KPFA also broadcast a number a great programs. Almost every day, KPFA aired shows that were weird, thorough, insightful and frequently hilarious : Morning Concert with Charles Amirkanian; Maximum Rock'n'Roll (first time I ever heard Snakefinger, the Residents, Tuxedomoon, the Butthole Surfers was on this show); John Gullack's No Other Radio; Negativland's Over the Edge; and Ray Farrell's Assassinatin' Rhythm (which broadcast live performances by Z'ev, Arkansaw Man, Slovenly). Ray Farrell is, in my opinion, the greatest DJ of all time. I doubt he'd even be a footnote in the history of broadcasting, but not attempting to speak in the horrible, well-modulated, hyper-smooth DJ style was never done back then. Well, Pacifica stations have their own, less dreadful version of it, but Ray's voice was always sort of idiosyncratic, even in that context.
What inspired you to start Bananafish in the first place?

After writing for other magazines for a couple years, artwork I'd acquired had been lost or destroyed, I was at the mercy of other publishers' schedules, and I frequently felt embarrassed by association with points-of-view of some of my colleagues. It was time to lose or destroy artwork, publish once a year, and cause myself embarrassment all on my own. I was consuming more than ever - records, magazines, crap I'd find on the ground - and it just seemed imperative to become a producer.

At the root of it, I think it's a basic desire that all people who decide to do something publicly, even on a modest or near-invisible scale, share - showing off, being the center of attention, craving the limelight, communicating with other people, validating one existence to one's parents, becoming a literary drag queen (so to speak), how ver you'd choose to characterize it. But there also has to be a certain satisfaction with developing the skills to make a person feel that the desire is justified. We all know people we think are talented in one way or another - incredibly hilarious, or naturally athletic, or musically gifted - and can't understand why they won't take it outside their bedroom. They just don't have that desire. And then think about all the sub-average oxygen thieves you see on television or in movies who you can tell are treading water - they make you think, "How did someone so patently unspecial end up with all the lights pointed at them?"

I was mostly interested in writing fiction until it became impossible to deny that I'm a terrible short story writer. After doing it for years and years, I can't point to a single thing I wrote that's both finished and isn't shabby mimicry of absurdist and surrealist masters. It's all lame and masturbatory. If I didn't think Bananafish was continuing to improve, I'd pull the plug on it.

Has Bananafish changed much since the beginning years?

As far as technically, the things that haven't changed would be easier to look at. It's still in English and it's still printed on paper. Other than that, everything about it is different. I'm not even the editor any more. I used to do the whole thing myself; now there are contributors from as far away as Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Asia.

It used to all be done with photocopiers and scissors and glue-stick; I didn't use rulers or page layout programs or even know about halftones and linescreens. The early issues had no table of contents, no page numbers, no ads, no proofreading; these are all things that we take for granted now. It used to take about two months of work to complete an issue; now it takes a year.

Barbara Manning used to print it at a copy shop on legal sheets of paper, every single page of which I'd fold, collate and staple myself; now it's printed on a web press. That's a change that came about after Barbara had quit the copy shop and new owners had come in; they took one look at what I'd brought them - issue number five, which had Boyd Rice and his swastikas everywhere, Lisa Suckdog and her full-frontal nudity everywhere, Merzbow and his bound and gas-masked women hanging from the ceiling, The Institute of Absurdity and their rainbow of verbal violence - and told me they don't print "pornography".

The focus has shifted over the years, but only slightly. The aesthetics have remained pretty consistent throughout the magazine's 14-year history, but succeeding at creating an issue the way it's intended is a hurdle we've cleared just recently. I tend to be an unorganized slob in virtually all aspects of my life; for me, a perfect issue is one that is precise and neat and typo-free, with photos that reproduce well. Yeah, good luck. Up until issue 12, photographs more often than not reproduced horribly in Bananafish. I have to say, now that Miss Monroe is the editor and Earl Kuck designs it and does the layout, it's a much better magazine.

John Wiese pointed out to me that it has somewhat standardized look, that all the articles, whether they're about durian fruit or Solmania's custom hot-wired guitars, have the same look and mood, more or less. I think that's fine. I like that there's a certain equality among the features, plus, if a reader's mind is gonna get blown (or numbed by boredom for that matter), I'd prefer that the ideas discussed and the images that accompany them do it instead of design-as-content.

Has your audience increased or decreased over the years?

It steadily increased for about 10 years, but I think the magazine has begun the red dwarf phase of its life. There were about 300 copies of the first issue printed, and if recent sales are any indication, we've come full circle.

What bands influenced your initial interest in experimental music?

Rock music. I grew up in a small New England town and my access to it was limited to what I could find at the public library, hear on the FM radio station, or read about in Rolling Stone - The White Album and some of the Beatles' early solo albums, Overnight Sensation, Dark Side of the Moon, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Are You Experienced?, Here Come the Warm Jets, stuff like that. Frank Zappa used to champion Edgar Var≤se on his record jackets, John and Yoko must have mentioned John Cage on the Mike Douglas show, Pink Floyd probably got compared to Luc Ferrari in Rolling Stone. I found the records all these rocks stars were talking about at the Berkeley Public Library after we moved to California. Cage's "Cartridge Music" and "Po≤me El≥ctronique" by Var≤se are still among my favorite pieces of music ever.

It wasn't until I was in California that I was able to find anything by the New York Dolls, Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. I remember reading about the Sex Pistols and being extremely unimpressed when I finally heard them. I thought their music would be artier. For a couple of years I was reading Trouser Press and other small magazines, where you could get full interviews with bands like Pere Ubu, Swell Maps, Raincoats, Sonic Youth, Mars, DNA, and hundreds of others. I was also finding out about Throbbing Gristle, Monte Cazazza, Whitehouse and hundreds of others through Unsound and Another Room.

Almost all the Japanese stuff came recommended from Systematic mail-order and later RRRecords mail-order. Almost no one was writing about The Hanatarash or A.N.P. or Hijo Kaidan or Merzbow. I'd never heard of any of them and bought the records solely because Ron Lessard said I should.

A friend used to mock what I listened to as "high-I.Q. music". To him, a bunch of blips and bleeps and screeches and hissing and cross-eyed screaming and mayhem might satisfy demands of pointless intellectual games and academic posturing, but as far as providing entertainment for the average music-lover, it was just garbage. To a degree, he was right. Some music takes me a long time to understand and to figure out if I like it or not. I don't listen exclusively to music I know I already like. I mean, I still put on XTC or Black Sabbath whenever I feel like it, but I do spend a lot of time letting new things seep into my brain slowly over a long period of time, and revisiting things I once thought were incredible.

On a good day, I might be able to pass as reasonably intelligent (although it's laughable to presume that one's taste in music is a reflection of one's intelligence). I would say patience, curiosity and the ability to derive slightly perverse pleasure from a decent spectacle would serve a person much better in appreciating experimental music than some mathematical formula about one's brain. You just have to accept that you're not always going to get it in the first 10 minutes, and that your opinions can change. It's worked for me.

Do you go to clubs/bars to see bands in San Francisco? If so, is there a particular venue that you favor?

The Great American Music Hall is a beautiful room, although the people who run it have this bizarre mania for walking around with flashlights telling people in the audience to stand somewhere else. They might have a show I'd like to see about four or five times a year. I find myself at Bottom of the Hill more often; it's a bar with a much smaller capacity than the Great American. Crowded shows there are sort of a drag because the shape of the room creates a horrible bottleneck, but it's still a good place. I've seen some wonderful shows by Stinkbug at Bruno's on Monday nights when the place is practically closed. One or two bartenders, no one serving food, and audiences in the two dozen range. But for me, the Clit Stop is the place to see music in San Francisco. For warehouse spaces, it's easily the most comfortable and best organized, and offers a lot of the kind of music that you'd read about in Bananafish and even more that you wouldn't. Normally, I hate warehouse shows. Well, it's the idiots who organize warehouse shows I actually hate. Organize them poorly, I should say. I've been to so many that were just horrible, a waste of time for everyone involved - artists, audience, neighbors. But the Clit Stop people know what they're doing and do it very well.

What is more scary to you: the influx of .com hyper gentrification in San Francisco or the permanent callous on the side of Larry Fine's face caused by the constant slapping of Moe Howard on The Three Stooges? [question submitted by Sam McAbee, Supersphere film critic, .com employee, three stooges fan]

Gentrification is nothing new here, but the scale and shamelessness of greed currently on display is certainly the most virulent strain I've ever seen at such a close range. These people have no apparent fear of retribution at all (which, with any luck, will prove to be their fatal flaw). The resentment and loathing I feel for them has less to do with the agenda of identity politics and more to do with-well, let's see. These people are going to be smug, mainstream assholes who feel entitled to anything and everything, merely because they know a lot of other people who are exactly the same, whether they're in line at the supermarket, dropping their kids off at soccer practice, or offering triple my rent to the landlord. Much as I despise them, I can't presume to be the gatekeeper of the neighborhood and I think the locals who are trying to legislate personal displeasure with the nouveau riche are opening a Pandora's box.

A neighborhood coalition went to a Board of Supervisors meeting demanding a moratorium on .coms moving into the neighborhood. The Board of Supervisors basically sat there looking at them and said, "Are you nuts? We can't make laws like that".

I completely empathize with the people who want decent, peaceful neighborhoods, but San Francisco politics tends to be one tempest in a teapot after another anyway, so it's not really surprising that my fellow freaks think it's possible to ban .coms, which aren't really the problem. I don't want to see my neighborhood turned into a nighttime playground for insensitive louts who have more money and less intelligence than me; I don't want poor people and artists to be displaced to another county or out of the state; I don't want to see the businesses I patronize have to choose between closing and catering to these fuckwads.

The papers will publish a big expose on the evils of gentrification one week, and then a huge Best of the Bay feature the next, in which all the great restaurants and thrift stores and bars and record shops are discussed and rated and blah, blah, blah. A lot of the people who decry gentrification have done quite a lot to pave the way for its inevitability.

But at the same time, the phenomenon is going to pass. Families and the arts will survive, and the behemoth, simpleton mainstream will continue to slosh around America however it likes, forever oblivious to the destruction and despair it leaves in its wake. Here's an insanely typical anecdote: I'm crossing the street and one of these drips leans out the window of his car and says, "Excuse me, is there any place to park around here?" I say there's a garage about six blocks away. The driver's very put off, lets out a little snort of impatience, and replies, "But that's so far away." As if it's my job (as a pedestrian, and by default his inferior, a renegade valet) to deal with the problem. I say, "You're in a fucking car; why don't you just drive there?" and keep walking.

I love living and working in the Mission, but it's not like the neighborhood is sacred ground just because I'm a resident. The white man has profoundly desecrated the entire continent - and completed a lot of notable target practice on most others - in ways that can never be undone. In the big scheme of things, the closing of a dance studio and overcrowding of the place that serves my favorite red curry duck don't mean shit. These are the least of our shames.

(Speaking of the rich...) How do you see the relationship between class and experimental music? For example, experimental music started mostly as an artistic movement which meant those listening and producing were mostly middle and upper class. Do you think this class distinction still applies today?

Maybe it does, but so what? Should one's choice of music to listen to be made according to how much blue collar credibility it confers? Or should the RIAA sticker record jackets with aristocracy ratings so that people can make informed decisions about listening outside their class? It's been said that Americans are in denial about the class system; I could very well be one of the blind and ignorant, because I'd insist good music can come from anybody at any time in any place. Aretha Franklin to Stockhausen to Tuvan throat singers to the homeless guy three block from my house.

Is there room for innovation in music? What direction do you see the bulk of experimental music going? Backward (retro)? Forward? Stagnant?

Honestly, I never think in those terms, so my answer'd be coming from an amateur. I'd be guessing or wishfully thinking. I might be able to tell you, but I'd want to think for a long time before saying anything. I can say that what I look for performance- and sound-wise combines various aspects of out-of-control noise with more controlled music, not being able to tell if it's all planned out or made up on the spot. If you're talking about how it's manufactured and distributed, the Internet has made the suits sit up and take notice, but the long-term future seems up in the air. I'd rather have an album or CD than files on my computer, and can't imagine being satisfied with on-line music.

As far as what's going to be most popular, it'll probably be whatever people in their teens and 20s favor. That's who has the most disposable cash and the inclination to waste it; and at whom all the marketing demons aim their advertising bazookas.

Are there any zines published today that you personally enjoy?

Wingnut used to be a favorite, but they stopped publishing. It was completely shaped by the personal vision of Wes Wallace. There was nothing radical about it, but each had his personality all over it, a textbook example of Tom Smith's axiom, "It doesn't have to be brilliant; it just has to be you." Wingnut was a very honest and sincere reflection of Wes's interests; he was obviously motivated by the desire to publish a magazine for its own sake and not for what everyone else would make of it. I have nothing but the highest respect for that alone. Even when he had interviews with bands in whose music I wasn't interested, it was always well done and enjoyable to read. Plus, he'd intersperse the interviews with articles like "Sherpa Tribesmen from the Himalayas" and "Considerations on intellectual merit concerning the resemblance of Indy Rock with Puritan theology, esp. with regard to the use of irony." He might still be into selling back issues. I'd send a card to POB 603128, Providence RI 02906 to find out what's up.

Resonance is the one I read cover to cover because of the music they write about. They only publish several times a year and each issue has a theme. One issue might be all about radio, the next about field recordings of third world music and ethnomusicology, the next about electroacoustics, the next about free improv. The articles tend to be more like research papers, instead of the crash course mentality favored by The Wire.

Hermenaut is another one that I like a lot. It's got very little to do with music; it's more about philosophy and pop culture. Always extremely entertaining and insightful and enlightening. It's been a while since I've seen a new issue, but I receive regular updates about their website via e-mail. Try http://www.hermenaut.com.

The Onion is easily the funniest magazine in America, if not the world. Very satirical and a lot of black humor. Like The Simpsons of magazines. I have laughed so hard that I couldn't stop crying more times than I can count. I frequently let new issues sit on the shelf before I even look at them. I really have to brace myself.

I hear you eat a lot of burritos. Why is this? Do you live conveniently near a burrito joint? [Twig, of Nautical Almanac, submitted this question. He lives conveniently near John Hotdogs].

It's not true. I eat one at a time. They're fast, cheap, taste good and at some places aren't hideously unhealthy. If I walked a block from my house in any direction, I'd pass a burrito joint. If I kept going another block in any direction, I pass another one. They're all over the place. But this neighborhood has other food that's just as affordable and delicious - Indian, Thai, Middle Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, on and on. That's why the yuppies keep coming back.

I record with Barbara Manning as the Glands of External Secretion. We've put out a couple singles, an album on Starlight Furniture Company and have done collaboration CDs with Prick Decay and the Double U. There are also a bunch of contributions to compilations here and there. Most of our records sell like day-old dogshit. Yes, fresh dogshit has a bigger audience. Can I say dogshit on the Internet? Some of the people who like our music have been enthusiastic about it. I don't know what if anything is wrong with the music we make, as no one who's heard it and thought it was dreck has said anything.

Journey through Fen Addison's epic history of BANANAFISH.