A Campaign of Shock and Awe: The Noonmoon Interview
Mike Sparks Jr on his organically lovely new album, being diagnosed with an autoimmune disease during a pandemic, quarantine art, and Steely Dan.
Mike Sparks Jr., the IRL human behind Noonmoon, and I have been friends for over a decade now. There’s not too many people I know who I want to impress more than Mike. His music is always impeccably written and performed, he has cool taste that never borders on either extreme — too obscure or too general audience — and he’s conscientious almost to a fault. Knowing Mike is to want him to like you. As such, a healthy competitive spirit has developed between us over the years , as if our recorded output were an ongoing argument where each album is the latest rhetorical point.
Mike has a way of arguing that feels like fucking. This is not to say that Mike and I are anything but really great friends. Throughout these last two years, we kept each other sane with weekly phone calls that would sometimes stretch late into the evening. It wasn’t uncommon for us to have to recap the conversations in the morning, as one or both of us got too smashed to remember what the hell we were even discussing. Though I always remember how he ends his calls: “I love you deeply.”
Mike and I play in Dream Demon together, the more-recording-project-than-band that released four EPs in the last twelve months. But it’s Noonmoon, Mike’s solo project, where much of his best work currently resides. Vanisher, Noonmoon’s debut album released in 2017, was a monolith of ambient drone music that was somehow also an intimate portrayal of loneliness while being deeply connective. Mike’s vocals are the very embodiment of “choking up” and across Vanisher’s sparse and anxious landscape, his voice is a totem assuring you that even though you may lose your way, you are not lost.
Noonmoon is about to release a second LP, The American, via Heather, Rose, and my label, Chain Letter Collective. In honor of this accomplishment, I thought it would be fun to catch up with Mike in a way that (inadequately) synthesizes to you, dear reader, what those many late night, drunken, free-flowing pandemic conversations are like. you can listen to the album while you read here.
You’ve been in a ton of bands over the years and are currently in Reader and Dream Demon. Why Noonmoon?
MSJR: Why Noonmoon? Not sure what you are asking here…I mean…why anything? We’re all just shuffling towards the grave.
Here’s the best response I can think of: I’ve been writing solo material for years and years. Most of the time I end up sharing that music with others, and inevitably starting a band. Bands are like a collective consciousness though, you know? You find yourself in a certain style or with a certain aesthetic depending on how you work together blah blah blah. I like to make all kinds of music and I wanted to have the freedom to do so. Somewhere along the way I decided that Noonmoon would be the moniker I use for all my solo material. It’s refreshing because I don’t feel bound to any genre or architecture.
We’ve been a bit desensitized to pandemic narratives, especially now as the culture is being oversaturated by quarantine artworks. But shared experience is necessary for art, no? What are your thoughts and is The American a pandemic album?
MSJR: Ok here comes my stupid opinion. Just remember that you asked.
“Desensitized to pandemic narratives” and “oversaturated by quarantine artworks” are phrases that analyze value through a colossally fucked lens. I think phrases like these (and listen, I’m not mad at you for using them…just venting) are born from pandemic fatigue. Let’s call it “Everything All The Time Forever Syndrome.”
It’s like saying, everyone I know has a massive and painful wound on their abdomen that will not heal. It’s constantly bleeding, causes ceaseless agony, and, frankly, it’s getting boring because everyone won’t shut the fuck up about it. A pandemic narrative is a magnified expression born from fear, desperation, and hopelessness; a monologue that occurs when the seemingly unstoppable gears of a dysfunctional economic machine come grinding to a halt. When the dust settles we are naked and alone with no support, our routines obliterated, sitting in an infinite maw of fear created by an invisible biological foe. There, we do what humans do when we have no lifeline. We create. We call out to each other. We doubt ourselves. We talk too fucking much or we say fucking nothing. We create importance where there is none. We panic because we realize how fragile we truly are. This is a desperate time that calls for empathy, patience, and grace (is that the name of a Foo Fighters record?). We should rise to the occasion and listen and help more than ever.
But, dude, it’s impossible in this technological climate to listen and care when I can pick up a little computer and see everything that has ever happened. Tits, murder, puppies, bearing witness to an unending onslought of consumption culture. Everything, all the time forever. Who could have guessed that knowing everything would make us so calloused and confused by sarcasm that we guffaw at those who share their story?
Whew…
Anyway I wouldn’t classify The American as a pandemic album. This record would have happened either way. In the most fucked way possible, I’m very grateful that I had the opportunity, means, and luck to create something during a time where so many have suffered and gone unheard.
Why did you call the album The American?
MSJR: Being an American has become a lot more confusing these last few years, hasn’t it? I mean, let’s face it, it’s always been pretty sketchy and dichotomous. Kinda feels like your soul is being stretched as far as it can go in every different direction until you are practically invisible. Too much frame, not enough canvas. I don’t know if I’ve ever been proud of being from this country. This is where I was born and I don’t know anything different. The more you zoom out, the more you realize that it’s impossible to conceive how many different types of people come from America. So many different perspectives, cultures, prejudices, hopes, fears, religion, economic classes, and everything else. It’s absolutely insane. Really, the only thing we have in common most of the time is that we live here.
When I was overseas a few years ago, I always felt like–when I would walk into a room–everyone would kind of whisper “There’s the American.” It always felt like I was being looked down on, and dismissed. I felt like I deserved skepticism and judgement, given the history of my country, but inside I felt like I was screaming underwater. Like I wanted to make them understand that I wasn’t “The American,” I was “an American” and that we weren’t all the same, and some of us are beautiful and some of us are ugly. These songs, as they relate to me and my story, feel like a hushed testimonial to my American experience. An articulation of who I would like to be as The American.
The American sounds fairly different from your first album Vanisher. What was the intention behind that?
MSJR: As I mentioned early, Noonmoon is just the moniker I use for the music I make myself. I was super interested in making an ambient influenced record full of liturgical lyrical concepts, and Vanisher was born. I’ve been threatening to release a collection of traditional songs (e.g. acoustic guitar, piano) for as long as I can remember. Things came together quickly when I didn’t have to go to band practice four nights a week and here’s The American. I have a bunch of stuff I’m working on and I’m hoping to have a second record out this year. We’ll seeeeeeeee.
You’ve released a ton of material on bandcamp between these two albums. Why did you decide not to release those tunes as “official” Noonmoon albums?
MSJR: Ultimately, it’s pragmatism that led to the Bandcamp only releases (plus I didn’t want to bother you with releasing 83 songs on Chain Letter). For the last three years I have had the absolute pleasure of working for the Roland Corporation. I do writing and project management for Roland Cloud, a division that converts all of Roland’s famous synths (JUNO-106, JUPITER-8, Etc.) into plugins for use in digital recording scenarios. I had used Garageband a bunch in the past to get ideas down and I’ve always had decent instincts with recording, thanks to Robert Cheek (who co-produced The American, et al). But this job got me way more into what it means to make music digitally. The “Bedroom Songs” series on Bandcamp is the result of discovering Logic (the digital audio workstation…not the concept) through composition over the last two years. I’m not a nuts and bolts guy. I don’t go crazy about gear, preamps, and mics. I tend to learn by doing and writing these tunes got me familiar with doing stuff at home. I had all this music sitting on a hard drive, and just said fuck it, lets put it out there. Don’t worry I made like 40 bucks! (editor’s note: at least $20 of that was from me.)
Your lyrics are typically steeped in metaphor; they’re basically poetry. But then we have songs like “Sacrament” and “Something You Hold Tight” which are a bit of a departure, both lyrically and sonically. Talk us through this.
MSJR: The American is a collection of songs from a lot of different time periods in my life. Around half of the songs were written in the last year or two. However the rest were written over a really long period of time. “Something You Hold Tight” was probably written over 15 years ago before I even moved to Seattle. “Sacrament,” probably six or so. “Witness,” maybe 3 years ago, etc.
I’ve gone through a lot of phases as a lyricist and writer. I dropped out of college after attempting a degree in journalism when I was a kid, so words have always been important to me. In my first bands, lyrics were more like abstractions; table dressing for the music. The more music I wrote, the more I understood that lyrics are what sets bands apart. A lot of people can write a big old dumb guitar riff (which I am NOT above; I am a mega riff enthusiast). But, not a lot of people can reach down your gullet and tickle you with some insane lyrics until you can’t tell if you can’t tell if you are coming or dying. I’ve tried really hard to straddle the line between metaphor, intention, balderdash, and enigma with my words. Sometimes you gotta go full heart on sleeve. Sometimes you gotta weave an indeterminate helix of indelible exoticisms. Whatever.
Let’s zoom out a bit. So, you have lupus.
MSJR: Fuck yeah I do bro!
How did recent revelations about your health affect how you view your art slash life?
MSJR: Man, it’s hard to know where to begin with a question like that. Learning that you have an auto-immune disease that has the potential to take a bunch of years off of your life is like learning that an asteroid is coming towards the earth. You don’t know how big it is, you don’t know when it’s gonna hit, and you can’t even be sure it’s going to hit the earth at all but you assume it’s gonna and you better pay attention.
In all fairness I have what doctors call “incomplete lupus.” That means that, yes I have lupus, but, and I know this sounds silly, I could have it way worse. You have to have 4 out of the 10 or so medically agreed upon criteria to have full-blown Lupus (also there are like 3 different kinds of lupus). I have one…but it’s a good one, and one that can cause a lot of other issues (Chrone’s disease, arthritis, all the good stuff).
The best part about being diagnosed with a disease that is essentially incurable (and granted, the medication in the lupus game is bomb dot com, see Trump’s miracle drug), is all of your intrinsic denial of death goes out the fucking window. I know I’m going to die, and it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever felt. I think Terence Mckenna said something like when you know you are going to die, an ant carrying a leaf on its back can bring you to tears. I’m much more in moments. I’m conscious of how I talk to my friends. I try to treat people with kindness. I create more often from a place of pure joy and expression rather than worrying what people will think. I try to do what I want all the time. Maybe I’ll still live a long time, and everything will be just groovy. In the interim I really try to treat everyday like it’s my last one because that’s what life is about anyway….so thanks for putting out my record Ben, Heather, and Rose. I fucking love you guys.
Will you ever release a collection of poetry?
MSJR: I sure would like to. I have about twenty or so poems kicking around right now, but I almost always end up borrowing a lot of the phrases for lyrics. When I have idle time, I make music instead of writing, nine times out of ten. If that ratio ever shifts, expect some sad book of sonnets about lupus with big words and cryptic ideology.
Will there be Noonmoon shows?
MSJR: Absolutely! In the meantime, let's go to the Winchester, have a nice cold pint, and wait for all of this to blow over.
Lightning round. I’ll prompt you and you give me a one sentence assessment.
Steely Dan.
MSJR: I read that Fagan sued the Becker estate when WB died and it’s that cut-throat East Coast bullshit (combined with some of the most terrifying lyrical character arcs in music history) that gives me an Eiffel tower sized boner everytime I listen to “The Caves Of Altamira.”
Hard Seltzers.
MSJR: It’s because you need them for health and because you can drink them even if the clock points to a “bad” number and nothing matters so slurp em down you loser.
NFTs.
MSJR: I think they are useless and imaginary and they cause so much pollution and fuck everything.
The Pacific Northwest.
MSJR: If you listen to that Earth record “The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull” after taking a few lazy resin hits from a pipe that your communist roommate gave you 15 years ago, you’ll understand the appeal.
Friendship.
MSJR: Better remind those fuckers that you love them everyday cause you don’t know how much time you have left and human beings only have each other.
Making enemies.
MSJR: Better seek or accept forgiveness from those fuckers as soon as possible cause you don’t know how much time you have left and human beings only have each other.
Favorite band:
MSJR: Every time you (yes, I’m talking to you, dear reader) and your friends pick up instruments and try to write songs, you are in my favorite band because music is a fucking gift and you deserve to be celebrated because it’s way easier to do nothing.
Favorite film:
MSJR: I’m just waiting for John Wilson to direct the next American classic.
The last thing that inspired you.
MSJR: This Fucking Record
Ok, that’s it!
I lied. One more. I’ve heard it rumored there’s a “lost” Noonmoon record you started between Vanisher and The American. Will that ever see the light of day?
MSJR: Though there’s Lesser Magic here, it’s through the pain I’ve recognized: I do not wish for death my dear, I simply wish I were alive.
Noonmoon The American arrives at all streaming services on 02/04/2022
Who had it the worst on a major label? A semi-review of Sellout by Dan Ozzi
Dan Ozzi’s new book Sellout follows the trajectory of eleven punk/hardcore/emo bands as they attempted to make the jump from indie to major labels. With plenty of first person reporting from the bands themselves, as well as representatives from the labels, Ozzi does well to assemble a narrative that feels authoritative without being inhuman. This is no history book, per se. Rather, Sellout is making an argument about the controversy that surrounded what it meant to be “punk” through an honest accounting of what it was like to be in the indie world of the 90s and early aughts. Even more intriguing is the book’s sly demarcations of success. Ozzi never spells it out for you, but he is making the case that some of these bands had it better when they were on indie labels.
Some is not all. The big takeaway from Sellout seem to be this: the bands that succeeded on major labels were the ones that wanted to. Look, obviously, each one of these bands wanted to be successful — you don’t make the then-contentious move to a major label if you want to keep your day job. But being successful in the corporate music world requires something altogether different than being successful in the indie world: an unequivocal desire to be the biggest band on earth. The bands in this book that succeeded, the Green Days and blink-182s, are the types of bands you’d hastily label careerist. And why not? Ozzi’s stories of pretty much everyone else besides these two bands — outside of maybe Rise Against, who somehow succeeded on a major by just continuing to be themselves — read like cautionary tales, revealing a sobering truth of the music industry: no one’s really gonna help you without exploiting you. Each of these bands were on a knife’s edge; one slip up and you’re cut to the quick.
I have my opinions. For your reading pleasure, I’ve ranked nine of the bands in Sellout according to their experience on a major from best to worst. (Note: I skipped the chapter on My Chemical Romance. Gerard Way used to come in and eat at a restaurant I worked at and he was such a lousy tipper, it made me hate his band. MCR gets an “incomplete,” although my suspicion is that they would be in the first tier. I also had to return the book before I read the last chapter on Against Me! so an “incomplete” for them as well. My guess is that they would fall in the second tier, but I don’t really know.)
Tier One: The Bands That Made It
Champion: Green Day
It’s sort of a toss up between Green Day and blink as to who was more successful initially. Green Day were never pinup stars like blink were, thanks to their ubiquity on MTV’s TRL. But, with the scope of history in our bag of tools, we can safely say that being in Green Day in 2021 is better than being in blink-182. If you don’t have cancer, been in a plane crash, or legit think it’s your mission to find space aliens, and instead get to play stadiums, I think you win, even if the music is, objectively, pretty fucking terrible. (Seriously, Billy, rock operas?)
More traditional facts also support Green Day’s crown as the Kings of Major Label Pop-Punk. Green Day left indie stalwart Lookout! and their first album on a major, Dookie, sold 20 million copies worldwide. Hard to argue with that.
Always the Bridesmaid: blink-182
Reading about blink’s rise to fame was insufferable. Growing up in suburban California, the members of blink-182 were precisely the sort of dudes I hated. But part of me suspects this is a remembered hatred, the dark side of the remembered self. The dick and fart jokes, the homophobia, the misogyny — the traits I hated in jocks and skaters at my high school were probably traits the fifteen-year-old me displayed in some proportion as well. Thank Christ none of us had Twitter then. I’d hate to have a record of what ignorant shit I thought in 1995. Sucks for blink-182, though. Instead of Twitter, they have multi-platinum selling albums as evidence of their teenage dumb-shittedness.
There’s a reason blink were so popular. They didn’t give a fuck so much about being “punk” as about staying perpetually pubescent, immortalized by a major label debut called Dude Ranch, followed by the massively successful Enema of the State. My first year in college, I went to UC San Diego. According to my memory, as I drove around the winding little roads of campus in my ‘86 Jeep Cherokee, it felt like the local rock radio station, 91X, played precisely four songs all year: “Sex and Candy” by Marcy Playground, “Good Riddance” by Green Day, “Bittersweet Symphony” by the Verve, and “Damn It” by blink. I’ve heard that song one hundred million times, it seems. And damn it - no pun intended here - it’s a pretty catchy song.
Quietly Doing Fine: Rise Against
Rise Against are the only band in Sellout of whom I had no prior knowledge. While reading about their slow and steady rise from cult Chicago band to reliable rock headliner, I listened to a few of their tunes. It’s rock music of a specific era, for sure, reminiscent of Hot Topic, flat-ironed hair, palm-muted rhythm tracks with octave leads, and that scream-singing made popular by a bunch of influential bands that never made it as far as Rise Against. Their music is not for me, but one can’t deny the intense popularity of such a sound in the mid aughts.
As for their major label transition, the book makes it seem like they were one of the very last bands to make the leap from the indie scene to the corporate scene. They had a few of the usual pitfalls — spending too much money on making an album with a producer who didn't understand the band, having kids when your livelihood is being a touring musician — but overall, thanks to a head-down work ethic and a fluky acoustic song, Rise Against kept chugging along without a ton of backlash. In the words of the band themselves, “Good for them.”
Tier Two: The Mixed Bags
Third Time’s a Charm: Jimmy Eat World
There’s an argument to be made that Jimmy Eat World belongs in Tier One. They made Bleed American for heaven’s sake, the most influential third wave emo album ever, and remain a successful corporate rock band to this day. However, the band’s success came after an unsuccessful two-album stint on Capitol, hence the mixed bag delineation.
Their discovery story is incredible to someone like me who started playing in unheralded emo bands around the same time as them and saw only a tiny modicum of popularity. An A&R rep who was interested in Denver emo band Christie Front Drive got a 7” of CFD on which the B-side was a Jimmy Eat World song. When Christie Front Drive passed on the major label opportunity, it went to Jimmy, who were completely unknown outside of their native Phoenix suburbs. The band signed to Capitol and despite being given the money and space to record two albums and buy a tour van, were utterly ignored by everyone at the label. Clarity, their triumphant second album that made my 100, was shelved indefinitely upon completion. If not for the emergence of “Lucky Denver Mint” on the soundtrack of Never Been Kissed garnering a bit of radio play on KROQ, the album might never have been released.
I knew the band because in ‘97, ‘98, ‘99, I was going almost weekly to the Glasshouse, an all ages venue in Pomona, CA, and it seemed like Jimmy Eat World were the opening band for almost every show. I witnessed their transition from the two-singer thing to one, Jim Adkins. And I remember them going from so-so live to pretty respectable to professional in a matter of months. Their hard work paid off. Despite being dropped by Capitol, they recorded Bleed American on their own dime and unleashed third wave emo. Like all seminal bands, most of the bands in their wake are absolutely terrible. But it was super odd for an ex-emo kid like me that for a couple years, corporate rock radio was filled with bands I grew up seeing in sweaty basements and all ages clubs.
Dudes Are Gross: The Donnas
According to Sellout, the Donnas began as a parody band. Their real band was called the Electrocutes. It’s hard not to be cynical about the band’s early success. Four young teenage girls from middle class backgrounds playing rippin’ music in a scene filled with crust punks and pedophiles? What could go wrong?
Apparently, lots. The Donnas basically bankrupted Lookout! — though the book clearly argues it wasn’t their fault, more bad management on the side of Lookout! During their rise to major label status, the band was subjected to the kind of lecherous attention the entertainment industry is infamous for, and the kind of disrespect that women receive in music specifically, and in the workplace is general. There’s a telling anecdote where drummer Torry Castellano explains why the Donnas were so tight as a band: they were afraid that any fuck-up would proliferate the misconception that girls can’t play rock music.
Ultimately, the Donnas had a decent run of success, but after reading this account, I wonder how many of them, if they could, would go back to that moment chronicled in Sellout. It was right after graduating high school and they were deciding whether to attend college or defer and play music instead. Knowing what they know now, how many of them would have chosen college?
Fucked From the Word Go: Thursday
It baffles me how many people in the corporate music world thought that Thursday would be the next Nirvana, according to the book’s account. It’s also crazy that Island paid over a million dollars to release Thursday from their contract with Victory. This spurious fact leads me down two diverging thought paths. One: no wonder major labels almost folded with the advent of the Internet. Their business model is totally fucked. Two: Victory must’ve been real tough to work with if Island thought it worth it to pay a million bucks to avoid it — the band says as much, and in the book, Tony Victory comes across like a totally competent asshole.
Thrusday never had a chance. I remember the ridiculous amount of hype leading up to the release of War All the Time. I bought the CD, listened a few times, and then forgot about it. Conversely, between their release clause and the money they spent on making the album, Thursday were in the hole to Island over $2 million before the album was released. When Island got gobbled up in yet another major label consolidation, the writing was on the wall. The reason they’re in the mixed bag section was because they were able to negotiate an amicable release from their contract.
Tier Three: Things Did Not Go Well
Drug Addiction Is a Bitch, Part One: The Distillers
When I took Heather to see No Doubt and Garbage at the Long Beach Convention Center in 2003, the Distillers were the opening act. I remember thinking it wasn’t bad, but that singer Brody Dalle sounded like Courtney Love. Perhaps that’s reductive of 24-year-old me — and certainly the book makes this distinction — but going back and listening to the Distillers major label debut, Coral Fang… I’m sorry. She kinda sounds like Courtney Love. She’s a better singer than Love, but the touchpoints are there.
The Distillers toured mercilessly, then imploded under a bunch of poor financial decisions and rampant drug use AKA they were young and mentally fucked and that’s what happens.
Drug Addiction Is a Bitch, Part Two: At the Drive In
At the Drive In was always two bands — The Mars Volta and Sparta — but it took years of touring together and putting out a major label debut heralded as the savior of guitar rock for the member of At the Drive In to realize it. Ozzi also downplays the extent to which the band’s drug problem caused them to implode. But we’ll always have Relationship of Command. Unlike every other major label debut listed here, Relationship of Command is a seminal punk rock album. Its existence on a major did nothing to lessen its visceral acuity. Unlike…
The Biggest Losers: Jawbreaker
Poor Jawbreaker. They were never gonna be the next Green Day and Dear You, while aptly rated in retrospect, is a far inferior album than their previous album 24 Hour Revenge Therapy. Jawbreaker served as the cautionary tale for every indie band thinking of signing to a major label since, proving that if left to their own devices, a major will try to cookie-cutter success using templates that worked before, rather than innovate.
Which is one of my problems with the Big 3. Indies drive innovation. In my lifetime, my first CD, my first vinyl album, my first download card, my first subscription streaming service — all of these were brought to me by indie labels and companies. Once the indies, whether it be your local record store or Emusic, proved the viability of such innovations, the majors came along and stole them. Record Store Day is now a laughing stock, a place where major labels dump unwanted bullshit on fans of legacy acts. It also happens twice a year now. Also — and it’s a topic for another day — perhaps someday we’ll dive into why Spotify’s revenue system works for majors but not for indies. Spoiler alert: it ain’t a bug, it’s a feature.
Thanks for reading! Find me on twitter @benjiheywood or reply to this email! See you in two weeks!