John Sinclair Interview by Bo White
Responses
@ 420 Café, Amsterdam, February 7, 2011
John
will be performing @ White’s Bar Saturday November 3rd with the legendary Blues
Creators. Sinclair’s DVD Twenty To Life
will be screened throughout the evening
“To be literate in today's world is a political statement."
- John Sinclair
John
Sinclair
Affiant
Sayeth Not
At
69 years of age John Sinclair shows no signs of slowing down. Besides touring
the world with a loose and ever changing aggregation of Blues Scholars , Jazz
masters and Rock & Rollers, Sinclair continues to release CDs, books,
articles and programs and produces podcasts and internet radio programs. John
has performed in Saginaw several times and possesses a historic grasp of Michigan
culture from an international perspective. Sinclair is a sweet man of peace who
is also a realist. From his early days at Trans Love commune, managing the MC5
and befriending John Lennon, Sinclair has kept his hand on the pulse of our
crumbling empire. He is quick to point out that that America, like ancient Rome,
has lost sight of its democratic principles and given the ruling class carte
blanche to rob our coffers. He is also a man of the earth, a happy and
contented grandfather who values love and friendship above all else
John – what have you been up to since 20 to Life was released?
The
film was released in 2007 and quickly faded into media oblivion. Since then I
have continued my travels, performing around the USA and in London, Amsterdam,
Paris, Genoa, Rome, Santiago, Tokyo, Seville, Barcelona, Madrid and wherever
they will have me. I’m based in Amsterdam and London when I’m not in Detroit,
where I just completed a two-year Poet in Residence term at the Bohemian
National Home and am now based at the Trans-Love Energies Compassionate Care
Center at 1486 Gratiot in Detroit. I now write a bi-weekly column for the
Detroit Metro Times called HIGHER
GROUND.
It must have stirred up renewed interest in your life and times?
Not
so much. The filmmaker made a bad deal to get it completed and the distribution
was a big let-down, plus there were no theatrical screenings & very few
festival screenings, so not much notice was attracted to the film nor, by
extension, to myself.
Have you released any new music, poetry or writings?
As
a performer I continue to work with diverse bands in Amsterdam, London, New
York City, Detroit, New Orleans, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Mississippi.
Some of them play my arrangements, some improvise jazz to my texts, some play
straight-out blues to my poems. In the past three years I’ve performed in
ensembles with David Kimbrough, Afrissippi, the Black Crowes, Marshall Allen,
Elliott Levin, Daniel Carter, Ras Moshe, Sabeer Mateen, 101 Runners, Pinkeye
Orchestra, Planet D Nonet, Carlo Ditta, Dr. Prof. Barry Kaiser, Tom Worrell,
Vincente Pino, Leslie Lopez, Steve Fly, the Dirty Strangers, Gary Lammin,
Charles Shaar Murray, Jair-Rohm Parker Wells, Primal Scream, DKT/MC5, Youth,
Mark Ritsema, Angelo Olivieri, Raskolnikov, and people I can’t even remember
right now. I have bands of Blues Scholars in Amsterdam, Detroit, Los Angeles,
and Oxford, Mississippi.
I’ve
issued two books—IT’S ALL GOOD: A JOHN SINCLAIR READER and SUN RA INTERVIEWS
& ESSAYS with Headpress in London. SUN RA has just been translated into
Spanish and issued by Libertos Editorial. My “underground classic” book, GUITAR
ARMY, was reissued in a 35th anniversary edition by Feral
House/Process Books in 2007 and has been translated now into Italian, Spanish
and French. BookBeat in Detroit will be bringing out my poetry & prose
collection SONG OF PRAISE: HOMAGE TO JOHN COLTRANE, and Ecstatic Peace Press is
planning to issue the completed first half of my Monk work in verse, always know: a book of monk. And Dotty
Oliver in Little Rock is publishing my New Orleans prose collection, MARDI GRAS
TO THE WORLD, later this year.
I’ve
issued three CDs since 2007—TEARING DOWN THE SHRINE OF TRUTH & BEAUTY with
the Pinkeye Orchestra (LocoGnosis Records); DETROIT LIFE with the Motor City
Blues Scholars (No Cover Records); and VIPER MADNESS with the Planet D Nonet
(No Cover). My new record is called LET’S GO GET ‘EM by John Sinclair & His
International Blues Scholars and will be released by No Cover in March, and I’m
just now completing a new album project with a producer in London known as
Youth that I’m calling BEATNIK YOUTH.
I’ve
also completed a work begun in 1982: a book of blues verse titled FATTENING
FROGS FOR SNAKES that’s in four sections, each one set to music and recorded
with a different ensemble in New Orleans, Detroit, Oxford and Clarksville,
Mississippi. I’m assembling the package into a box set as we speak
Are you still
involved in radio? Do you see radio as an effective medium to get your message
and your poetry and music to a wider audience?
I
also program & produce regular podcasts for two internet radio stations,
Radio Free Amsterdam and Detroit Life Radio, including weekly installments of
the John Sinclair Radio Show, Sinclair On
The Air and Jazz from the
Hempshopper. I also collect and edit for broadcast blues & jazz
programs by deejays present & past that I enjoy. I post one one-hour
program each day on each of the two stations.
With the advent of file sharing do you see a
shift in the relationship between record companies and artists like yourself?
Yes:
basically there is none in terms of what used to be, i.e., with the possibility
of getting paid. My best experience is to be able to make the records and get
someone to press some of them at no cost to myself.
Last time we talked you seemed to paint a bleak picture of
our future based on the ascendance of powerful business-led coalitions and the
financial Institutions that control our government. In the past year Matt
Taibbi, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone
Magazine, has written several articles and a book Griftopia
that has exposed Wall Street’s culpability in destroying America from within.
Are you familiar with Taibbi’s work? Why aren’t people in an uproar over the
theft of our country?
That’s
a question I’m unable to answer. I know exactly how fucked up this country is,
but the white people love it this way and they won’t change for anything.
You had a bleak outlook on Detroit's recovery in the BBC
documentary Requiem for Detroit. Do
you still feel there is no hope for Detroit and other cities that were built on
the auto industry?
I
don’t know about the other ones, but Detroit is not going to come back. It’s
over. What becomes of the fabulous ruins of Detroit may be something
interesting but it will not be economically viable again.
What keeps bringing you back to Michigan?
I
have a beloved daughter & granddaughter in Detroit and hundreds of friends
made over the past 50 years. My estranged wife Penny Sinclair lives in Detroit
and I like to see her when I can. Also, I can work in and around Detroit and
use it as a base to tour different parts of the country and make enough dollars
to maintain my very frugal lifestyle while I’m in Amsterdam & London.
What role could
music/poetry play in the recovery of Michigan….the country? Are established
artists important to our culture? Should they look for success elsewhere? Can
our artists, poets and musicians be heard over the din of mass produced and
disposable music that dominates the corporate airwaves?
No.
Over the past ten years, Europe has shown an interest in
the downfall of Detroit and the auto industry. Documentaries have been filmed,
photographers have come to document the urban decay. Do you feel that their
interest is based in aesthetics, or are they sincerely concerned with what
seems to be the end of an era? Are they infatuated or concerned?
(A)
Aesthetics. (B) They are documentarians.
Do you keep in touch with any of your friends from the
days of the MC5 and Trans Love?
Yes.
An astonishing number of us are still alive, although we’ve recently lost
people like James Semark of the Artists Workshop, Stanley the Mad Hatter of the
Grande. Eastown and Second Chance Ballrooms, Bruce Cohen and others. I consider
Wayne Kramer of the MC5 one of my closest friends, ditto for Charles Moore of
the Detroit Artists Workshop, Pun Plamondon of the White Panther Party, Marton
Gross and Johnny Evans of the Urbations, Cary Loren of Destroy All Monsters,
and many others whom I see in Michigan and around the country on my travels.
Do you see any
signs that our counter culture/peace movement is growing and establishing a
wider base of support?
No.
Do you still collaborate with your ex-wife Leni?
I
remain a terrific fan of her photography and often recommend her work to people
publishing various projects of mine.
Any last comments?
I’m
happy to be alive in an old age I never anticipated nor expected, I’m ecstatic
to be a grandfather, I only do the things I want to do and don’t do the things
I don’t want to do, I’m borne along in life by my hundreds of friends all over
the western world and generally speaking I’m happy as a clam. Further, Affiant
sayeth not.
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