JOHN is way COOL

Rip It Up, Issue 204, 1 August 1994, Page 8

JOHN is way COOL

KM® fflsgßO® Don&aroßw

John. S Hall is the brain and the voice of King Missile. He's the one that writes brilliantly of everyday things and occurances such as Cheesecake Trucks, Real Men, Jesus, Doodies in Sandboxes and Penises that detach. John. S is reasonably normal on the phone. Not that I expected him to be wacky but he's very civil indeed. John. S says he likes doing interviews but he's not keen on the radio sort “because they want you to go on the radio and be silly or entertaining or something," he laughs.

Oh yeah, John. S talks exactly like he does on his records.

King Missile have been in existence since 1987 when they released their debut EP Fluting On The Hump which yielded two College radio hits ‘Take Stuff from Work’, and ‘Sensitive Artist’, closely followed by They in 1988 and the fantastical Mystical Shit in 1990 on which John. S showed off his lyric writing brilliance with songs like ‘Cheesecake Truck’, ‘Gary and Melissa’ and the way cool ‘Jesus Was Way Cool’. Mystical Shit was a major breakthrough as far as exposure for the band went. They followed Mystical Shit with their Atlantic debut The Way To Salvation in 1991, and Happy Hour in 1992 which featured the wonderful violent ‘Martin Scorsese’ and the smash hit ‘Detachable Penis’.

Aaannnd they’ve just recently released the self-titled King Missile, which was produced by rawk producer Daniel Rey (who used to be in Masters of Reality) and not Shimmy Disc owner — King Missile were a Shimmy band until The Way To Salvation — and Bongwater man Kramer who worked with King Missile up until the Happy Hour album.

“This is the second album I’ve done without Kramer, and the Happy Hour album wasn’t really done with Kramer either, he was hardly there at all. It’s weird working with Kramer and it’s weird working without him. I like to work with album orientated people as opposed to band orientated producers. This guy [Daniel Rey] was very band orientated and the resulting album [King Missile] is very much what the band did, and it’s definitely got its merits, but I prefer making albums as opposed to recording bands.” King Missile are certainly one on their own, they are un-labelable . . .

“I’ve always thought that the reason we get away with what we get away with is because no one else does it, so they embrace it for that reason. I met so many people in bands that just wanna sound like successful people, and I’ve always felt that that doesn’t work. But who knows, maybe in a few years time lots of people will be doing this sort of music. I like to hear stuff that is more free associative and less blatantly pop.” John. S’ lyrics have a wonderous childlike quality and simplistic qualities but his observations are also just so bang on it’s alarming. There’s a lot of child still inside of him .

“I think I’m more juvenile than most people (laughs). I’d like to write books, and that requires a lot of writing and a lot less goofing off. Other people don’t think I goof off that much but I certainly do. I just think it’s easier for me to look at things more clearly if I look at them from the point of view of an innocent.”

John. S has recently completed an MTV Spoken Word Tour with two other spoken word artists where he was taken around the country in “a very fancy tour bus” and was treated to “very nice hotel rooms” and got paid “lotsa money”. But the promoters unfortunately forgot to promote the actual event and spent too much money on the

artists much to John’s dismay. The music industry is a very mixed up world with a weird set of priorities, and it can be quite awful for a Sensitive Artist like John. S . . . “I don’t know how it is over there, but over here . . . and it’s probably true of any industry .. . (sighs) for me it’s very hard to deal with so many men. I hearthat publishing for example has a lot more women in positions of power so if I move into books it might be easier. Mostly the people I get along with here {at Atlantic Records} are the women who work in the promotions/publicity department and some of the diplomats that aren't so much involved in the boy party thing. And it’s also very white, it’s not like the real world. The problem is it’s a bunch of men who are used to their own thing, they’re not dealing with the world, just their own corner . . . and they don’t even necessarily have to be sexist but just operating in a sexist environment changes everybody, and even if you’re not sexist after a while that stuff gets to you.”

Speaking of people that can’t see outta their own corner, what’s all the fuss about Generation X at the moment? All this stuff about ‘we are making less money than our parents, but we are sooo cool and right on and 90s’?

“Well, all labels are bullshit. I know so many different kinds of people. I know people who live in the squat in the Lower East Side and I know people who work in industries for five dollars an hour and live in cheap apartments and I know people who make 90,000 a year and people who make 30,000 a year and people who struggle and people who are slackers, and my experience with this country is while we probably value money a lot more than a lot of other countries do, there’s still a wide spectrum of people who, in terms of ambition and everything else, some people are just more ambitious than others, either financially or artistically or what have you. There are all these slogans like ‘we are the first generation to make less money than our parents’, but that’s not true. My father made less money than his father, and I would be the second generation to make less than my parents (laughs) if it worked out that way. Not everbody fits into these neat categories, not everybody in the 60s was upwardly mobile, and therefore things that are happening now are not necessarily unprecedented, the seeds have been sewn for generations. So right now our country isn’t making as much money as we did. So who cares. It’s not a big deal, but to some people it is, so Generation X exists for people who define themselves on the basis of their financial worth ... or their lack of ambition.”

Yeah, tell it like it is John. King Missile will be on a break for about a year and a half, John tells me, while their guitarist David Rick has a child with his girlfriend. Meanwhile John. S has another project underway. “It’s gonna be like a quartet, sort of, with a cello, a violin and acoustic guitar ... but there will also be a bit of feedback there too, and I’ll keep seeing the four or five movies a week that I usually do.”

SHIRLEY-ANNE CHARLES.