Saint James Infirmary

Here is a more obscure one. From Oakland, CA, Saint James Infirmary.
Cracks me up that to this day, St. James' official biography on the
Alternative Tentacles website actually quotes one of our reviews.

MOISST:  I know that the tour will be over pretty soon.  What do you think you’ll be doing with the band afterwards?

SCOTT:  Nothing is definite yet but I guess we will put some time into new material, work on the band and work towards the next logical progression.  We are talking to a few people right now like we have been talking to John at Alternative Tentacles and he seems real interested in continuing to release our music.

MOISST:  I was talking to Jason I was wondering if you knew if the next release on allied is going to be a split or not?

SCOTT:  We have no Idea at this point.  I mean their is a lot of speculation but at this point we have no control over what is going on. Once we get back from tour we’ll have a little bit of a better idea on what is going on.

MOISST:  How do you place your band with others?  When I listen to your music I really don’t hear anything I could really compare it with.

SCOTT:  We don’t set out with our music to do any preconceived idea or pigeon holed concept.  I mean our band is just a group of guys that like loud music and kicking out a lot of energy. We just want to get out their and play our music to as many fucking people as possible.

MOISST:  Do you still have a lot of people asking you about Paul leaving the band?

SCOTT:  Not so much anymore since the new record came out.  Lately we have been touring our asses off. I mean I joined the band on a really short notice and  we have really accomplished a lot in a short amount of time.  I mean we’ve played fifty shows within the last six months.

MOISST:  How long were you in the band before you recorded the record?

SCOTT:  Six weeks.

MOISST:  Did you have part in the lyrical aspect on the new record?

SCOTT:  Yeah, before I joined the band I was in a band for around two years in Baltimore.  We parted ways and I started working for this independent Jazz and Blues record label called Maple Shade I mean we did a lot of session work with Davis and Mingus.  It was really cool.  A bunch of punks worked there.  Anyway, I guess a bunch of shit went down with Paul.  So, I got a call from Jason and I was really interested in it.  At that point I had around two years of material that I had to pick from because I write every day.  It worked out really well, when I got the call they were in the process of putting together some material. So, they sent me this tape with ten songs on it and I started putting my words to their songs and six weeks later I was out there and we were practicing.

MOISST:  How difficult was it for you to move from Baltimore to Oakland?

SCOTT:  Well, on a personal level.  Right before I left I had to come to terms of with were I was from. Just like anywhere Baltimore has a lot of different little things that make it what it is.  It is definitely a town with a lot of character and I’m very much into like the strange things involved with that town, the history of the town and just being from there.  I mean their are some crazy mother fuckin intense artists and musicians that have done a lot of great things that are from there. More on the obscure level but I could see that people would not realize that it had come from Baltimore.  Then again I really like playin in the band living in the area is cool you know.  I miss my home town but I’ll be in Oakland for a while.  As long as the band is making music and that’s my main focus at this point of my life and that is the main focus for everyone in the band.  To go on nonstop, full bore, do as much possible and put out as many records as we can and tour as much as possible.

MOISST:  I really don’t want to have to ask this question, but for people that haven’t heard your music. Is their any band that you would say you have some similarities with?

SCOTT:  Fuck you, why do you have to ask those kind of questions.  No, we have a lot of influences.

MOISST:  OK, what is one of your heaviest influences?

SCOTT:  Oh fuck,  It really is a broad range of music.  For me personally I would have to say Scratch Acid, Naked Raygun, Just a lot of different things a lot of weird obscure jazz.

MOISST:  Would you consider your lyrics more on the political or social end of the  spectrum?

SCOTT:  I’m not that concerned about that whole concept of politics being in music.  The main reason that I like doing music is riling people up getting them to go ape shit and having a good time.  The band is our vehicle as musicians and artists to talk about things that piss us off.  Some of it is personal and some of it is political.  This is just our vehicle to express our ideas and how we feel.  I hope were the kind of people with enough depth to reach a variety of different topics, ideas, and direction.

MOISST:  At this point what is your favorite song off the new album?

SCOTT:  I would probably say from a lyrical standpoint and a personal standpoint what personally hits me the hardest is  Root in Race.  That’s a song that I wrote with a good friend of mine that I was traveling with from Baltimore out to the Bay Area.  It’s about the area I lived in, in Baltimore that had a lot of crime and a lot of crack houses in my neighborhood which was a lot of bullshit.  Their was a lot of weird racial tension in certain parts of Baltimore it was just about a lot of things I had experienced with those situations in one way or another throughout the course of me living there.  Situations that every body has encountered in one way or another on a lot of different levels. Just traveling out to the Bay Area it was one of the things that stuck in my mind the most.  Just a real bad older on American culture.

MOISST:  What’s the one thing that you dislike the most about playing shows?

SCOTT:  Maybe just approaching them  with me being a little older and all the people I grew up with aren’t there.  Some are dead, some have just moved on to different things.  A few of them are playing out with their own bands but a lot are really not doing anything anymore.  We are just playing for a younger crowd and it always happens.  You know when I was younger their was  always a the feeling of people being real separatist or clicish and it’s fucking lame.  The whole idea of punk to me was saying fuck you to that whole kind of bullshit.  The whole thing of being a jock or a cheerleader I mean fuck that shit.

MOISST:   Do you think that punk has more of a varied life-style?

SCOTT:  What do you mean?  I mean yeah, compared to the whole Jock Cheerleader American dream life-style definitely.