_{Filmmaker Jason Axel Summers (right) with Stuart Gray. in Jason’s apartment. This “Stutue” was commissioned by Jason and depicts him with his Super 8 camera and light meter in either hand.  The white of the lens and the sensor on the meter are made of glow in the dark epoxy.  Stuart used his own hair as the hair on the Stutue}

US filmmaker Jason Axel Summers' documentary about Australian-born musical anarchist and visual artist, Stuart Gray, “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago”, is a prime example of what fantastic music there is out there to discover, and an excellent example of 'if you had expectations about this man, leave 'em at the door”.

Many I-94 Barflies will know of Stuart Gray (aka Stu Spasm), but not so much his music. If there's any justice, as a result of this documentary, Stuart will become a TV star and take his latest band, the New York City-based Art Gray Noizz Quartet, on an international stadium tour, complete with middle-aged ladies heaving their undies at him, while his oddly-insightful sculptures will sell for hundreds of thousands.

But hey, we live in a real world of struggle, pain, indifference, beauty, sin and downright foolishness, don't we.

So let's have a little yak with Jason Axel Summers, the somewhat determined man behind “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago”.

_{Stuart Gray aka Spasm.}

Robert Brokenmouth: Jason, what exactly drew you to actually make documentaries in the first place - it's a thankless task, surely?

Jason Axel Summers: Yes, making underground music documentaries is not something I would recommend for 99.999% of the population.  The short answer is that doing this is a ridiculous compulsion - a sort of illness or condition.  It can make you feel very proud, but can also make you heartsick and depressed and overwhelmed. 

I wish I could figure a way to involve grants, etc.. to help me finance more documentaries instead of using all our own resources to do everything. I need to figure that out! Here’s the longer answer:

As a teenager I was really into all kinds of music, including classic rock, blues, classical, punk rock and metal.  My father and I took a night course in photography and built a dark room in our basement when I was about 15.  I continued with photography as we moved around, and moved to Wilmington, North Carolina my senior year of high school.  I then went to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989 because it was incredibly cheap and easy for me, as we lived in North Carolina at that time. 

I knew nothing about the wide range of music coming out of this pocket of the southern US. The one exception was Flat Duo Jets, and I saw them once my senior year of high school, and that fucking blew me away, but I didn’t know anything about them other than my artist friend had a t shirt where he had just written in marker pen “Flat Duo Jets”. This simple act of his making his own shitty shirt affected me greatly, and opened me up to the ideas behind punk and music outside the system in a new kind of Dada way.

This was 1988, so there was no such thing as the internet.  Moving around a lot as a kid meant I didn’t really have much link to music scenes, living in places like West Virginia, Niagara Falls, NY, South Carolina, Virginia.  I did have friends who had metal bands in Delaware, and I was playing guitar then, in middle and high school, so metal was big with me at that time.  

My middle school science teacher (Tom Darden) had an elective class music band where he taught us how to play and we performed at the end of the semester as a group.  He had been in a garage band in the mid 1960’s called The Nobles who put out one 7” with the A-Side titled “Something Else”.  He came into class one day with an LP copy of Crypt Records' “Back From The Grave #5”  on it and was so excited Tim Warren had put The Nobles on that album and sent him a copy. 

His band used to play in Roman togas like the scene in "Animal House"!   It’s the only band I know of that used to actually do that.  Copies of that 7” now go for hundreds of dollars.   I eventually scored one on eBay a few years ago, and when I got it, it had “Tom Darden” written on it - it was one of his personal copies! He had passed away many years ago.

But the heavier stuff like metal and Black Sabbath and Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains was what I wanted to hear because I was sick of what was being played on the radio for the most part.  We were very close to Washington, DC, so I had found out about crazy bands nearby, like Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and Pentagram.  I had really gotten into Butthole Surfers, Sex Pistols, Germs, and Black Flag. 

When I showed up for university in Chapel Hill in 1989, the music scene had a long tradition going back to Elizabeth Cotten and James Taylor, besides others a little further away in North Carolina like Link Wray, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, and Nina Simone.  I was able to get my heart’s desire my sophomore year, and was able to land a DJ position for the radio station at the university.  This happened to be one of the best college radio stations in America at that time - WXYC (89.3 FM). 

It was open-format programming, which meant all types of music could be played at any time, and we weren’t constrained to present block programming where it is just one category of music. It was the first radio station on the planet to broadcast around the clock on the internet.  

There were tons of people who were DJ’s there who had graduated and were older and happy to mentor us younger folks wanting to learn more about music.  It was a very strong community, all these DJ’s, and we did all kinds of events together, besides seeing each other out at shows, etc.. I spent a year co-hosting a show called “The Backyard Barbecue” which presented music from all the various bands of the area, which included Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Wilmington,  and Charlotte. 

I worked at a restaurant with all kinds of people who were artists, and many became very successful in their chosen fields, including writers and musicians.  Katherine Whalen from Squirrel Nut Zippers worked there, and we collaborated on some fun little motion picture and marionette projects. That’s when I took some pictures of Squirrel Nut Zippers for one of their albums, and I used to watch her and Jimbo’s house and dog when they would go on tour. 

I was also in a band, and played with some other friends sometimes, and I helped build the newest version of the famous Cat’s Cradle venue in 1993 and worked there for several years.  I started doing photos for friends’ bands, either promo shots or for their albums, and then I started doing really scuzzy music videos on Super 8 film.

After a few years, I wrangled my way onto a couple no-budget feature films, and I started working as a freelance film technician full time in about 1996, doing lighting, grip, and camera assistant roles.  I knew what it took with both raw talent, dedication to practicing, and a real drive to perform your music being in an independent band at that time.  I didn’t really have the talent or the dedication to practicing, and I was more of a dilettante, but that helped me understand just how exceptional and phenomenal so many musicians are as people and artists.  I felt a real affinity for them, and music has always been otherworldly to me. 

I did have that drive to make it happen for myself when I got into film professionally, and so I was able to then aim my skills with that field back at the musicians and artists I so admired and wanted to try and understand better.  I was learning as I made money working in the field, including on an endless stream of low budget features.  That is its own crazy article!  I even ended up working on a couple of Beastie Boys music videos, and those were by far the coolest paid jobs I've ever had in my life. 

All that being said, if I knew I had the skills, the time, the musical knowledge, and the gear to shine a light on these people I’ve singled out with my films, if I’d had the opportunity to make a film with them and didn’t, I would just feel horrible inside.  I would not be able to live with myself knowing I had an opportunity and let it slip past me because I was too lazy or distracted with other shit to fucking tell the whole world how amazing these people and their work is.  This is my burden, and I have to put in the work to try and blow people’s minds. I’m a persistent motherfucker.

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RB: Could you expand on what you wrote on the Film Freeway site: "While DJing at a college radio station in the early 1990’s I discovered the strange and wonderful albums of the band Lubricated Goat ..."?

JAS: Working at the college radio station WXYC I mentioned previously, I would do long overnight shifts the first year, that were like four hours long I think. Just playing some of the albums in the assigned rotation we had to play were insanely good - Jesus Lizard, Alice Donut, Cop Shoot Cop, God Bullies, Guided By Voices, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Royal Trux, William Burroughs’ “Dead City Radio”, The Cows, Soundgarden, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, The Cramps, GWAR, Flaming Lips, Henry Rollins, tons of jazz, including a lot of reissues coming out around that time like Raymond Scott/”Carl Stalling Project”.  I would spend a lot of time meeting and talking to people there and playing records and learning about all kinds of music I had never been exposed to.

Around that time bands like Dead Moon and Lubricated Goat were showing up in our play rotation.  The people at the radio station in charge of programming were really into amazing music, and had contacts with record labels and people involved with the crazier independent music scenes around the US and the world that were becoming successful with the help of college radio.  I found out about bands like Vertical Slit/V3/James Shepard, Flipper, Brian Eno, Sleep, Crash Worship, and all kinds of other music through my involvement with this station. 

For some reason, Lubricated Goat (the first two albums) really excited me.  I thought “Plays The Devil’s Music” was one of the most intriguing and confusing records I had ever heard.  I grew up with my dad’s Frank Zappa albums, so I had already been properly challenged, but Zappa didn’t have the kickass catchy rocking that Lubricated Goat seemed to do effortlessly while being hysterically weird.  

“Paddock Of Love” is also a fucking masterpiece, in my opinion.  I would steer anyone wanting to do an autopsy on “alternative” or “grunge” music from the 1990’s to that album as a shining beacon of excellence. 

Also, I really liked this band called Nirvana and this record I bought called “Bleach” that came out that I knew nothing about, and that was the first album I bought when I showed up in Chapel Hill.  Their first record still fucking rules.  I have one of the first 2000 pressed of “Bleach”.  It’s still in the shrink wrap with the poster and the price sticker says $6.99. 

That album from Nirvana had the same vibe as the heavy stuff of Lubricated Goat. I just loved Lubricated Goat’s slamming drums, and their piss-takes of stripper music.  I thought it was like taking The Cramps and Butthole Surfers mixing it with crazy novelty songs from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s I would have heard listening to a famous nationwide radio show called “Dr. Demento”.  That’s where my brother and I as kids would hear shit like Kim Fowley’s “They’re Coming To Take Me Away”, “Monster Mash”,  “Shaving Cream”, 'Fish Heads' by Barnes & Barnes and Weird Al Yankovic got his start on there.

How could this one band (Lubricated Goat) and the Butthole Surfers too, I guess, have the total package?  Chugging, heavy music, with great drumming, with hilariously stupid artwork, subject matter, and fantastically inventive production!!  The more confused I got, the more interested I got.  I knew I liked tons of other shit coming out on Amphetamine Reptile (Am Rep released LG in the States) at that point, but I was too poor to buy magazines like “Your Flesh”, “Maximum R&R”, and “Flipside”, where I could learn more about all the bands I was loving, but also find out about Stu Spasm and Lubricated Goat. Total information vacuum! 

Lubricated Goat played at the Cat’s Cradle at some point while I was living there, but somehow I missed them.  Everyone talked about them setting their hair on fire during the show and playing pool with everyone. Man, was I pissed I missed that! I went to a little record fair, probably in 1995 with Dave Hartman, drummer of Southern Culture On The Skids, and I found the Lubricated Goat “Schadenfreude” EP (signed!) by Stu Spasm and bought that.  Man was I excited!  My collection of some of the best music on the planet was growing, and I was hooked.  In 1997 I moved to New York City to pursue my film career.

_{Jason Axel Summers with the Art Gray Noizz Quintet - June, 2022}

RB: How on earth did you first encounter Gray, and his music? 

JAS: (Partner) Kate Fix and I met on a feature film in Long Island, NY toward the end of 1997.  I had already planned my move to NYC, and she and I got apartments in Manhattan in the Lower East Side/East Village the same month, four blocks from each other, randomly.  She had just moved back to New York City after living in Portland, Oregon and being a friend of Andrew Loomis, drummer of Dead Moon. 

Not long after that, at the infamous Mars Bar, a notorious tiny dive bar around the corner from my apartment and CBGB, I saw at the end of their bar 'LUBRICATED GOAT', a 2-foot-long, carved into the bar with power tools in the gothic letters from “Plays The Devil’s Music”.  I said out loud to the bar “Holy shit, I guess Stu Spasm must be in NYC and must have done this”.  Someone said, “Yeah, he’s in here all the time”. I couldn’t fucking believe it. 

Around that time, Kate and I also ran into a poster for the band Dead Moon performing at the Continental Club up at St. Mark’s Place, a few blocks up from where we lived.  We hooked up with them (Kate was already friends with them from Portland) and they came back to crash at my apartment that night, which was their first show ever in NYC (they played with The Oblivians and Quintron & Miss Pussycat Show - fucking epic show). Not long after that, out on the street on East Houston St, where you see me getting into the van to go on the road with Lubricated Goat in the film, I found a poster on a crosswalk pole for Stu Spasm & The One-Legged Octopus.  It was for a show fucking 150-feet from our apartment, on Orchard Street. I could not believe my luck!!! 

I went to that show, and it was a very strange affair, with Stuart doing kind of a cabaret show with karaoke to his own songs, with some weird props on stage, including balloons.  I was at the bar near the stage, and he was singing, and all of a sudden he yelled at all of us at the bar to lift our feet up.  He then got down and was scrambling on the floor underneath our stools, and came up with something in his hands, then dipped them in his Jameson’s whiskey, then jammed them in his mouth and went back up on stage and started singing again. 

His two front teeth had fallen out and he was getting them back in and ON WITH THE SHOW as quickly as he could.  

We ended up drinking all night there, and the rest is history.  We became very good friends.  We did an article together for Bob Bert’s “BB Gun” magazine that is shown in the film concerning Stuart’s teeth and how he makes them.  We did the article to try and get Stuart the attention of a dentist who might help.

RB: What made you actually want to do a documentary on him? There's a world of difference in becoming interested in a performer and taking it further…

JAS: I loved his shows.  He was DJing, and he had Lubricated Goat going at that time, with Hayden Milsteed on drums, Natz from Cop Shoot Cop on bass, and Ant Migliaccio from The Spitters on second guitar.  I met Skeleton Boy at a CBGB show where both of us were shooting LG. 

Stu knew I shot, and we had just gotten a couple of these little MiniDV cameras that had just been introduced to the world (we shot our Dead Moon documentary with them).  He asked me to shoot an interview with him for Craig Barnes, who also goes by Cousin Creep.  He was doing a documentary on the “Blah Blah Blah” Lubricated Goat TV appearance where he was based in Australia, and I needed some footage shot in Australia for our Dead Moon doc we were working on, so we agreed to trade footage across the globe. Barnes ended up not proceeding with his doc and he kindly allowed us the use of that interview in our film.

Anyway, I continued shooting various things with Gray as I could.  I found him to be an intensely interesting interviewee.  He was more concise, droll, clever, and dark, and very intimidating than anyone I had ever met.  Yet he was very kind to me.  He really wanted me to keep shooting.  He was always hoping I could do something to project what he was doing and what he was about to the world.  He’d had several opportunities with other people involved in video production that never panned out in NY. 

He has done a whole film soundtrack for the film “Love God” which is amazing from the filmmaker who did “Red & Rosy”, Frank Grow.  He has done all kinds of amazing music, a lot has never been released.  Much of it was done as demos in his bedroom or practice room with a drum machine.  He started feeding me everything in his archive way back then.  It’s all so good.  I just can’t get enough of it. 

I did a couple of LP & EP covers with him - taking the photographs for the 'Stu Spasm:  Popular Male Vocal' 7”, and the LP 'The Great Old Ones' monster we created on a sidewalk. He was a gentlemanly person, and so Kate liked him a lot, and we would go eat with his girlfriend and him every now and then, and he was hysterically funny. 

He was so knowledgeable about all kinds of underground culture and music, and esoteric things, and these are the kinds of things that really get me excited.  He didn’t suffer fools lightly, but I didn't either, so we were kind of similar.  His intriguing character and personality just made me think he was a genuinely creative force who could also present himself in this very performative way while being interviewed, and I had enough sense to recognize that. 

_{The man as interview subject.}

Then Kate and I moved away from NYC, to North Carolina.  I would sometimes go up and stay with Stuart for a week or so, when I got him gigs with me doing tech work for a video company shooting Fashion Week in NYC twice a year. 

After a few years, that gig ended, and Stuart and I didn’t see each other for a number of years.  Kate and I had our daughter, and so my attention got drawn elsewhere.  I reconnected with him on a work trip to NYC in 2021, and he was really interested in the old footage I had done, and so I edited it together, and Kate really loved it.  That’s when we started shooting more to document him further.  He was still the insanely gregarious and bawdy wit that was exciting to be around.  It just made sense to continue shooting him.

_{Children’s Choir Director Seamus Kenney with Stuart and his wife Dennie on the set for an interview in a North Carolina barn.} 

RB: North Carolina seems to have had a thriving music scene, could you tell us a little about that?

JAS: The music scene in North Carolina at the time I moved there in 1989 was astonishingly brilliant, diverse, and supportive. I fell totally backass into it as an oblivious mouth-breather.

There were amazing bands from all over the world coming here constantly.  Because of the Cat’s Cradle, and a bevy of other venues, bands were treated properly and came back over and over to play for people from all over NC who would descend on the moderately sized college town of Chapel Hill. Bigger acts like Iggy Pop would go an hour away to Raleigh.   Bands of various areas in NC that I really got into included Antiseen, Brickbat, Shiny Beast, Her Majesty’s Secret Cervix, Chew Toy, Tweaker, Picasso Trigger, Southern Culture On The Skids, Polvo, Archers Of Loaf, Speed McQueen, Trailer Bride, Kerbloki, Black Taj, Poncho Holly Bullfight Party, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Family Dollar Pharaohs, Protean Spook, Metal Flake Mother, Flat Duo Jets/Dexter Romweber, Dillon Fence, Zen Frisbee, Shark Quest, Pipe, Spatula, Mind Sirens, Blue Green Gods, Bicentennial Quarters, Evil Wiener/Billy Sugar Fix, Bobo The Amazing Rubber Faced Boy, Mishki Sanfords, Lud, and on and on. 

There was also a collective in Raleigh that had all manner of bands called “Wifflefist”, and many of the bands were doing aggressive and purposely inane performances that seemed to be in line with a lot of what I found out later was going on in Adelaide and Sydney in Stu’s formative years - like Stu’s Chicken Holder, Stu Spasm’s Commercial Band, Toilet Duck, Thug, Furry Men Of The North, Bumhead Orchestra, The Boilers, and Lachlan McLeod’s crazy projects and compilations, etc.. 

They were more Dadaist and looking to be provocative, and also to comment on our stupid culture that we grew up with in the US in the 1970’s and 80’s. 

I was friends with Archers Of Loaf, and they had a single come out called “Wrong”, and I think they paid me $80 to make a Super 8 music video for the song.  I went to a few out-of-town shows with them shooting, and we shot some goofy stuff around town, and some really crappy stop action stuff, and their first music video was done.  It fucking ended up on MTV!  I just couldn’t believe it.  They went on to have label support and do some real music videos.  To this day they still tell me that “Wrong” was the best music video they ever did.  

RB: Weren't you  in a band or two yourself?

JAS: Yes, I was in a band called Minerva Strain, kind of sometimes complicated, shoegaze music, somewhat akin to early Flaming Lips or something. I played guitar and sometimes sang.  We did a full LP as well as several 7”s and a split 10” with Her Majesty’s Secret Cervix. We appeared on some compilations of that era and played a tour up through NYC, up into New England.  

I also used to play and recorded a small amount with my friends in a band called Mishki Sanfords.  My friend Roy Lee Gittens, who is very influential on me - he’s kind of heavily involved with Southern Culture On The Skids, and he tour managed The Fall in the US a few times, and worked on many famous films as an electrician, like “Blue Velvet”, “Weekend At Bernie’s”, “Evil Dead II”, and the movie “Sideways” is based on him and his friend Julian. 

From being in bands that played out, toured, recorded, and basically put out our own records I realized not only how hard it is to be in a band, and practice enough to get better, but how hard it is for me to write original material that really accomplished what I wanted musically.  Therefore, I have massive respect for the people that can do that, and it really informs how I approach music, bands, and artists now.  It’s exhausting to tour and bring your A-game on the road as a struggling, unsupported and basically unknown musician.  Many of these people are compelled to do this, and the world is better for it.  Those are my people - that and film and circus people!  

RB: Doco’s are horribly expensive: how did you manage to fund “I Should Have Been Dead Years Ago”? how did you handle the publishing rights? Was a lot of travel involved..? 

JAS: Kate and I have been pretty responsible, and being a freelancer in the motion picture world for decades will put the fear of dry spells in you, so one learns how to save for the lean times.  We’ve had the support of our respective parents, and been poised in that regard to take advantage when luck presents itself. 

At this point in our careers, with excellent cameras and lights becoming available in the last decade or so for much less expense, and our acquiring this gear for me to make money on with various commercials, documentaries, and other kinds of shoots I get hired for, the gear ends up paying for itself and helping to get my day rates.  Being wise and getting a camera, lighting, and grip package together gets me some very interesting clients, and makes me able to shoot for free whenever I want! 

We had to spend money on audio production and post production, and travel, and yes, we paid Stuart for mechanical and publishing rights, but he gave us a deal on those, realizing we were working toward a final film that punched well above its financial weight in quality.  At least that’s what I’d like to think.  There was a lot of travel with me going to NYC several times and living with Stuart or Bloody Rich Hutchins, and then I flew Stu and Dennie (his wife) down for the children’s choir scene we shot on our property her in North Carolina in one of our barns. 

That was an expense, and I had to hire a choir director who knew what he was doing, so I got Seamus Kenney from the Chapel Hill area to put that together for us.  That was well worth it and a great way to end the film.  I spent a year-and-a-half, on and off, editing this thing myself as well.  So that is a huge savings of budget.

This film is an anomaly in that it looks and sounds like a fairly professional film, but I did almost everything myself.  Not a lot of people make films like this on their own without financing from outside and hiring people to do these various roles.  Because of this fact, we can do whatever the hell we want, and we answer to no one with both style and content.  

RB: Did you have any idea how complicated and crowded Stuart's story was? 

JAS: I knew what I thought was a lot about Stuart’s past, including in Australia, but as people started surfacing with photos, posters, and other materials, I realized just how little I actually knew.  I know a good deal now, but still I’m obviously ignorant about a ton of music and art from him and that scene that I wasn’t present for and was not well documented unfortunately, however understandably. 

I knew about Salamander Jim, and I knew Lachlan McLeod personally when he came and stayed for a good bit in NYC.  I knew about Beasts of Bourbon and the “Waste Sausage” compilation, and I loved Grong Grong, Bloodloss, and King Snake Roost.  That being said, it was like a tidal wave of stuff that came at me with various people who have been very kind delving into their old archives and sending me stuff. Russell Kilbey, Craig Barnes, Graham Nitschke, Adrian Symes, Alison Lea, Liz Dee, John Foy, John Billington, Patrick Kavanagh, Andrew Denton, Alexander Karinksy, Bruce Griffiths, and a slew of other people who still think a lot of Stuart came to the rescue. 

They could have dismissed me as an interloper, but I’ve been delighted by their esprit de corps for getting the word out about their art scene and Stuart Fucking Gray.  John Billington, who owns the rights to the John Foy/Jim Paton book “Snaps Crack Pop!” by Skull Printworks, featuring everything graphically created and related to Red Eye and Black Eye Records, and all the stories to go with them, was very kind in allowing me use of the materials, which was a great help in many ways, and John Foy was very gracious helping as he could.  This book really helped me educate myself about what was going on back then. 

Because of the way Stuart left Australia for the US, his large archive at Gracelands just disappeared into the mists. A real art and history tragedy in my opinion.  So yes, it was beyond complicated and terrifying trying to poke my nose into this world of the past without insulting people who were actually there!

RB: You located a huge amount of footage - how hard was it to source? was it expensive? How much restoration work was needed? 

JAS: Some of the footage came from Lachlan McLeod, and some footage I found online and approached the people and asked them to please be involved, and people are still coughing up footage occasionally and sending it my way. 

I had to pay a lot of money to the ABC for the “In The Raw” Lubricated Goat “Blah Blah Blah” footage, but Andrew Denton and others were very gracious with allowing me to use their likeness when they didn’t need to. 

There was no restoration work done.  If you have good sound, you can often get away with shitty visuals.  If you have crappy sound, all is lost.   I like to think my clever and expert editing and pacing helped some of the materials that were of lesser quality be digested in the film more easily, so I hope visually and audio-wise people enjoy themselves when watching it.

_{Mike Westbrook woring on audio post production.}

RB: The sound in the film is excellent, and consistent, how did you manage it? 

JAS: We strove to make excellent sound from the beginning of this film.  I luckily did some of the best sound work of that time for me personally with Stu’s first interviews in 2003, even though they weren’t great.  We screwed ourselves with terrible sound previously and learned how important good sound is to a film.  There is nothing, nothing like experiential learning.  Those searing scars will teach you well. 

The interviews were done with ancient Tram lavalier microphones, and then for the very important Art Gray Noizz Quintet performance at TV Eye in 2022 seen in the film, I hired a close friend of the band (who is now in the band playing second guitar) Michael Jung from Alice Donut fame.  He brought in a 16-channel board and recorded this concert, then did audio post on that.  His audio production company is called Hizhaus Recording in Brooklyn. 

I did all the other audio myself for the film interviews, except the Tex Perkins interview that I directed remotely, with Russell Kilbey shooting and capturing audio on set in Australia.  We then went to the amazing Mike Westbrook Audio (mw-audio) in Durham, North Carolina for post-production and mastering for the entire film.  He’s now as well done post on our new Dead Moon film we just are screening, called “20 Years In The Crypt:  Embedded On Tour With Dead Moon”.  We’ve had a good response to the audio in this film, so that’s encouraging as a filmmaker and a big deal for me.

RB: There is a huge gap between your interviews with Stuart in 2003 and 2022 ... that's gigantic... what caused the gap..?

JAS: As I mentioned, up through around 2007 or so I was still hanging out with Stuart, and would occasionally crash at his apartment while we worked on Fashion Week together, but then the life transformation of buying an old farm house and fixing it and the property up ended up taking up all our time.  The 2008 market crash happened, and the film business tanked for a while, so I spent even more time working on our house, so my head was really in the sand.  We just kind of lost touch. 

Then, we had our daughter in 2011, so that really got me knocked off the rock scene kind of stuff for a while, just trying to be a good dad and a decent husband.  My priorities had shifted and my world got smaller for a good stretch of time. 

Reaching out and reconnecting with Stuart was really fun and invigorating.  He had done a lot while I was MIA.  He  had a band with his girlfriend Anna Rasmussen called Lovestruck.  That band was amazing, and they put out an album and a 7”. 

Bloody Rich Hutchins was their drummer as well for Lovestruck.  I went and saw them play at some point in NYC while up for Fashion Week around 2012 or so.  They were really great, but I couldn’t get them to fit into the film!  Anna Rasmussen is Stu’s girlfriend who appears in the “Thundercats” spoof you see, done by M. Henry Jones, the crazy visionary artist in NYC at Snakemonkey Studio that Stuart used to work with.  Jones passed away while we were filming, and his wife, Rachel Amodeo, kindly gave us her blessing to use the  footage.

Stu seems to create a lot of good will, and that should be recognized.  So even though I wasn’t busy documenting Stuart at this time, I was paying close attention to what he was up to, which was always in his weird style, no matter the idea.  

RB: Also, Stuart's personality seems very different 19 years later. Comment?

JAS: Stuart seemed much darker, and his drug use was fairly obvious when I first met him.  He would occasionally mention it to me as our friendship continued, as well as his attempts to deal with it.  He discussed his going to Narcotics Anonymous with me as the years rolled on.  When we substantially reconnected in 2021, he had really gone through the looking glass as a person, and was what seemed a little more of an elder statesman-type character. 

He always has interesting art projects of one type or another going on, and so he is always doing what he loves, though not at the level he would hope for yet, but it seems to give him real joy.  That joy was always there, and his telling jokes or anecdotes and laughing a lot is very magnetizing, but it is definitely different now than it used to be. 

I’ve met several people in my life who have transformed as they’ve gotten older into better people, or more pleasant people, or more happier with themselves, and I find it rare.  I always make special note to myself of these people and their accomplishments, which I would like to try and emulate myself.  I view Stuart as one of these people, and salute him.

_{On the set for a scene with a children's choir in a North Carolina barn}

RB: You've been at work over 25 years in the film/underworld, could you tell us a little about that?

JAS: When I started in motion pictures, like real films, was in 1994.  They were real 35mm motion pictures.  I learned the cameras and lenses of that time, and the technology, including old hot lights with filaments that were high wattage, all that gear was more akin to turn-of-the-20th-century Thomas Edison/Victorian technology than what we use now for 98% of shoots. 

The division of labor was quite structured and strict, as, if you fucked up, you wouldn’t know until at least the next day when the film had been developed and watched as dailies. 

This was good training ground, and it was hard, but you had a lot of responsibility, and that meant you learned how to be very productive without messing up and wasting everyone’s effort and money. 

_{"Rat Cacher" by Stuart Gray.}

Now that the gear has changed, it’s a little more freewheeling, and I’m glad I have my training in the era when I understand all the basics, and can now start to use new and easier and more light weight, lower-wattage technology to accomplish things.  It makes it possible to work on your own, or just with a couple people if you’re doing small-project shooting like myself. It’s certainly been an interesting life. 

There are all kinds of fascinating people who get into the film world as a career, and the energy and eclectic knowledge, fun and sharing that I find with them is often inspiring.  It beats the fuck out of a regular job.  Even when we shoot in offices for commercials or documentaries or whatever, I get really uptight just being in them for a few hours or a few days.  I can’t imagine actually having work my whole career in them.  I’d go nuts!

RB: There's a thing here in Australia - many US bands have influenced Australian musicians. But I wonder just how realistic is the notion that some Australians have influenced American musicians - or is this more a combination of mythology and wishful thinking on our part?

JAS: I think a certain element of killer bands in the 1990’s were influenced by Australian bands.  I know in Seattle and Portland and New York City that Australian bands like The Birthday Party, Lubricated Goat, Bloodloss, Grong Grong, Beasts Of Bourbon, The Scientists, had a big effect on bands like Dead Moon, Mudhoney, The Cows, and others of that era. 

I got into Lime Spiders and Radio Birdman in high school, then moved on to more challenging fare from Oz, but I believe it is undeniable that heavier bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s from Australia were absolutely blowing the minds of a lot of awesome American bands.  The separation and distance made it quite attractive to hear weirdos being weird and loud and grooving with just a little different approach, and that change of perspective is certainly influential.  Not myth or wishful thinking at all.
As it’s Top Ten time at the Bar, Robert asked Jason for some lists…

10 favorite documentaries:  Let’s make it 14!
“Dancing Outlaw'
“Heavy Metal Parking Lot'
“Theremin - An Electronic Odyssey'
“Raymond Johnson:  How To Draw A Bunny'
“Grey Gardens'
Pentagram doc “Last Days Here” about Bobby Liebling
“Lightning Bolt:  The Power Of Salad & Milkshakes”
“Marjoe”
“Sweetgrass”
“Off The Charts - The Song-Poem Story”
“American Movie”
“Athens, GA Inside Out”
“You’re Gonna Miss Me - Roky Erickson”
“The Devil & Daniel Johnston” 

10 favorite documentary makers:
Albert & David Maysles
Werner Herzog
Jacob Young
Michael Galinsky & Suki Hawley
Jeff Krulik
Scott Cummings
Chris Smith & Sarah Price
Kenneth Anger (kind of a documentary maker…)
Godfrey Reggio
Les Blank

10 favorite bands:
Butthole Surfers
Flat Duo Jets
Lubricated Goat
Dead Moon
Metal Flake Mother
Polvo
Bad Brains
Iggy Pop/Stooges
Chrome
Royal Trux/Neil Hagerty
Simply Saucer
Black Sabbath
Velvet Underground
Chico Hamilton
Jimi Hendrix
PIL ("Metal Box" Period)
Syd Barrett/Syd-era Pink Floyd
Flipper
The Birthday Party

(That’s 19, so sue me!)

10 Plays:
Wifflefist’s “Hee Haw'/'Lawrence Welk Show” - mixing the two horrible 1970’s American television shows as a bombastic music spectacle at Cat’s Cradle
Wifflefist’s “Easter Passion Play” - another obnoxious celebration of our community in Durham, oh yeah, and something about Jesus Christ on the cross
“Wicked”
“An Evening With Quentin Crisp”
“Peer Gynt:
“Waiting For Godot”
“Ubu Roi”
“Hamilton”
“Annie”
“Cerano De Bergerac” 

Kate and I, and now my daughter, have spent over 20 years on what we call 'The Xmas Card Project'.  We try to emulate famous tableau, either from films, albums, or whatever.

We do this with very little Photoshop for most of them.  We may tweak color and density and such, or make us appear multiple times in the same frame, but for the vast majority of these they are true photos without photoshop magic usually.  Please note, “The Shining” card front is a real photo - the camera trigger is in my hand.  We shot it at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, which served as the exterior for 'The Shining'.  Hope everyone enjoys these…see them here and here.

The Art Gray Noizz Quintet on the Web