Guitarist for Blöödhag, whose motto is: "The faster you go deaf, the more time you have to read."
EVENT: Blöödhag plays the Breakroom with Yellow Machine Gun and Vulgar Pigeons on Sat Nov 18.
Do you plan on throwing any books at this show?
"Oh yeah. We always throw at least a dozen. Maybe a baker's dozen."
So does heavy metal promote literacy?
"I think classic heavy metal does--when you're talking about Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, stuff like that. Even Metallica, they talk about the books that they've read, like For Whom the Bell Tolls. Somebody was reading some Hemingway at some point."
And being literate promotes listening to heavy metal?
"See, I don't know. Everybody seems to think that heavy-metal guys are idiots and boneheads, which I guess to a certain degree they are. But really, the guys that are playing the music aren't boneheads. I mean, look at Lemmy [of Motörhead], he's practically a genius. That's a perfect example--that guy's fully literate."
All of your song titles are author names, right?
"Yep, every single one. Though we did switch around a story by Philip K. Dick that he wrote about killer pinball machines so we could be on a Multiball compilation."
So after the show, are the books just left in the trampled mess of spilled beer?
"Actually, after every show I go around and usually end up picking up two or three books, which is pretty good when we throw out 13 to 15 a show.... People are taking them home. And if you watch [the people] when we're throwing them, they want 'em! Except for the big guys that get hit in the face with a book and get all mad at us. But that's the price you've got to pay for promoting literacy in this 'smack the people on the head' fashion."
Didn't you guys just finish a library tour?
"Yeah, we just went on this thing called the Timberland Library District, and we played at libraries in five different counties in Western Washington. Some of them were really out of the way, like Hoquiam, and the kids would show up, and well, not really know what to think."
And you'd throw books at the kids?
"Yeah, totally."
