interview by: Roberto Martinelli

I'm in the passenger seat of this beat up, old, white van parked in a dark alley. Sitting next to me is a large, intimidating black man whose reputation as a pit fighter precedes him. You know what kind of fighting I’m talking about. Have you seen the movie “The Fight Club”? Like that. At any moment this man could reach over and snuff me out like nothing.

What the fuck am I doing here?

The guy in the driver’s seat is Eugene Robinson, lover, fighter, erudite, journalist. Robinson is nearly 41 years old, but his looks and energy would make you guess late twenties.

I've braved the shadows and unknown to interview Robinson in his capacity as the front man for Oxbow, the best art-rock band that no one will ever hear about. Oxbow has been around since 1989, and had released its sixth record, An Evil Heat, on Neurot Recordings a year before this interview, which took place in 2003. Since then, a gradually increasing amount of worrisome tales of public nudity, duct-taped ears, uncontrollable drooling and strangled concert goers (all stemming from Robinson's being in the band) had both frightened and intrigued me. But mostly intrigued me.

But it turns out Robinson has done a lot more than challenged people's concept of the relationship between audience and band. He’s been editor in chief for major trade magazines and has written for such publications as GQ and Hustler, leading him to interview such celebrities as Anton LaVey, Halle Berry, Henry Rollins and Matt Groening of the Simpsons. He’s also run his own label, CFY records, since 1982, putting out Stigmata’s debut album as well as the premier spoken word record, “The Birth of Tragedy's Spoken Word/Graven Image Compilation,” featuring Allen Ginsberg and Charles Manson.

What was to follow was the most interesting and funny interview I have ever done. In Robinson’s words, “it’s so funny you might start crying.”

Maelstrom: So, how’s the fighting career going?

Eugene Robinson: I have an amazing record - knock on wood. I’ve never lost. I keep telling myself it’s because I’m fighting guys who are no good.

Maelstrom: Maybe you’re just amazing. How did you get into that? What I think is fascinating about you is this duality of ferality and intellectuality. You come across as a very well-spoken man in person, but on stage, I’m afraid to get too close for fear that you’ll strangle me.

Eugene Robinson: Somebody asked me about this very issue. It’s a whole continuing discussion about whether it’s a contrivance or not. Like whether the guy walking around, seeming nice and personable, is the guy; or whether the guy on stage is the guy. I feel more of my own, being a contrarian, on stage. I think they’re equally accessible personalities. The issue is that San Franciscans have gotten into this cool complacency spot in which they think they have an understanding of how these personalities work. But I don’t think they do, really.

Non participation doesn’t necessarily mean that you will not be participating. It’s a very careful calculus that comes into play vis-a-vis personalities and their emergence. This is a long standing family trait. I’ve seen this kind of mercurial thing in old women in my family.

Clearly, I find myself making sane decisions more frequently than I make insane decisions, but you have to understand, when we play these shows on these stages, things happen, and not necessarily of our making. These clubs don’t provide any security. They don’t care about the band. There’s gotta be some sort of police function happening.

Maelstrom: And that’s you. It’s funny to see the other guys in the band’s personalities on stage in contrast to yours.

Eugene Robinson: All that stuff is deceiving. Niko (Wenner, guitar) actually had boxing lessons, which most people don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Niko, in the 19 years I’ve known him, throw a punch in anger, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know how to do it. But in the greater scheme of insignificant issues, I do what I do clearly because it amuses me.

But what interests me more is getting through the show without interruption. Like with what happened in Bradford, England: the night fueled by Dutch courage: two guy in the audience decided to “have a little fun” and interact with the band. They wanted to be part of the show.

Maelstrom: So, what happened to those guys?

Eugene Robinson: You can go to the website (www.theoxbow.com). There’s a clip from the documentary.

Maelstrom: Did they get their ass kicked?

Eugene Robinson: Yes. Choked into unconsciousness would be a phrase that covers it.

Maelstrom: Do you ever beat the shit out of people who are just watching your show?

Eugene Robinson: No. Nonononono. It’s like the AC/DC song. “I never shot anybody who didn’t carry a gun.” These guys, on a certain level, made a decision to be part of the show. And I decided to accomodate their interest. I can’t make believe that they don’t exist. Both of the guys came up to me afterward and said the same thing: “I was just having a little fun.” To which I said, “so was I.” Both guys said I had hurt them. I told them both the same thing: “If I had wanted to hurt you, this would have been a very different conversation.” Hahaha. “There wouldn’t have been a conversation, you would have still been lying on the ground, and I would be loading equipment.”

My friend Andy used to say, “Jim Morrison comes in packages now.” People have gotten so used to the Jack-in-the-Box school or rock ‘n’ roll performance/ art type stuff, that when something seems to pierce the veil of art and artifice, there are only a couple of responses. I’m not saying that there’s a correct response, but after having played 1,000 shows, people either get it (or they get it and don’t believe it), or they don’t get it and find out the hard way.

Maelstrom: I really don’t mean to seem rude about this, Eugene, but I’m fascinated about why you like to take your clothes off on stage.

Eugene Robinson: I think that has got rock journalized out of proportion. I told somebody the other day, and they didn’t believe me. “Because it’s hot!” Very seriously. When you go on tour, you can’t pack everything. If I’ve got one pair of pants that I need to last three weeks because we don’t have time to stop at a laundromat, the second the sweat starts pouring down my legs, you have to realize that if I do not take those pants off, I’ve got to spend the two hours after the show sitting around in wet pants. It’s like sitting around in a wet diaper. No fun.

Maelstrom: But it is totally part of your performance, isn’t it?

Eugene Robinson: Well, it is in that I get hot every show. But the show the other night at the Hemlock (review here), I didn’t reach the requisite level of hotness. I believe I left my pants on. It is not like some guy who reviewed one of our shows recently said, “ah, the usual striptease!” But when we played in Turin, nothing came off. It was freezing in the club. Sometimes the simplest explanations don’t serve anyone’s interest.

The second show of the ‘95 tour, I tore a medial collateral ligament in my knee.

Maelstrom: How did you do that?

Eugene Robinson: It was when I was 265 (pounds - 120 kilos), and I was jumpin’ around, and I wasn’t stretched. I heard it pop, and that was it. For the rest of the tour I had to duct tape my knee to get through the show. After a long drive, I’d have to hop after I got out of the van. The interviews after that, people were trying to say: “Does the black duct tape that you use on your knee signify your being shackled by society?” I go, “no, man. I hurt my knee.” Sometimes a cigar is a cigar.

But it seems to me that you’re getting at the question that if I’m aware of the fact that by removing my pants, I’m creating a semi-significant situation that makes people uncomfortable. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t aware of that. But it’s an interesting uncomfortability. If you would say to the average person, “why don’t you take off your clothes and walk downtown?” The average person would say, “I don’t want to do that because people would point at me and laugh.” I’ve actually been naked in public, and not necessarily on stage. Me and a bud decided to try it and see what would happen. At first people have that instinct to laugh. But when they see that you’re not laughing and that there’s nothing really explicitly funny about you choosing not to have clothes on... It’s like that great Raymond Pettibon epigram: “Will I turn you on, or will I turn on you?”

But the underwear staying on or coming off goes beyond the heat issue, and that ties in very much to our lyrical landscape.

Maelstrom: I like that quote of yours in Terrorizer magazine, “I’d never leave the house unless it was to fuck.” So it means a lot that you showed up for the interview, by the way. But there’s a lot of centeredness on your penis. On the press clippings on your website; whether or not An Evil Heat is the only album that has such themes (as Robinson claimed - Roberto), you have an album called Fuckfest. The center of your show is a lot about what’s happening around your groin area. It’s a big part of your energy and what you’re pushing.

Eugene Robinson: Not to get all Eastern and mystical on you, but that’s where the most powerful of the seven shakras of power, the one in the groin area, is. But how it applies to us, not to simplify it at all - it’s not as simple as the legend I’m about to offer - it’s clearly about a struggle between the flesh and the soul.

Maelstrom: How’s the struggle going?

Eugene Robinson: What do you think? You read the lyrics on An Evil Heat.

Maelstrom: I read a lot of stuff about sex and the priesthood. I wanted to ask you about the song “Sweetheart.” That’s the one that grabbed me the most.

Eugene Robinson: What about it grabbed you?

Maelstrom: The lyrics about “and I cinch until you dream” and then it says “and night lasts until I sleep/ with your eyes hot on me/ thinking kill him or flee/ kill him or flee...” It has a sexual connotation, but also a fighting element. Then there’s the part about “and you cry that you love me/ like God/ and like God/ I say whatever it is/ you want to hear.” There’s a major sordid feeling throughout this record.

Eugene Robinson: (chuckles) Yeah...

Maelstrom: I don’t know who wrote the commentary on the back of the CD about the music being “like walking in on a sex crime against humanity,” but it fits perfectly.

Eugene Robinson: Scott Sterling, a writer friend of mine from L.A. If I had to offer an explanation as to what’s going on, that’s it exactly.

Maelstrom: Is “Sweetheart” a great example of a sex crime against humanity? The title and the content are quite at odds with each other.

Eugene Robinson: Well, the title would imply a certain love song. I’ve become a sort of Manichaeist. (to read about this doctrine, please visit this site
http://www-rcf.usc.edu/~sbriggs/Britannica/manichaeism.htm - Roberto) I’ve got competing urges and desires and issues. Whether it’s as simple as love versus sex or God versus the Devil, or body versus the soul, I think that “Sweetheart” is a prime example of the extended process of liberation. It’s a song of joy and freedom. On the surface you might distill it into some kind of prosaic, San Franciscan, BDSM type of trip. I see it as much more elemental as that.

Maelstrom: You’ve got a sunwheel tattoo. What’s the significance of that?

Eugene Robinson: You’re being very gracious. I would call it a swatzstika.

Maelstrom: Well, as Quorthon of Bathory said to me, it’s unfortunate that a terrible twelve-year period in one country’s history has made this ancient symbol a negative one. So if I’m going to ask about it, I’ll take that course first rather than immediately assuming it’s a Nazi sign. But in your case, is it simply a swatzstika? What is the meaning to you and why is it there?

Eugene Robinson: The swatzstika is clearly co-joined with the devil (on Robinson’s arm). But nobody sees that. It probably speaks of the power of the symbol. Again, some things appear simple that are in fact complex and vice versa. This is one of those things that might appear complex but in actual fact is very simple. It has to do with my obsession with Manechaeism. The joining of opposites. If you follow the lyrics from the beginning - from the first record - the lyrical sub-texts could have been struggled. What marks An Evil Heat as being a wholly different lyrical piece of work is that it’s much less about struggle than any of the other records and much more about surrender and embrace.

Maelstrom: On the back of An Evil Heat is another description about the music, described as a “drug addled” and “dark, narcotic.” I’d like to ask you again about the use of substance in your act. I remember after the Hemlock show, you said you weren’t in a position to be able to drive. You were getting off your high from the show. What do you do to whip yourself into that state?

Eugene Robinson: Sometimes everything; sometimes nothing.

Maelstrom: I’d be surprised if you used recreational drugs to do that. You take care of your body and work out a lot.

Eugene Robinson: It’s like Travis Bickle! (From “Taxi Driver” - Roberto) A guy says to him: “You’re a walking contradiction! You’re like that Kris Kristofferson song! ‘Partly truth, partly fiction!” And Bickle says, “I’ve never been a pusher.” (Laugh) It’s a movie I enjoy.

Yeah, I’m a health fanatic.

Maelstrom: Yeah, I’d be surprised if someone like you took heroin before a show.

Eugene Robinson: Well, I don’t think those things are mutually exclusive. (Laugh) Chemicals that are consumed that are widely perceived as problems by 90 percent of the population are only problems if 90 percent of the population has problems with them. What’s much more an earmark of my personality is obsessive behaviors, not addictive behaviors.

Maelstrom: You’re in another place when you’re up there on stage.

Eugene Robinson: Oxbow has been around for 13 years. I stopped drinking in 1978. But one time we played a show in Lyon. I was sitting there and really enjoying myself and someone offered me some wine. And I thought it was ridiculous with me sitting in France and not having any French wine. And then around ‘96-97 they had all those articles about the health benefits of red wine. But I can’t even finish one glass without getting kind of tipsy.

But up until that point, it was six or seven years I had been doing the show that we do using only as a touchstone my insoluble emotional difficulties. And I enjoyed the red wine experience so much I decided to open things up a bit. If a substance is used, it’s from the point of view of me finding it amusing.

Maelstrom: How about at Hemlock?

Eugene Robinson: I think it was ketamine (read about it at http://www.dancesafe.org/documents/druginfo/ketamine.php) If you go to the Oxbow website, I give an itemized list of what was consumed during the recording on An Evil Heat.

Maelstrom: But you always duct tape your ears. Is that symbolic or is it primitive earplugs?

Eugene Robinson: You got it with the latter guess. I gotta keep my ears intact.

Maelstrom: Why don’t you just wear earplugs?

Eugene Robinson: I do wear earplugs. The duct tape is to keep them in. I start to sweat and they won’t stay in without the tape. You’re uncovering all the great secrets. These are things that people thought were laden with symbolism.

Maelstrom: How did you develop your vocal style?

Eugene Robinson: One time, when I was 16, I was brushing my teeth. I started to scream and make noises - animal and angry - into the toothbrush and riding this manic ride into a whole and total cacophony of noise, being mindful all the while that I was going far, far and farther away. Eventually I found myself on the floor, wrapped around the toilet. There I was, looking at the space behind the toilet and then finally having the thought as I squirmed on the floor, "One of these days I just might not come back from here." I managed to get myself up and back to normal. Some people don’t.

And so it is, every time, we do what we do: I'm highly aware of moving just a little beyond the time before. And depending on what your world view is I'm either pushing the boundaries (and therefore my luck) or expanding my consciousness. I'm not sure which but that sound out of my mouth is definitely a way to get somewhere like in here (points to head).

Maelstrom: Why weren’t the lyrics from your first two records, Fuckfest and King of the Jews, printed in the booklets?

Eugene Robinson: At the time I was interested in the purity of musical experience. I had serious questions about why you would print lyrics. Is it the idea that people can sit and sing along to your music? The level of articulation that lyrics provide is not one that you get in any other venue. You don’t get it live, certainly. You wouldn’t even get it listening to the music!

But I eventually made sense of it. It’s like an opera. At the time, they had just had Wagner at the San Francisco opera house. There was the controversial use of supertitles. I paid attention to arguments on both sides and decided that *if* you were interested, you should be able to have access to the lyrics. On Let Me Be a Woman, we decided to do one better and not only provide those underpinnings, you should also have the music! So we also printed some of the musical notation. It of course caused reviews like Les Scurry from KFJC and Your Flesh to call it pompous. But pompous is as pompous does. I don’t mind pomposity as an indicator. I think what we were doing is questioning the validity of all these various forms of expression. With Serenade in Red, it was pretty necessary. It turned out that people would frequently come up to us and say, “we had no idea what you were singing about!”

Maelstrom: You were really keen on my reading the lyrics for Serenade in Red. You didn’t mention Let Me Be a Woman or Balls in the Meat Grinder. Obviously, the Serenade... ones are the most representative or pivotal ones in your work.

Eugene Robinson: They represent the pre-change and the post-change.

Maelstrom: Yeah. I noticed that.

Eugene Robinson: For want of a better phrase, Serenade in Red completely explains how I got here. It’s the death of love and its simultaneous rebirth.

Maelstrom: Yes. The song “Babydoll” is the one where the speaker strangles a woman. When you talk about the death of love, I’m reminded of that song.

Eugene Robinson: Right. That’s sort of what it’s about. Ruby is a character in a book I wrote. I’ve written two. The second one ended up at Random House and then at Penguin Putnam. It’s called The Long, Slow Screw. It’s a crime saga. It was a way for me to fictionalize all the thuggery stuff I had been doing.

Maelstrom: You’re a thug, Eugene?

Eugene Robinson: (laugh) I’m a lover. I had a character in the story called Ruby Red, who became this catch all character for this woman who was the prime mover for the Oxbow experience. Obviously...(laugh) I mean obviously there was someone other than ME who was responsible for all those records, all that bad insanity, and all of that gun-in-mouth stuff. Hahahah!

Maelstrom: I wonder if it was because she was the first.

Eugene Robinson: You mean the first relationship that I had that was like that? Well, no. She was SPECIAL, haha. Of course EVERYONE thinks THEIRS is special because everyone’s got one of those relationships. The kind of relationship where it seems murder--hers, yours, or someone else’s -- is the only reasonable way out. This one was mine. It’s like that book, The Gypsy’s Curse by Harry Crews, where the curse of the title is “may you find a cunt that fits you.”

She was a dangerous woman. And when combined with me, it was possibly a highly volatile situation in a very sublime but no less dangerous way. But much like callouses on your hand from lifting weights, you evolve into a different creature as a result of actually living through this.

In the Jungian sense, though, she was anima, really. And like any anima unchecked, she was a destroyer in every way you could imagine. Really bright and fun to be around; really sexy. And as insane as me. She ended up, in a very expected, totally unsurprising way, being a Nietzsche scholar at Wake Forest University. And in a totally comical reversal she ended up teaching a class in ethics, which always amused me. Or at least amused me as much as Hitler teaching a class in humanities would. But if I had to inscribe a legend for her, it would be “kill or be killed,” since it was my sense that she was committed to, as a life mission, undoing me as completely as possible. But I realized that although she was a formidable opponent, she was no match for time. I started thinking, what she’s going to be able to offer me is really limited, because we’re all fucking dying!

Maelstrom: There’s no way that I can fully understand what’s going on in each of the songs. But I can get a sense of the energy of each album. Like you were saying, Serenade in Red strikes me more as coming from a position of being frustrated at not having what you want and being unable to feel comfortable with what you really want. An Evil Heat is the point where embracing the core desire, regardless of its nature, is achieved.

Eugene Robinson: Right. The change came about. The phraseology that marked my change was “the quiet embrace of self.” It dawned on me that there were these kind of Road to Damascus figures whose lives were changed by a single incident - an incident in which they were able to see more clearly than ever before and embrace who it is that they were.

I remember interviewing Anton LaVey of the Church of Satan. He said, “popularity has killed more people than anything.” At a certain point you have to be willing to relinquish any popularity in order to be sane. That’s what happened. It also reminds me of the artist Raymond Petitbon, the guy who did the Black Flag covers. He had this legend of a hand putting bullets into a gun. The legend read, “I’ve been good too long.”

Maelstrom: That’s what An Evil Heat sounds like.

Eugene Robinson: That’s exactly it. Two things are happening here. I’m a creature of basic desires and I believe they are transcended desires. I’ve comfortably embraced who I am, and society be damned.

In Palo Alto, where I live, there’s a garbage service called P.A.S.C.O. Sam. Their logo is this winking construction worker sort of guy with a pencil thin mustache. The legend next to his head reads, “why not?” It’s amazingly abstract for a garbage collection company, but I can’t answer that question to any degree of certainty. If I had to draw any lines, it would be at my sense of fair play. I’ve never enjoyed being a bully. There’s something about it I’ve always found to be distasteful.

Maelstrom: You often talk about “the Oxbow world.” Can you explain what you mean?

Eugene Robinson: I had a friend who was really into ice mountain climbing. I told him that climbing a mountain, first of all, seemed scary, but climbing a mountain of ice... And he said, “Eugene, you just gotta remember one thing: You can’t fall off a mountain.”

Maelstrom: What?

Eugene Robinson: You can’t fall off a mountain. You can fall off your *place* in the mountain and end up somewhere *else* on the mountain. It was kind of a Zen, paradoxical thing. It’s like not being able to fall off the Earth. I shared the story with a female friend of mine who asked, “I don’t get that story; is that supposed to be reassuring?” And I said, “no.” In typical Oxbow fashion, it’s supposed to be anything BUT reassuring.

The punch line to the story is that the guy who told me that subsequently slipped down a hundred foot ice crevasse and was never heard from again. That’s the Oxbow world view, right there.

If you come home early, you might find your girlfriend with a cock where you think it shouldn’t be, but guess what? The cock is always where it should be: in the hole. It just happens that it’s not your cock, man. You gotta let go of all that stuff. Life will fuck you in the ass if it can. In the ancient Greek they would talk about a variety of religious experience; the rough translation is to be “a hilarious giver” -- one that gives freely and willingly. That’s one of the things that people often miss with Oxbow: there’s a great deal of hilarity to it. This shit is funny, man. It’s so funny you might start crying.

I think we have to reconfigure our relationship to tragedy. I think there’s not much that’s tragic in life except for debilitating illness and being sexually abused as a child. Those people have problems. Everyone else has difficulties. You come home and your wife is sucking the milkman’s cock: that’s fun and games. You just gotta get your head around it, ‘cause you never should have trusted her to begin with. Or, you should have trusted her totally. I had a girlfriend once who was constantly lying to me. I went to a friend and asked, “how many times did your girlfriend have to lie to you before it was enough?” And he said, “once!” And I go, “ha! That’s the wrong answer...” HAHAHA! The right answer is that she should be able to lie to you 10,000 times - lie to you so much that it ceases to be important if she lies to you. There are certain people that, even when they lie, they tell the truth, as Tony Montano said. In other words, your essential elemental nature will always out. Why struggle against it? That’s what An Evil Heat is all about.

Maelstrom: Have you got any new material in the works?

Eugene Robinson: Yes. Our next record is going to be called The Narcotics Story. The lyrics are already written and done. We’re working on the music. By the time it comes out, it’ll probably be two years from now!

Maelstrom: Tell us about your label, CFY Records. Is that an Oxbow only vehicle?

Eugene Robinson: No, no. We put out stuff that’s non Oxbow. You might have heard of that band Stigmata, from New York. They’re still around. We were the first ones to put them out. Their demo tape sounded like early Metallica with Henry Rollins singing. We put out Whipping Boy stuff... Our biggest seller of all time was of course Birth of Tragedy: the Spoken Word Record. I used to do this magazine called the Birth of Tragedy, and this record took the people I interviewed and put them on tape. We had Anton LaVey, Charles Manson, Lydia Lunch, Nick Cave, Allen Ginsburgh, Henry Rollins, the guys from Survival Research Labs... They all did something. It actually made so much money, I felt guilty about it and paid people royalties.

Maelstrom: Are you putting out more stuff?

Eugene Robinson: No, man. Record labels suck.

Maelstrom: What does CFY stand for?

Eugene Robinson: It stands for Control for Youth. But of course, I’m not a youth anymore.

Maelstrom: How long have you had this label?

Eugene Robinson: Since 1980. The first band I was in was called Al and the Xs. I played saxophone. I started CFY to sell our demo tapes. ...Hey! There’s a PASCO Sam truck! “Why not?” Exactly. I love this guy...

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