid labels that we all signed with and if the wording in the contract had been, “We're licensing this from you for the next five years or seven years or whatever,” that would have been fine because, regardless of what happened in five years or seven years or whatever, you could go back and start anew. Instead, what they did is screw you royally.
I don't want to bore you with a bunch of legalese. The way copyrights work is that you can copyright something that you write because writers have had copyright law working on their side since the 1800s. As have photographers and visual artists, poets and various other kinds of artists. However musicians have always been treated like second class citizens, and so our deal wasn't based on you've made a work of art and there's a copyright in it. Our deal was based on you've made a machine that makes noise and I own this machine that makes noise. That's what the record was, and that's what they mean when they talk about a mechanical royalty for songwriters. The songwriter writes the song, but now the label has to pay that songwriter a royalty for putting it on a mechanical device, like a record a CD or a stream. Musicians are not considered artists in the eyes of the law. Every other art is art. For some reason, we get fucked up the ass because, you know, the law loves to fuck musicians in every conceivable way. So we're not even treated as well as a poet or a photographer or somebody that does landscape drawings or anything else as they recognize this is a work of art and copyrights go from there. With musicians, it was like you're making a machine that makes noise. It's like a lawn mower or a blender. It's this machine and it makes noise so other people can own your shit forever the same way you can own a lawn mower forever, or you can own a blender forever. So because that's the basis of music deals, we always get fucked 100% of the time and until that stops being the case -- until they recognize recorded music as an art -- it will always be we get a dick in the ass 100% of the time. So until that, I mean look at Taylor Swift there. There's never been an example of somebody who did better in the conventional music industry and made 10s of millions of dollars and yet still she figured out, “This is fucked. I'm gonna re-record all my old albums because some asshole owns my copyright.” So you know, that's the modern story. Are we going to get to the point where we outlaw slavery in the music industry? I don't know. It probably won't happen in my lifetime, but I'm hopeful that someday they will. That would be nice.
Scene Point Blank: I didn't realize that Taylor Swift re-recorded some of her old albums. But I know that there have been other bands that have done it: Suicidal Tendencies redid their first record and I guess that's how people get around it like, “Okay, screw you, you own this. So we'll just re-record it.” The Dead Boys redid Young, Loud and Snotty with Cheetah and Blitz and other younger musicians.
So are you looking at re-releasing a lot of the older Dwarves stuff or have you already?
Blag: I reissued all the old Dwarves records that Sub Pop had taken out of print. I bought them back and I put them back in print and I did the same thing with Come Clean and various records. They were out of print and I got them back in print, and now every Dwarves record is in print. I'm very proud of that, that's how it should be! Not every band has enough demand to be able to do that, so I'm glad that I'm in that position. Mostly, I’m just glad that it exists and nobody who doesn't like my music or doesn't give a fuck about me or actively wishes me harm is in a position to fucking withhold my music.
Scene Point Blank: On that note, this is probably a subject that hits home with you and the Dwarves: the current climate we live in with cancel culture. I believe that the Dwarves have probably experienced this since their inception. What is your take on cancel culture and how this hits home with the band?
Blag: Our new video just came out yesterday. Our new single is called “We Will Dare” and the tagline is “Don’t let them cancel our love.” I did the song with a young singer named Madd Lucas from a band called Sik Sik Sicks as a duet. It's a humourous video and I also got some of the guys from Jackass to be in it as well. It is a great video. I encourage people to go check it out and check out the song. There's this kind of ‘90s pop-punk revival so I said, “Okay we'll make it like The ‘90s Punk Song. I put it in the context of a romance between two people, but there's lots of context for cancel culture in there. The Dwarves have been getting cancelled since the beginning. We've been getting cancelled since before that was the thing, and we mostly got cancelled for having nudity on our covers or having obscenity. We also got cancelled because we were very excitable when we were young and fucked up. There were a lot of fights and shit at our shows and shit would get crazy and club owners would get mad and other bands would get mad. So yeah, I've been getting cancelled in various ways for various reasons. You know, some of which I just deserved. People just have to make up their minds about what they think is fair and what isn't. I don't want to just be an old guy saying everything was better back in the day as it wasn't. I've been getting cancelled all along. There's always been some form of that bullshit out there.
Scene Point Blank: When I was growing up, we listened to a Canadian band, The Dayglo Abortions. I will probably get cancelled for saying this: I went to a Mentors gig that didn’t happen, so we had to watch Das Damen twice. The Mentors didn't make it over the border because they had dildos and pornographic material in their van. There were tons of bands like that. If I look back on it with a today-lens on, I'd be like, “Oh, geez, they were pretty offensive.” However, It was never taken seriously. Yes, it was offensive but people had an understanding that it was a joke. It just didn't seem that people took stuff as seriously. There was no need to be like, “I don't like the Dwarves so I am going to cancel them, I don't want to listen to them and I'm going to slag them every fucking chance I get.” Life is short and there is enough stuff that is messed up in the world that people should be angry about. Danzig said recently that if the Misfits existed today they would be cancelled. Once again, I always took their lyrics to be horror imagery no different than watching a horror movie.
Blag: There's already a backlash against all that stuff, you get some monster like Harvey Weinstein and it changes the conversation for a while and suddenly everybody's a villain and everybody gets lumped in together with a real sick person like that, you know? Some people deserve to be quote-unquote cancelled, you know, because they're pieces of shit that are out there doing mean stuff. I like to treat people like adults and think they can handle shit. It's like, “Look, if you don't like it, don't buy it.” That shouldn't be that fucking complicated.
Scene Point Blank: Back to your current release, what is the concept of your new release, aptly named Concept Album?
Blag: Yeah, people have been asking that. You know, it's pretty funny. I mean, this was our post-pandemic record and so we had a lot of material. So we went into the studio and we recorded 25 drum and bass parts in two days. We're still old school in that way where we can go in and knock out fucking songs and kill it, right? So then, while we were in the studio, we made up another three or four songs.
By the time we're done, we had like 30 songs. So, this is our White Album and The White Album is kind of like a concept album in that sense. It's very sprawling and it's long and it goes in all these different places. So I wound up editing it down to a single album. I don't think double albums are as effective anymore. It plays like a concept because it hits every different genre. It's kind of a return to The Dwarves Must Die record. So there's no specific concept, per se. -- unless tits count as a concept. It plays like a double album. Side one is the whole album in itself and then side two has the more pop stuff on it. It’s an interesting album. You just have to listen to it.
Scene Point Blank: Last question! if they were to erect a statue of you in your hometown, what part of the body do you think people would rub for good luck?
Blag: Easy! That would be my big dick, my friend, I hope they erect a statue of me there. I deserve it, haha!
