Episode 33: RU Sirius - Cyberpunk Legend - The Mindplex Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lisa Rein (00:18):
Hey, all right, so thank you for coming on the
Mindflex podcast. That littlemontage was of Mondo, 2000
covers and content from the 90s,very early 90s, and it's because
today our guest is, are youserious? Say hi. Are you? Hello,

(00:40):
everybody. And just to givepeople a little more background
about you, because what'sexciting to me is I feel like
I'm kind of reintroducing you toa new generation of people that
are already excited. I havepeople come up to me, younger
people coming up to me that arelike, what's up with mono 2000

(01:00):
and it's like, oh, I actually,you know, and they can go on the
Internet Archive and see it,because a lot of it is on
archive.org and so it's reallyexciting to have you on the show
to tell us about it. Co founderand former editor in chief of
mono 2000 and you co foundedthat with Allison and Bailey.

(01:21):
You have done so many books. Ididn't actually count them, but
it's more than 15 or 20. I knowthat many books on many things,
psychedelic, psychedelichistory, psychedelic literature.
You've co authored books withTimothy Leary. You've did the
original cyberpunk handbook, orthe original fake book,

(01:42):
depending on how you how youlook at it. And I just found out
I was reading an old wellinterview with you from 2004
with John, John Lebowski, and Iwas just telling a friend of
mine last week about theyippies, because people forget
about the yippies. You know thatit was the yippies before the
hippies and

RU Sirius (02:05):
the yippies actually, the yippies took the hippies and
acknowledged that there were apolitical gang of hippies, and
they called that the yippies,the Youth International party
19. Yes.

Lisa Rein (02:22):
Yes. And you formed, and you formed the Bingham, New
York, Chapter

RU Sirius (02:27):
of the yippies in 19 from 1970

Lisa Rein (02:32):
to 1973 and so that was really right, when all this
stuff was going on. I mean, AbbyHoffman, the whole, you know,
the Chicago 1968 at the D youknow, at the DNC had happened.
And you were really in the heartof that. And then you were in a
punk rock band, which I didn'tknow what was the name of the

(02:55):
punk rock band,

RU Sirius (02:56):
party dogs in New York. We used to play a club
called squirties. It might stillbe there. It was the only punk
New Wave club in Rochester atthe time. We were just before
hardcore hit Rochester, NewYork. So we were kind of the

(03:17):
punkiest band at the time, butwe were really more punk
inflected rock and roll when youcome down to it. But, yeah, we
were great. You can find thestuff on my band camp. Are you
serious? Band Camp?

Lisa Rein (03:32):
Nice, okay, great, and I'll add a link to that,
party dog. Is that

RU Sirius (03:38):
what you said? Party dog? I called the album. It's
actually, like about 30 minutesof music. I call it, it's a
groove, so Okay. Oh, and I thinkit's on some commercial places
as well. You might be able tofind it on YouTube,

Lisa Rein (03:57):
all right. Well, I'll find it and put and pop a link
in there so we can, people canhear that. I didn't had a chance
to hear that yet. So, so whatI'd like to do for the show
everybody is, you're free to askquestions anytime, but I'm going
to try to start kind of at thebeginning and let Are you talk
about how the magazine wasformed and stuff like that, and

(04:20):
then look at some of the earlyissues and get his first hand
feedback on them. So what I'dlike to do now, I'm going to
share my screen. Very exciting.
Here we go, dun. Dun. All right.
Are you seeing issue number one?
I

RU Sirius (04:43):
am seeing it. There we are at the very beginning.
All

Lisa Rein (04:47):
right, so first of all, I mean, wow, this issue. I
mean, Todd Rundgren, Tim Larry,William Gibson. How did it come
about? It's also like there's.
The whole thing about how it'snumber seven of reality hackers,
even though it's number oneMondo, like, what's what's it
all mean, yeah,

RU Sirius (05:08):
we were confused lot, for sure, yeah, I'll go into
this, yes. So, I mean, we wereactually designing issue number
seven of reality hackers to bethe cyberpunk edition, when I

(05:28):
decided that we needed toupgrade the name, and I was
watching TV, and there was ashow called something 2000 and
there were advertisements tryingto sell stuff by identifying
with the year 2000 so I went toclean Moo. I said, Yeah, we

(05:52):
should change.

Lisa Rein (05:54):
We could do that

RU Sirius (05:57):
actually coming up, she liked it because she thought
the logo would look great. Hefelt the design of the logo the
great which it does.

Lisa Rein (06:09):
Yeah, yes. One of the defining things

RU Sirius (06:13):
is imitating that imitated by on The Simpsons is
Mondo Franco, and also a juicecompany put out put out Mondo
juice that used something verysimilar to our design, and I
tried to milk them for somemoney, but got nowhere with
that. So anyway, yeah, I cantalk more about this.

Lisa Rein (06:38):
Yeah. So just wanted to show everybody that you can
find this issue at the InternetArchive, because a lot of these
issues are up there and and on.
Very early on, we have this pagewhere you explain, that's you,
and there's Allison Queen Mooand there's a closer picture
that people can see you guys,because it's just, it's such a,

(07:01):
I don't know it's such a perfectthe expressions on your faces is
so perfect for the time period,in terms of the optimism, it's
just these optimistic looks tome. And here's where you give
your shirt a little manifesto ofwhat about. And I have,

RU Sirius (07:22):
either way on Mondo, two thousand.com I have a
version of this where I gothrough and add new comments and
make fun of it.

Lisa Rein (07:31):
Oh, good. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Give me this to be the
new the new version of of theMondo explanation. Would you
read the part that have themhighlighted there for

RU Sirius (07:44):
us? I'm not sure you read it. I'm not sure if I can
see it. Oh, okay.

Lisa Rein (07:49):
Oh, okay. Well, I'm gonna read then, okay, okay. It
says the cybernet is in place.
If fusion is real, we'll findout about it fast. The old
information elites arecrumbling. The kids are at the
controls. This magazine is aboutwhat to do until the Millennium
comes. We're talking about totalpossibilities, radical assaults
on the limits of biology,gravity and time, the end of

(08:13):
artificial scarcity, the dawn ofa new humanism, hijacking
technology for personalempowerment, fun and games,
flexing those synapses, stokingthose neuropeptides, making
bliss states our normal wakingconsciousness, becoming the
bionic Angel. They get weirderbefore they get better, the

(08:33):
rupture before the rapture,social and economic dislocation
that will make the cracked 80slook like summer camp. So in the
words of the immortal RudyRucker, hang 10 on the edge
because the 90s are going to bequite a ride. Queen. What does
that sound like?

RU Sirius (08:55):
Wow. That's pretty inspirational.

Lisa Rein (08:58):
It sounds like

RU Sirius (09:00):
I'm glad we got into the decline part of it. Yeah, it
sounds very, sounds very transunity, really, yeah, becoming
the bionic Angel. Yeah? DavidPierce, see your art out. Man,

(09:22):
yes. So what does it all mean?
Now, I look to other people totell me generally, no, no, not.
What

Lisa Rein (09:33):
does it mean now, sorry to be clear,

RU Sirius (09:37):
what does it mean now, it's a tremendous
challenge,

Lisa Rein (09:42):
right, right? But what I meant is it sounds like
the same kinds of things thatpeople are saying now about AI
and AGI and yeah, what it'sgonna

RU Sirius (09:56):
do, what's interesting to me, though, is
that what we did. Mondo. And Iwas just reading this article by
Nick Herbert from Issue numbertwo or three about the pleasure
dome project. What's interestingis that this moment in the early

(10:16):
90s appealed to pretty much theentire counterculture of the San
Francisco Bay Area. And it wouldbe a culture that I would say
would be about two thirds ofthem would probably be hostile
towards these sort of utopianproject projections about the

(10:42):
future and new technology and soforth. So the narrative, at
least, and perhaps theactuality, has turned from an
optimism and utopian IDFtechnology to a lot of
recognition, or feelings aboutit being very dystopian now. And

(11:09):
the thing with with Mondo atthat time, we could make it all
up. The future was it was beingmade. It was ahead of us. And
the feeling with new technologyand the internet that hardly
were relative to the population.
Hardly anybody was on it yet,and everybody was talking about

(11:32):
virtual reality, as if that wasabout to become widely
distributed, and all that stuff,and the idea that nanotechnology
might happen soon, all thatstuff in the early 90s, that
that was a culture that it wasstill making itself up, so that
people, people who would beinclined to be interested in

(11:57):
that, could all hang outtogether, whether you were the
owners of the company or thelowest lump in proletariat,
person living in a squat, I liketo say that the people who threw
rocks at the Google Bus and theowners of zuzzel would have been

(12:21):
hanging out together at theMondo 2000 house in the early
90s. So, I mean, it's such adifferent culture then, and it
was such an unmade culture. Andyou know, we were going to
parties about virtual realitythat didn't really even have any
virtual reality at it, maybe geterithson or Darren Lanier to

(12:45):
drag one of their systems to aparty,

Lisa Rein (12:52):
right? Because they were big. They were big systems
I was just trying to get to findthose pictures. Have they were
amazing, darn it. We'll hit itup soon. But that's, maybe,
that's what's so exciting, Iguess, is that the stuff is
finally happening. All the stuffthat was just, you know,

(13:15):
bullshit, science fiction, youknow, is actually happening now.
Yeah, and, and, so that's what,but it's, but the utopianism.
Yeah, it can turn people off,but it didn't turn us off then.
So much it was because we hadn'theard it before. See, now it's

(13:36):
like, now it's 30 years later,and I've heard it so many times,
right? So it's, it's different,but it was so wasn't like that,
though, this is about theinternet, and, you know, it was

RU Sirius (13:47):
so new and so unique.
The voice that model put out. Imean, I'm looking at an old
issue, and I'm seeing how thatthere are errors, and, you know,
it's a little messy and soforth. Oh, I know you've the
early issue, the early issues,really early issues. We kind of,
we kind of hit our stride aroundnumber four and held that to
about number seven or eight.

(14:11):
Those were, those were reallyslick, well, well organized, but
it was okay, directed, but yeah,it was okay, because it was new.
It was novel, because

Lisa Rein (14:23):
it was cool. We were just looking at the picture, you
know, it was sort of like, andthen what somebody would read
part of it, and then it would belike, what? And then everyone
would read like that part. So wecould argue about it, right?

RU Sirius (14:39):
Glad to hear

Lisa Rein (14:41):
it. And it was just there. It would be there. There
was a copy of Mondo. And likeall the party houses, you know,
everywhere you went, you know,when you're getting ready to go,
wherever, you know, there'd bethe Mondo, and it would be, oh,
it was almost like a waitingroom. It was, it was the
required, you know, waitingroom, um, magazine. And.
Everybody was just wait when thenew one came out. Everyone was,

(15:03):
you know, just talking about itand talking about it. This,
right here, you said was one ofyour favorite covers. Tell us
about it. This is the JFK. Thisis the Mary Pinochet Meyer that
who may have dosed JFK, whichmay have what turned him into
such a peacenik is the theory,

RU Sirius (15:23):
yeah, right, yeah, the headline is America's
psychedelic president. But Ilove the picture sort of
isolated from the actual articleor the content of the article,
because what you're seeing, insome sense, is the wild,
psychedelic 1960s coming out ofthe bullet hole in JFK brain. I

(15:47):
think it's the signature momentof the 20th century, and I think
it's incredibly well expressedby this picture, which I think,
I think it was actually paintedby Eric White, who has gone on
to become a fairly famouspainter. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean

(16:11):
that references

Lisa Rein (16:14):
other. That's a good keep going. Yeah. It's just
flipping through it. It's acombination of of all the stuff
you know going on at the time,and then also the incredible
graphics, of course. Yeah, sowho's doing these graphics at

(16:38):
this time? It was

RU Sirius (16:39):
an art Nagel. Is the art director. Heidi Foley, who
later became the art director,is the Assistant art director,
and they're both very involved.
And then, you know, they're,they're hiring different artists
to to do it, John Barrus, a namethat comes to mind, Eric White,
who, I guess mentioned Bart isdoing some of them himself. You

(17:00):
know, I don't remember all thenames, but a lot of really
marvelous artists. And I mean,it's all credit to clean move
for wanting to have to featuredesign and to spare no expense,
which was complicatedfinancially, but so marvelous,

(17:25):
so marvelous to see and look at.
In fact, let me do a littlemerch here.

Lisa Rein (17:41):
Oh, should we do you want to be showing something on
the screen? Yeah, okay, cut tohere we go. We'll stop sharing
for a second.

RU Sirius (17:50):
I don't know if people can see this, but this is
a book called Mondo vision.
They're just 1000 copies of itwith various visuals inside, how
they happen to be opening to thesame thing.

(18:12):
It's published by culpa press,and there's only 1000 copies of
it. So you can try to get one ofthem. Yeah,

Lisa Rein (18:26):
great. So I actually forgot to ask you something that
I'm going to go back to thestuff I have prepared here,
because I didn't get the storynow. How did you get Todd run
good on the cover? Cover? How'dthat help?

RU Sirius (18:45):
Yeah, we jazz Morgan, our music editor and Morgan
Russell, who was one of our COpublishers at the beginning,
they went out to see Todd. Hewas living in Sausalito. Todd
had become a digital enthusiast.
I suppose he was always atechnical enthusiast. There in

(19:06):
Woodstock, was a recordingstudio and so forth. But he had
moved to Sausalito and becomepart of the culture there. And
so they went out and theyinterviewed him and took a
picture, and it was going to befor reality hackers. So he's
holding a copy of realityhackers with sun raw on the

(19:27):
cover, which was our issuenumber six of reality hackers
music issue, an excellent issue,by the way. And so yeah, we got
we got the picture and decidedto use that now I gotta say that
Todd is sort of the only maleever to appear on except for JFK

(19:48):
with his head the only male,except there was somebody in
drag in. And on one in one ofthe issues, I wish I could
remember the name, their name,but yeah, yeah, but yeah, he was
the only guy ever to grace aMondo cover. Allison decided on

(20:14):
putting the women on the cover,as, I think, after reading what
it turns magazines, actually,

Lisa Rein (20:27):
yeah, and I gotta tell you, it did a thing about,
and I remembered now where Ihave the where I have the,
sorry, here on a second, okay,where I found the virtual
reality thing. Here's thevirtual reality thing about

(20:51):
that. That's what virtualreality was when this was
happening. And I used to pay $15for 15 minutes on this thing at
the in San Francisco, and it wasworth every penny, and the
carvers of it, which I neverused, but that's that's what
that is. And then, speaking ofhot covers, I mean the hot Mondo

(21:13):
cover, whether it was an eleganthot Mondo cover or Reese
Witherspoon hot monocover, evenwhen she's just being silly,
she's hot, right? I mean, thereit is, yeah, and then that, I
mean, that's just, I don't knowwhat, planet's definitely hot,
right? Like, oh,

RU Sirius (21:33):
that's Central.
Wilson, the great writer, CintaWilson, yeah,

Lisa Rein (21:38):
oh, okay, great. And she and I have another this
layout later that I took apicture of that center, Wilson,
I believe, right,

RU Sirius (21:48):
I can't see it that clearly. Oh, okay, that's that's
from

Lisa Rein (21:52):
that. That's from that issue. Hot covers. Hot
covers were really a part of it,but they were still tasteful.
Hot covers, yeah? And they, theywere authentic. Here's some
other stuff that we showed inthe opening. Um, there, there's
Iggy ate you had a great and anIggy is also one of these people

(22:17):
are always sort of, I don'tknow, cutting edge, bleeding
edge, yeah,

RU Sirius (22:21):
actually, on the Well, I had people complaining
that Iggy Pop was, was was old,was we started right around 1974
or 1994 1995 when the Gen Xthing really exploded, there was
some identity conflicts going onwithin Mondo and within Mondo

(22:46):
fandom not wanting to crush theold people on there. People
complain about Timothy Learybeing a frequent presence the
Mondo staff rejecting aninterview with Ken Kesey very
much trying to get away from thehippie thing and become pure

(23:12):
cyberpunk and post punk and allthat. But a few people even
complained about Iggy, and Isaid, Iggy is a perennial, which
is just what you were basicallysaying just now. And

Lisa Rein (23:23):
the idea that he's, I mean, Iggy, literally, I just
saw Iggy Pop last year live.

RU Sirius (23:29):
He's still great.
Yes, this

Lisa Rein (23:31):
is, like, one of the best concert I'd ever seen in my
life. I mean, he had a superband, you know, he's got all
these great people playing withhim, but he always does. And the
idea he gave me hope. You know,as so as a rock and roller, you
know, an aging rock and roller,or whatever, like, wow, 80 years
old, he's doing great, you know,he's, he's certainly, but the

(23:51):
idea that he'd be washed up inthe 70s, that's why I was
laughing. He was still hot. Iggywas hot when I was in high
school. We still thought pop washot. That was the 80s, you know.
So that that's just funny to me,but anyway, he's there. We got
this was amazing, Rage Againstthe Machine you have in there.
Okay, yeah, and Einstein didn'tknew button.

RU Sirius (24:14):
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Everybody went out to see themperform, yeah, yeah,

Lisa Rein (24:20):
yeah. That was exciting, of course. What
William Gibson? And there's youbeing now. That is that snow
vanilla

RU Sirius (24:31):
picture? No, that's a picture taken. That's a picture
taken by my sweetheart, EveBernie, who recently passed,
actually that well after Mondo2000

Lisa Rein (24:44):
and there's Eve, because I had a picture of her
ready in case he came.

RU Sirius (24:48):
Oh yeah, there we go.

Lisa Rein (24:55):
Let's go back to this. So we're in the. Eight.
We're talking about the dealwith JFK. Oh, yeah. So again,
this thing with JFK I will miss.
I just told it like last I waslooking, wait a minute, what's
that? You know? And I wasn'tsure if it was, now, I see that

(25:20):
it's coming out or bullet comingin, but I was like, Oh, wait,
that's actually the key toeverything. And I and I just
noticed it. But this is a key.
This is a really importantKennedy for all of his, you
know, interesting. I don't wantto get into a discussion about

(25:40):
Kennedy but interestingpolicies. Uh, did a clear about
face at the something happened.
It changed his mind about war.
And it's the kind of thing thatpeople do do, and they've been
tripping. We will never know forsure there's different evidence
around it. What gave you theidea for this, What? What? What

(26:02):
evidence were you acting on?

RU Sirius (26:05):
It was actually the article by Nam C druid was
lifted straight out of issuenumber three of high frontiers,
which came out in 1987 so, okay,yeah, so, so we just re rerun
the same thing. But, I mean, itcame from Timothy Leary and

(26:28):
flashbacks going into hisrelation ship with his
friendship with Mary PinchotMeyer. How she she says she came
to her for psychedelics and tolearn about running psychedelic
trips because she was going toturn on powerful men in

(26:49):
Washington, and it being Tim, Ithought, oh, Tim made up a great
story. But, but, I mean, it'sbeen confirmed. I can't remember
the name of the author, buttheir book about Mary pincher
Meyer confirms that she knewTimothy Leary. She had a

(27:13):
friendship with Timothy Leary,and she had an affair with the
JFK, and they smoked marijuanain the White House. She couldn't
confirm that they took acid inin the White House. But that
even part of this, that evenpart of this story, lines up

(27:34):
with reality, is is prettystunning.

Lisa Rein (27:39):
Yeah, yeah. And I love that they couldn't confirm
it with which just means theright people kept their mouth
shut, which I also love. Yeah,it's almost the best part of the
story is and they're never goingto be able to confirm it, and
who cares? Maybe he neveractually took it, but it got him
thinking, and he did somereading, and the reading turned

(28:00):
him, I mean, whatever. It was

RU Sirius (28:02):
a great story. Yeah.
I just love the idea of 1963being this turning point in
which the wild psychedelicmovement leaks out of the brain
of Yeah, and in our and it andin our hysteria and our

(28:23):
apocalyptic feelings, it ledtowards the whole dropout,
revolutionary, Wild wanderingsof the late 1960s and into the
1970s so yeah, I mean, I loveit. It's a signature moment

(28:46):
that's captured in that image.
And a friend of mine at thememorial for Eve brought me a
framed copy of that cover,signed by Timothy Leary and
Oliver Stone.

Lisa Rein (29:03):
Nice, nice. Yeah, and I don't think he put that in the
movie. I don't, I don't thinkthat was in the movie, but, but,
uh, yeah, it's just, it's awonderful image. It's really
beautiful. And in that issue isan interview with David Byrne

(29:23):
and Timothy Leary, yeah, and Timwould get starstruck The one
time I actually hung out with myhouse after I edited his last
book, surfing the consciousnets, this comic book that He
did the the one day I was there,he had just come back from
George DiCaprio, his wedding,and he had met Leonardo, and he

(29:50):
was just walking on air andrunning around with Leonardo's
phone number in his hand. And hewanted to be friends. He wants
to be friends so they. Knew theymet briefly, like years earlier,
but Leonardo was too you knowthat, and Tim was too shy, and
then learn, then Titanic cameout, and Leonardo was a big

(30:13):
star. So now Tim was shy, andthen they at the wedding, they
bonded and talked about also itwas that he was, and so it's the
same kind of thing he's askinghe's a fan, and, you know, date

(30:37):
of and the whole thing just, youknow, so there's the and there's
a close and, and so you can seeother, yeah,

RU Sirius (30:54):
That's nice.

Lisa Rein (30:58):
Thing else you want about this piece,

RU Sirius (31:04):
there's an accompanying piece in which Tim
does sort of, not exactly areview, but an article of praise
for a book that David Byrne hadput out about new ways of
looking at art in the internetage, and it was sort of along

(31:26):
the lines of the WilliamBurroughs loot, the louver idea
that everything was going to befree or cheap and easy and would
not be valued by itsexclusivity, but it would be,
you know, copied and passedaround very kind of sort of very

(31:57):
sophisticated culture theory,thing that younger people would
not have expected from TimothyLeary. I really like that. I
quoted from it recently in anarticle on the monda 2000
website, actually,

Lisa Rein (32:18):
yeah, we talked that.
With creative commons, that theidea he talked about sharing,
remixing and things like that,he didn't call it remixing, it
collages, yeah, you know, againis 1990 he told me I was a

(32:39):
librarian, and I had no ideawhat he was even talking about.
You know, I had no idea what thelibrarian was. Never heard that
word before in my life. And sohe really did see a lot of the
stuff, you know, that thathappened. Hey, while we're here,
I saw this Neil Young piece. Howdid you get Neil Young? I mean,

(33:00):
again, these are big names veryearly on in the magazines.

RU Sirius (33:06):
Well, these are great stories. I don't know. I don't
know if you, if you ask thatquestion to lead into a bragging
point, if you, if you know this,but we had these people actually
contact we had these peopleactually contact us to want to
be in the magazine, which is,you know, I think a very rare

(33:27):
and wow, usual, particularly fora magazine at the time our our
circulation was maybe 70 80,000you know, nothing compared to
Rolling Stone or any of themajor publications. But, yeah,
we heard from Neil Young wantingto be in the magazine. Right
around the same time, we heardfrom David Bowie wanting to be

(33:49):
in the magazine. David Bowie, tome, is God, but

Lisa Rein (33:53):
that Yeah, and

RU Sirius (33:58):
we, we, and of course, as legend would have it.
We heard from you too to namethe edge. So, I mean, that's a
there's a whole story behind,behind that. But

Lisa Rein (34:13):
is it number 10?
Yeah, David. Is it number 10?
The David Bowie,

RU Sirius (34:18):
the Bowie interview?
Okay, well, Tim Leary ties intothis, and it's not a happy
story. We did eventually have aninterview with David Bowie in
monda 2000 in a later issue, butwe heard from his people that he
wanted to do an interview andthat he was going to be in Los
Angeles. And we were like, Okay,our man in Los Angeles is

(34:38):
Timothy Leary, and he canceledthe interview, so

Lisa Rein (34:47):
didn't want to get interviewed. He

RU Sirius (34:53):
was a little paranoid about Leary. We were envisioning
a repeat of the. Rolling Stoneissue, where he and burrows post
together and all that. But,yeah, well, it's hard. It's part
of the story, you know.

Lisa Rein (35:09):
Yeah,

RU Sirius (35:12):
not happy about it.

Lisa Rein (35:15):
No, I imagine not. I imagine not. I imagine he was
excited. I'm sure, like I saidhe was probably because anybody
would be. Yeah,

RU Sirius (35:26):
we talked about whether we thought, we talked
about whether Ashes to ashes wasabout him or not.

Lisa Rein (35:33):
Oh, but that had come out way before Ash to ashes had
come out. Way before you werescheduling that interview. What
am I missing? Oh,

RU Sirius (35:47):
yeah, yeah,

Lisa Rein (35:48):
yeah. So it couldn't have been about, Oh, you think
he lived in

RU Sirius (35:55):
the 70s. Everybody, right, right. He commented on
Leary and rock magazine, Ithink, in the early 70s, when he
was talking about a song, Ican't remember the name of it,
something from space, I leavethe Signet committee. Yeah, at
the time, it wasn't negative orpositive, but he followed, he

(36:18):
clearly followed some of Tim'sthemes across his career, which
is what part of why it wasdisappointing. But I guess he
thought we wanted we he thoughtof drugs and we're thinking
cyber culture, which they'reboth into.

Lisa Rein (36:35):
Yeah, he said he was thinking drugs. You think it's

RU Sirius (36:42):
gonna be about drugs, yeah, and he was, again, he was
being against drugs, which waspartly bullshit, but
nevertheless,

Lisa Rein (36:52):
yeah, I didn't know.
I didn't know he'd ever actuallysaid anything against them. I
can understand him not wantingto be in Los Angeles, in a house
to where they were more likelygoing to be there, you know,
like, that's a hard

RU Sirius (37:05):
he also, I mean, we shouldn't necessarily continue
this discussion too much longer,but okay, he had a paranoia
connected with Los Angeles andpeople who like Ellis Rowley, So
he had those two things in hishead that he had paranoia about.
He may have connected Tim withthat. Well, I

Lisa Rein (37:29):
think that it's starting to sound to me like it
didn't have anything to do withTim and it had more to do with
Los Angeles. That's what itsounds Yeah. Yeah, he

RU Sirius (37:38):
did. He did have a lot of anxiety about Los
Angeles. So, yeah,

Lisa Rein (37:41):
in all fairness, because that's the LAPD are
terrifying, and that they liketo set people up, you know, and
stuff like that. So it'sactually, you know, it's, it's a
perfectly fine that just went toa an important point that's
always good to make. And youshould be careful with Los
Angeles paranoid. But

RU Sirius (38:01):
David Kushner who ultimately interviewed him for
Mondo. And Kushner is a prettywell known writer. Yeah, it was
a good interview. I think he wasdoing tin machine.

Lisa Rein (38:12):
Where was that I tried? He did. He was in it
because I tried to find it's ina later issue

RU Sirius (38:16):
and a much later issue, maybe 13 or 14, something
like that.

Lisa Rein (38:23):
It should be there, right? And archive.org because,
again, it says things at issue10. Issue 10 came, it's like 40
or something, yeah,

RU Sirius (38:35):
or it could be, it could be 10. I don't really, you
know, I wasn't, I wasn't theeditor in chief at that time.

Lisa Rein (38:44):
Yeah, all right, well, I'm

RU Sirius (38:45):
gonna give up. I'm gonna go. I knew I was happening
and I was happy about it, but Iwasn't. Yeah, scrambled in my
mind. Well, this

Lisa Rein (38:55):
issue that I'm showing right now is Deborah
Harry, and again, did DeborahHarry really being on the cover?
Oh

RU Sirius (39:06):
no, no, a friend of mine. I can't think of his name
right now, but he knew everybodyin music, practically, because
he had, like, the biggest recordcollection in the world, or
something like that. And he wasan old friend of Allison's. So
there was a show called Escapefrom New York featuring Blondie,

(39:31):
two members of the talking headto Chris and Tina. Tina, Chris
and Tina tomtown club. Yeah,they were calling themselves as
severed heads at the time, andthe Ramones. So do I want to go
to that? Yeah, of course I wantto go to that. Yeah, I was

(39:53):
actually, I was actually therein New York to see some of those
people at the at the beginningof it all. So I. Anyway, yeah,
we got to go backstage. And Idon't think it was pre arranged.
I think we just asked for aninterview on the spot from
Debbie and from Kristin Tina.
And we got both of those things,and Debbie was great too. It's

(40:16):
very enthusiastic about Mondo,and I guess I can say this, she
asked if I had any of those newpsychedelics, which I didn't. I
didn't have any on me at thetime. But yeah, I

Lisa Rein (40:37):
was asking, quietly.
Heard about it. Anybody payinganybody paying attention? You
know, was asking.

RU Sirius (40:44):
So she was great, and got to add to the interview over
the phone. And she actuallycalled me at the Mondo house one
time, which made me a bigcelebrity in the office for a
day. Yeah,

Lisa Rein (41:06):
you always had Cisco house. The only time I got to go
to the Mondo house was when Iwas with a celebrity. I was
hanging out with mercury Mullin.
Oh yeah, Allison invited her,and I got to hang out. We were
sitting on the bed 17th centuryor something, or maybe it was 14
something. It was somebody'sbed, that

RU Sirius (41:26):
famous bed, yeah, in the master bedroom,

Lisa Rein (41:29):
right? But how old it was like from? It was very old,
right? It was like from the1700s

RU Sirius (41:34):
I don't know. I've lost track of those details.

Lisa Rein (41:36):
Oh, okay. Well, though we were,

RU Sirius (41:39):
mom had a her mom was part of the same family as Mary
Todd, who married AbrahamLincoln and Queen Moo always
says she had the Mad Mary Toddjeans.

Lisa Rein (41:59):
Very cool. So, yeah, so here's, I found the Deborah
Harry interview. I didn'trealize there was an actual I
couldn't, I couldn't find itwhen I was looking

RU Sirius (42:07):
before. Yeah, it's a very short interview, but, yeah,

Lisa Rein (42:11):
but it's short, but exciting, and in that same issue
again, kind of ahead of itstime, you have this ad for an
article, I mean, grow your owngrowth hormone, you know, which
I thought was reallyinteresting. Tell us about

RU Sirius (42:31):
it. Okay. Well, I believe that Dirk Pearson and
Sandy Shaw the the vitamin andnutrient hustlers, you know, I
don't know if people, peopleshould know about Dirk and Sandy
if they're in the longevityworld, you know, they were doing

(42:52):
it. They were doing a raw, youknow, without a lot of advanced
technology going on. MervGriffin in late 1970s dressed
like heavy metal stars talkingabout longevity and different
vitamins and nutrients. You canyou can try and st, Jude st,
Jude Milham, who became oursenior editor, developed a great

(43:15):
rapport with them, because shewas very not knowledgeable about
obscure medical stuff. She hadbeen a registered nurse.
Actually,

Lisa Rein (43:28):
that was St Jude on the in the on the cover of the
cyberpunk handbook, is that StJude? No, that's no, okay, I

RU Sirius (43:36):
won't try to find it.
Tiffany. Tiffany brown actuallyon the cover,

Lisa Rein (43:43):
no picture of her.
Yeah, I'm just gonna show, Oh,it's right, I forgot. I gotta
put the millhorn or it's gonnagive me Jesus. Here we are.
Yeah,

RU Sirius (43:57):
a little intervention from Jesus.

Lisa Rein (44:01):
Hey, never heard anybody. Here's the picture.
Here's your mug shot. Is a goodone.

RU Sirius (44:07):
Oh yeah, yeah, that's arrested that civil rights
demonstration. I'm one of thebig ones down in the south in
the early 60s. Jude, yeah, dude.
Jude was went through it all.
She was working in analog withcomputers, and she helped to

(44:32):
design the automatic automatonsthat would spit that you could
put money in and it would put itwould shoot food that out at a
place called horn and hard art,she helped to design those. She
was the only woman in StephenLevy's hackers about the

(44:58):
history, the early history. Ofhackers, and she was part of the
group that started the communitymemory, which was also the group
that with Lee Felsen Stein andEphraim Lipkin that started the
Homebrew Computer group out ofwhich grew the personal computer

(45:22):
Jobs and Wozniak were among thepeople who were going to those
gatherings down, I think they'rein the South Bay, but also in
some of them were in Berkeley. Ithink Elise Felsenstein just
hasn't wrote a book, nopublisher yet, but such an
interesting early, early, earlyhistory of computers. By the

(45:46):
way, we talked about yippiesearlier, I mentioned in a number
of places that might claim thatthe yippies started the digital
revolution because they were atthe center of phone freaks. They
put out the, I can't rememberthe name of it, but they put out

(46:07):
the newsletter, Bell, somethingBell. They were absolutely you
know, Draper used to hang out atthe yippies Dippy headquarters
in New York, at every level thatthe phone, freaking pH, b, h, R,
E, A, K and yippies wereintertwined absolutely so I

(46:32):
mean, that was sort of thebeginning of the hacker
movement.

Lisa Rein (46:40):
And the cyberpunk the hacker movement, were kind of

RU Sirius (46:45):
yeah, a lot of

Lisa Rein (46:47):
us, and I'm sharing a picture of the cyberpunk
handbook now it seems like agood time to talk about it,
since we're talking about these.
You wrote this with St Jude,right? Yeah, and, oh yeah, Bart
and eagles and Bart. Bart

RU Sirius (47:01):
did the design, dude and I wrote it, more dude than
myself. Yeah, cool. And

Lisa Rein (47:09):
it, and it has a it's pretty much, it's our it's like
a parody. It's like a parody,parody all at the same time, you
know, yeah, when it, when itcame out, we were learning from
it, because I wasn't reallyhanging out with actual hackers
yet. I was still just kind of inthe with the rain. So it was, it

(47:29):
was, it was really interesting.
So tell us about led up to youguys deciding we're gonna, we're
gonna put out a book.

RU Sirius (47:37):
Yeah, we were working on a book, another book called
How to mutate and take over theworld for a Ballantine book,
which is a subsidiary of RandomHouse. And in the middle of
that, somebody got in touch withus, and originally, Penn jollett
was going to write cyberpunkhandbook. It was his pitch, and

(48:00):
he decided he didn't have timeto do it. So basically we were,
it was, we were just for hire.
Basically, they came to us andsaid, Do you want to do this?
And,

Lisa Rein (48:13):
oh, that's funny. So they went and they went and
looked for people that wouldwrite the book that they want to
put out. It was that kind

RU Sirius (48:19):
of, yeah. They came to us and they were offering a
pretty decent amount of money.
And yeah, we said, Yes. Andthere was a little like flurry
of people wanting to get rid ofthe use of the cyber word at the
time. And I was thinking, yeah.

(48:42):
So I was thinking, you know, myusual attitude towards the
publishers, I'll get the money,and then after I have the money,
I'll change the title. But dudewent ahead and started writing
this brilliant and funny stuffabout cyberpunk. So the title
remained, but

Lisa Rein (49:02):
it didn't have the real cyberpunk fake book. You
guys added that, right?

RU Sirius (49:06):
Yeah, yeah. We

Lisa Rein (49:07):
added that, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We

RU Sirius (49:09):
turned it into, I mean, I think it was since, it
was since it was Penn Jillette.
It probably would have beencomedy, even originally, but we
definitely, yeah,

Lisa Rein (49:22):
yeah, that's but

RU Sirius (49:24):
also with real, with real material in there, real,
real instructions.

Lisa Rein (49:29):
Well, yeah, and this guy, this guy, Eric, I actually
brunch with him. Was at the atthe Thai temple in Berkeley.
Eric, I can't think of his lastname, darn it. But yeah, I can't

RU Sirius (49:44):
think of it either.
Eric White's name is getting inmy way. Eric, I can't remember,
right? One of the people whostarted the cipher punks,

Lisa Rein (49:57):
right? Yeah, exactly.
Exactly. And so this is really,like you said, it was funny as
hell, but it was also, you know,parts of it were real. I love
this. It's just a pager. Yeah,really neat, really neat stuff.
So during around that was, andthen then this happened. You

(50:18):
wanted to make sure we coveredthis? What does this this
poster? So everybody had these,and we're, we're passing them
around, giving them to people,writing, you'd have it would be
on the wall. And people wouldsometimes add their own stuff to
the poster. You know? They wouldput in their own stuff with the
arrow, making fun.

RU Sirius (50:41):
That's Chris. Chris Hudak, looking good in weather,
a handsome fellow. You know,there were two people involved
in Mondo who actually calledthemselves Cyberpunks, and one
of them was Chris, and the otherones was Michael synergy, who
disappeared from, from view,from anybody knowing who he

(51:06):
where, where he went to, butthat anyway, yeah, and, I mean,
this was just, it was filler,actually, within the magazine,
within, within the context of, Iwasn't there at the time, but I
was aware of what was going on.
And there was an advertisementthat didn't arrive, and the

(51:27):
issue had to be shipped, so theyhad to fill a page within a
couple of days. And actually,Marcia Robert, who was mostly
known to us as the person whowas working in the office and
answering the phones and stuff,came up with this concept, which

(51:49):
turned out to be the, you know,the hit of monda, 2000 on the
internet during the 21stcentury, most people under 40,
if they've seen anything fromMonday, 2000 all they've seen is
this thing. And half, more thanhalf of them probably don't know

(52:10):
we're taking the piss out ofourselves. I mean, it was, you
know,

Lisa Rein (52:17):
like it was a real thing, yeah, like, like it was
something you wanted, you wantedto be, but again, in many ways
you did,

RU Sirius (52:25):
yeah, many ways it wasn't stuff we should have at
that time,

Lisa Rein (52:32):
yeah, or you wanted to find out about it, or
whatever, you know. Yeah,absolutely, yeah, neat. So let's
see. Okay, I'm gonna go backhere. Okay, but John Perry
Barlow, John Perry Barlow, andhere's a picture of him and you

(52:52):
Yeah, and yeah, I just wanted toshow this thing across it. John
Perry wrote a lot for you guys,and what, what was that like?
Was he did he just sort of sendyou his latest thing and you
would put it in or more? Did youask him?

RU Sirius (53:11):
I mean, he came along pretty early, when we were
Mondo. Actually, we're stillreally reality hackers. When he
got interested, I have a wholeinterview with him about it,
meeting me at a hackersgathering at the Exploratorium

(53:31):
in San Francisco. And thenMorgan ru invited him, inviting
him up to the Mondo house, andit being a kind of a revelation
for him. He was starting his newlife. He had taken off from
being a farmer in Wyoming, andhad come to the Bay Area to be a

(53:52):
participant in digital digitalculture. They cyber culture, as
we called it at the time, and,of course, a Grateful Dead
lyricist, but not somebody washanging out really with Grateful
Dead so in a way, it was, thiswas kind of new to him. And it
came to the Mondo house, whichwas a beautiful, sort of

(54:16):
described in the media duringthe 90s as a techno Gothic
Citadel high in the Berkeleyhills. Yeah, go

Lisa Rein (54:27):
ahead. Yeah,

RU Sirius (54:29):
go ahead. No.

Lisa Rein (54:30):
Well, when he talks about his relationship with the
Grateful Dead and writinglyrics, basically he was Bobby's
smart friend. That's how theythought of him. And and Bobby
had to write lyrics. Bobbyneeded some songs to like show
that he could write good songs.
And so the way that Perry tellsit, he would give, I would give

(54:54):
him a perfectly good song thatwas already worked out or
whatever. And Bob. Me wouldcompletely transform it. He'd
give it some weird timesignature and change it into one
of his weird Bobby songs, but,but they had this thing, but,
but, yeah, he wasn't really. Hehung out with them when they
were playing, because he'd gobackstage, you know, for the

(55:15):
shows, but, but he wasn't reallyinto that, the dead scene like
that. It was really interestingtalk about it,

RU Sirius (55:26):
yeah, yeah. But anyway, yeah. And he was living
as a farmer in Wyoming, and thenhe came out to the Bay Area and
really got, really got into it.
And we're excited among thefirst people that he kind of
started hanging out with. Thefirst thing we got from him for
the virtual reality issue, beingin nothingness. Part of it had

(55:47):
already been published in a nicelittle free paper that was
available in the Bay Area calledmicrotones. And then we took it
and tuned it up a little bit andran it along with interview with
Sharon Lanier that he had doneturned what was the

Lisa Rein (56:10):
title? What was the title of that? Again, I'm going
to look it up right

RU Sirius (56:13):
now, being and nothingness was the Barlow
article and life and the datacloud, I believe, with the title
of the conversation betweenBarlow and Jaron Lanier,

Lisa Rein (56:28):
was it? Was it an early one, like Issue number
two? Or what

RU Sirius (56:31):
issue two the virtual reality issue? I'm pretty sure
that's Issue number two.

Lisa Rein (56:36):
All right, perfect.
So

RU Sirius (56:38):
we'll just two or three. I think it's two.

Lisa Rein (56:45):
See if we can get lucky and find just keep
talking, and I'm just going totry to find out while

RU Sirius (56:49):
you're all right, yeah, I was just reading that
issue, actually. That's prettyfun issue. There's Dirk and
Sandy, the infamous Dirk, thereit is, being a nothingness.
That's the name of it. You werethere,

Lisa Rein (57:00):
yeah. Ba bam, all

RU Sirius (57:01):
right. And nothingness, that's it, yeah.

Lisa Rein (57:05):
So tell us about this. This is, this is 19, one
of

RU Sirius (57:09):
the first, yeah, one of the first articles about one
of the first, really at lengtharticles about virtual reality
by John Perry Barlow, covers alot of territory about what
Darren Lanier was up to, aboutwhat Eric Gullickson was up to,
about Timothy Leary's andenthusiasm, you know, how he was

(57:32):
hopping on the next train toNirvana. And we can say Barlow
was was really good writer. Imean, we're so fortunate to have
him writing for us. Yeah,remember, we had a lot of really
good writers, and Barlow. Barlowwas among them, yeah,

Lisa Rein (57:53):
yeah. No idea who was or who you know, but it was just
captivating to read about it,even though it didn't exist

RU Sirius (58:01):
yet. Yeah, and interestingly, although he ended
up interviewing Darren Lanierfor us, we knew Darren Lanier
all the way back to the goingall the way back to the days of
high frontiers in the mid 80s,because at what came to be

(58:23):
called the Mondo house, at thehouse where we lived, another
woman lived there, DeborahHarlow and Jaron Lanier was
courting Deborah Harlow, andthey eventually got married, and
then he had to face one highpowered lawyer. But anyway,

(58:45):
we'll do it. We'll do a gossip.
Exactly,

Lisa Rein (58:49):
gossip, yeah, here

RU Sirius (58:52):
I have some great gossip.

Lisa Rein (58:55):
Karen's article in this issue too. There

RU Sirius (58:58):
it is. This is where it starts. This is where it's
the start of Barlow and Darrenand conversation, substantial,
long, very interesting articleabout diverse reality right
there in issue number 219, 90.
Nice.

Lisa Rein (59:14):
All right, so we'll have that. I'll put that in.
I've actually put links to allthe stuff we're talking about in
the description. I'm gonna putthat here. So I so I linked to
that. So

RU Sirius (59:23):
we heard about, anyway, we heard about virtual
reality in the mid 80s from fromDarren. He had the company, then
VPL, that was putting, supposedto be putting together the first
virtual stuff. And right aroundthe same time, Timothy, Leary
and Eric alexan collaborated onOracle that was tired artificial

(59:46):
realities, so they actuallyweren't even using the term
virtual yet. But that's, uh,what it was,

Lisa Rein (59:56):
neat. Neat. So, um.
Um, let's see. So I wanted to,Oh, yeah. So again, you were
talking about music. You had alot of incredible music,
everything, I mean, themusicians themselves, and then
the designers. You'd havefashion shoots and stuff like
that. Now this issue, especiallythis number four. Now, who is

(01:00:19):
that on the cover?

RU Sirius (01:00:23):
Some model, um,

Lisa Rein (01:00:26):
some model, because you don't give her credit,

RU Sirius (01:00:29):
no, yeah, she so we're

Lisa Rein (01:00:31):
losing our minds to this day, are you? We don't know
who this woman is. We werelosing our minds.

RU Sirius (01:00:38):
Not mentioned on the on

Lisa Rein (01:00:41):
the No, nope, she is not. And so I thought we were
going to solve the great mysterytoday, and apparently, not. Yes,
we still don't know who she is,but it was a cool cover, and it
didn't matter she was. So I

RU Sirius (01:00:54):
remember coming up to the house. She was very cool.
But yeah, someday

Lisa Rein (01:01:00):
somebody out there, let me know who she is. So in
the same issue, in this oneissue, you've got skinny puppy,
yeah, you've got Brian Eno, yep,you've got the cuckoo. The

RU Sirius (01:01:16):
cuckoo, what a great that they were a product of San
Francisco cyber culture, andthey were the star. They were
like the local stars of the SanFrancisco cyber culture for
women, doing stuff with digitalstuff and live music. And they

(01:01:39):
ended up making an albumproduced by Brian Eno, but I
don't think it. I don't think Iwent anywhere, but they were,
they were like the stars of ourlocal culture,

Lisa Rein (01:01:50):
yeah, they had their moment. I can't remember what
the song was. They had differentmoments, but there is a
widespread respect for what they

RU Sirius (01:01:58):
were doing, yeah. Oh, they were fantastic, even though
they didn't get big, and

Lisa Rein (01:02:03):
we found this unpublished cover. Oh,

RU Sirius (01:02:06):
yeah, that's one of the members.

Lisa Rein (01:02:09):
So because you ended up using the model, the model
without a name, but it could

RU Sirius (01:02:15):
be, or could be from a different Yeah, probably from
that issue, right? Yeah, we had,

Lisa Rein (01:02:20):
it's the same picture, almost. See it's from
that same shoe. Yeah,

RU Sirius (01:02:24):
we moshed up a bunch of covers and printed them and
made some decisions on those.

Lisa Rein (01:02:34):
And then here's an article we're still in this
issue of John Perry Barlowinterviewing Ted Nelson, yeah.
Nelson, the inventor ofhypertext, who actually hangs
out at the Internet Archive allthe time. He's got a he's Yeah,
that's there for like, 20 years.

RU Sirius (01:02:50):
That's a Mount Rushmore of cyberculture stuff,
right there.

Lisa Rein (01:02:58):
Barlow Nelson, especially, especially when he
says things like, like, wizzywig is practically the bottom
lobotomization of our ability tosee, yeah, that's just the kind
of overdramatic shit that Tedwould say. Oh yeah. Good stuff.

(01:03:19):
Good stuff. We

RU Sirius (01:03:20):
love, we love people who produce pull quotes, that's
for sure. Yes,

Lisa Rein (01:03:24):
yes. And then here same issue William Gibson and
Bruce Sterling.

RU Sirius (01:03:30):
That's actually a review of, oh,

Lisa Rein (01:03:33):
it's a review of their book by Rudy.

RU Sirius (01:03:35):
Is it probably by Rudy? Yeah,

Lisa Rein (01:03:39):
so you've got Rudy.
So Rudy Rucker is doing bookreviews. Yeah, for you. Okay,
make that point. It's kind ofamazing. It's just

RU Sirius (01:03:51):
running for us.
Gibson ever ended up running forus? He might have, but Bruce
Sterling ended up writing for usa lot. Rudy, Rudy, Rudy, we
connected with way back when wewere Mondo 2000 and John Shirley
was actually the first person toagree to be in our initial
article from the cyberpunkworld. He had just moved to the

(01:04:14):
Bay Area. Yeah. And Josh earlywrote for us a lot as well.

Lisa Rein (01:04:24):
Neat, okay, and then we have is this, Sarah Drew, and
I what's going on?

RU Sirius (01:04:35):
Let's not not to be named, but I guess it's too
late. No,

Lisa Rein (01:04:44):
okay, yeah,

RU Sirius (01:04:47):
but yeah, it's a great it's a great pose being a
cyber siren, siren and a cyborg.
And yes, man. Many years, manyyears of my life. But that's the
for the gossip show. That's

Lisa Rein (01:05:04):
another we're definitely going to have to have
the gossip show now. We keepdropping tidbits for it, and we
are going to have you back inSeptember, by the way, so that
you and Ben, you know, can talkabout, you know, future stuff
too, by the way. So this isanother cover that never was.
You can tell it's not a finalcover, because you guys would

(01:05:25):
never, you guys would never haveanything boxy like that, but,
but I still thought it wasinteresting. And that's what you
do, is you, you mock up severalcovers and pick the best one,
you know. And for you guys, I'mjust lots of amazing covers that
never, that never, yeah,

RU Sirius (01:05:41):
not too many of them were saved, but some of them

Lisa Rein (01:05:44):
were, yeah, I was able to find Yeah, neat. And
it's so nice. It's so great thatyou put them up there. You know
that that the Internet Archive,that they're there for people.
Hey, let's talk about Mondo.
Vanilli. Oh, yeah. So I wasamazed. I remembered the song. I
found that love is the productsong. That's the music that was

(01:06:06):
playing in the opening montage.
Yeah, and

RU Sirius (01:06:13):
that's an hour that's an hour long song. Story in and
of itself, how we met TrentReznor and I, and
he said we should record forhim, spent $90,000 of nothing,
records money, and then theydidn't release it. Yeah, that's

(01:06:34):
a whole he was, he was in hisdownward spiral at the time,
wild, wild times. And he was, ofcourse, living in the house
where Sharon Tate was murdered,and we met him at a housewarming
party with Timothy Leary and themembers of Mondo Vanilli and

(01:06:56):
Gibby Haynes and, my God, Ican't remember the name of the
guy anyway. Bunch of rock stars,yeah,

Lisa Rein (01:07:08):
what do you think happened? Why do you think they
didn't release it? I mean, whatreason would

RU Sirius (01:07:15):
everybody went over budget, including us? And I
think we are following Trent'sexample, assuming we could do
the same thing that he could do,but nothing. It was a boutique
record company given to Trent inwhich, as is often the case with

(01:07:39):
record companies, telling him hecan do whatever he wants with
it, and then not actuallyfollowing through on that offer.
So nothing was a subsidiary ofInterscope, which I believe was
a subsidiary of Warner Brothers.
So it was the contracts weresupposed to be friendly, but

(01:08:01):
were actually really hostile,because they went up the chain
of command, and yeah, it wasall, it was all pretty bizarre,
and then we couldn't use it.
Eventually, we just put it outon the internet. Enough time had
passed, but they wanted to bepaid back for their studio for

(01:08:27):
their $90,000 of studio timebefore we could use what we did,
and we couldn't really. Reznordropped out of sight after a
while. Couldn't reallycommunicate with him. He was on
a downward spiral. He wasdownward spiral, and then he was

(01:08:49):
on an upward spiral, and becamethis huge, well respected man
about town. So anyway, yeah,it's a start there. If people
look it up, they can find metelling the full, full story on
various

Lisa Rein (01:09:09):
and, and, yeah, it sounds like it was out of turn,
out of Trent's hands, anywhere.
In all fairness, the other thing

RU Sirius (01:09:18):
or not. Yeah, there was the Tipper Gore crisis, and
what Congress Believe me

Lisa Rein (01:09:29):
when I try to tell him that story, they think I
make it up,

RU Sirius (01:09:32):
yeah, and which Congress was attacking music,
and they specifically went afterNine Inch Nails, and that was
right, or that was at the sametime too, and the parent
company, inter scope, was alsobeing attacked for carrying Dr

(01:09:52):
Dre so that anxiety hit just atthis just at the same time we
turned. Than our own IOU bed. Soall that was mixed up, and you
haven't had a Mac. We haven'thad a we even had a manager who
quit the entire Rock and Rollindustry in the middle of it

(01:10:13):
all,

Lisa Rein (01:10:14):
even though, in the end, it ended up selling our
records in the end, right? Itturned out you wanted the
sticker as time went on.

RU Sirius (01:10:22):
Oh yeah, you want to say things on purpose to get the
sticker everything. Oh yeah, wedidn't. We didn't have to put
that on there. It's on therebecause we wanted to, yeah,

Lisa Rein (01:10:31):
right, right. But, I mean, but I mean, in general,
when, when you was an artist,there was a panic, and then it
happened, and then it turnedout, they sold more records with
the sticker, and it just sort ofneutered the whole thing, you
know, what

RU Sirius (01:10:45):
the results of the of the meaning of the hearings were
going to be turned out being asticker, then, okay, well,
that's, that's weak. It

Lisa Rein (01:10:56):
just made people, made teenagers want to go buy
more records to piss everybodyoff, you know, worked out and,
of course, real quick a momentof silence for Millie Vanilli,
Oh, yeah. So how did you decideto make the name mondoville
Vanilla?

RU Sirius (01:11:13):
Yeah. Well, I was just reading the newspaper one
day, sitting out having mycoffee. I was in the middle of
the obsession with virtualreality, and I read about these
guys being in trouble for lipsyncing, and to my virtual
reality so brain, I was like,What's the difference? Why not?

(01:11:37):
Well, there

Lisa Rein (01:11:37):
isn't yet and again.
They got a bad rap. We are. Mostpeople are kind of in agreement
now that they got a bad rap inthe sense that there's a lot of
of other singers that are usedin everything, and you can't go
down that, go down that trail.
But

RU Sirius (01:11:53):
I was definitely up playing the simulacrum and and
Millie Vanilli. What MillieVanilli done? I mean, there's
their song. Shouldn't havenever, ever gotten a Grammy, but
that's exactly the song, I mean.
But yeah, so I just tossed itout as as as a joke, and the

Lisa Rein (01:12:18):
rest is history. And then, of course, IOU babe is a
takeoff on I Got You Babe, which

RU Sirius (01:12:23):
is Yeah, yeah, which became even more relevant when
we gave the album The title. Andthen we ended up owing nothing
records $90,000 and then we wemade a new song called The
Ballad of Brent buzzkill, and weput it in our post nothing

(01:12:45):
records version of the albumthat's on Bandcamp now in
different places,

Lisa Rein (01:12:49):
was that, is that the record executive or something?

RU Sirius (01:12:53):
No, Brent bus killed.
Is a play on,

Lisa Rein (01:12:56):
yeah, oh, oh, okay, yeah. Again, again. It sounds
like he to me. It sounded likeit wasn't anything personal. It
sounded like No, no, they givehim a record label, and you
don't really have the power todo it at what you will like.
What

RU Sirius (01:13:13):
happened was he actually had six different
artists that he had signed,other than Nine Inch Nails, and
the only one who got albumsreleased was Marilyn Manson,
which was certainly a businesswise is a good decision. You
know, we see where that wow,

Lisa Rein (01:13:37):
it's, it's hard to talk about Marilyn Manson since
I've seen the documentary, youknow, now about, about all that,
but, but in that, but way backthen, he was actually a
progressive he had a stage show.

RU Sirius (01:13:51):
Yeah, there were no albums

Lisa Rein (01:13:53):
but progressive and stuff. And that just makes it
all the more sad, you know, put,throw him on the list of music I
can't really listen to anymore.
He can hang out with MichaelJackson and all the other sad
music, but swiftly moving on. Sothis I

RU Sirius (01:14:10):
listen to anything.
But anyway, yeah, yeah, I stilllisten to Cat Scratch Fever
because it's a good

Lisa Rein (01:14:16):
Oh no. He's the worst. No no. Not Ted. Not Ted.
Nugent. So

RU Sirius (01:14:23):
I have a song. I have a song actually called, I can't
remember the opening title, butit's subtitles. I Ted Nugent
with his own gun, so people canlook that up.

Lisa Rein (01:14:36):
Is that one of your songs? Yeah. Oh, well, that's
okay. Anyway, yeah, um, yeah,he's just, you know, just a mean
meanie. I don't like meanies.
Um, yeah, hey, I found thispiece. Now I'm showing now
here's Genesis, um, who'sfinally got a movie out about

(01:14:57):
them. I saw. Ah, I haven't seenit yet, but it looks really
exciting and and here's a quotefrom him. Video is the nearest
you'll get to an electricmaltov. Go out and throw one,
cause the cat cathode ray tubesto resonate and implode. You are
your own screen. Yeah, weworshiped this guy, this guy,

(01:15:21):
um, are they um, at the at thetime he that's why I made that
mistake.

RU Sirius (01:15:30):
But I don't know.
What is I don't

Lisa Rein (01:15:36):
I don't know. Okay, well, there was already Genesis.
Was already around by the time,because he was doing psychic TV.
Oh, yeah, right,

RU Sirius (01:15:45):
and performance arts going back to the 70s or maybe
even the 60s. Yeah. I remember.
I remember, I remember seeinghim, his name in Dallas magazine
called file, which during thepunk era became vile.

Lisa Rein (01:16:04):
That's late 70s, early 80s. Probably, yeah, okay,
so this is 85 and I'm thinkingabout when you're more when your
your magazine was coming out,maybe around 90, maybe around
1990 and we would just collecttelevisions, old television
sets, and make these walls oftelevision sets, yeah, and then,

(01:16:27):
and then fuck with the signal toget it to, to display different,
bizarre, different things,right? Than just all the same
thing or something flashing. Or,if you somebody finally did it
to where it could be one bigpicture, you know, from all the
TV

RU Sirius (01:16:45):
snacks back to Nam June Pike, actually the first
video artists from going back to1960 if nobody else wanted to
have Anything to do with videoart. And there's great NAMA,
June Pike, n, a, m, J, U, n, e,

Lisa Rein (01:17:08):
i Korean. A Korean artist,

RU Sirius (01:17:11):
yeah, Korean. Moved to America and yeah, all right,
I have a personal story Eve. Eveand I had our first sort of
formal date when our friendLarry took us to San Jose to a

(01:17:31):
non June hype exhibition, videoexhibition,

Lisa Rein (01:17:36):
uh huh,

RU Sirius (01:17:37):
yeah, so yeah, did

Lisa Rein (01:17:39):
you? Did you meet him? Or,

RU Sirius (01:17:41):
oh no, no,

Lisa Rein (01:17:43):
okay,

RU Sirius (01:17:46):
he wasn't later. We went to something at MoMA in New
York that was a exhibition. Butit was, it was, it was after the
opening. So, no, I never got tomeet him. Needs, actually,
Binghamton. Binghamton, New Yorkhad a strong experimental TV
center, so I was very aware ofexperimental TV as Neil.

Lisa Rein (01:18:10):
I'd never heard of him before, so this is neat.
It's always need to get some getsome more.

RU Sirius (01:18:15):
People should find that show. It's such a marvelous
show. He says so many brilliantthings about technology on that
show. What's the name of theshow? And find it by a PBS,
something about Moon somethingor the first TV, something like

(01:18:36):
that. Alright, I'll,

Lisa Rein (01:18:37):
I'll find it, but I'll find it and drop it in the
drop it in the description.
What's the story behind thiscover? I don't know.

RU Sirius (01:18:45):
That's Brenda. Brenda Laurel, one of the early people
experimenting with virtualreality, still quite well, okay,
within VR and tech circles. So,yeah, that's, that's who that
is. Neither was she in collegeor teaching in college. I can't

(01:19:06):
remember exactly, Laurel,absolutely

Lisa Rein (01:19:12):
neat. And then we have Reese Witherspoon, Reese's

RU Sirius (01:19:15):
first cover,

Lisa Rein (01:19:18):
haha. It says freeways. Reese Witherspoon,
what the heck is freeway? Isthat a movie? Freeway?

RU Sirius (01:19:24):
Yeah, there's this weird movie that Queen movie
came obsessed with. So weinterviewed the director, and
then we, of course, put Reese onthe on the cover.

Lisa Rein (01:19:35):
And you think it was her first cover?

RU Sirius (01:19:38):
I'm pretty sure that's her first cover. It was
pretty career. That was crazy.
It was a very punky, nastymovie. It was very different
from what you'd likely to seeher and anymore, although I
think she does make goodchoices,

Lisa Rein (01:19:56):
she does big little eyes. Was the last thing I saw.
Her end. And I was actuallyrather impressed, interesting.
This is great. Go ahead,usually, what would you say?

RU Sirius (01:20:08):
Yeah, usually, if I see she's in the movie, I'll at
least try to find out what itis,

Lisa Rein (01:20:15):
yeah. So that's amazing. And this is night. So
this is, yeah, the same timeperiod, sort of 9495 Okay, six.
Maybe

RU Sirius (01:20:25):
that's actually I that's the one issue I was
editor in chief on in the laterperiod I came back to guest edit
an issue, and that's the onewith Reese withers.

Lisa Rein (01:20:40):
That one neat. Okay, and then this is just an ad,
yeah, no, Sentra. There'sSentra. We, we talked about her.
Now this, I wanted to ask youabout this is an ad. Is this an
ad that Logitech gave you, likethis? Or did you guys, were you

(01:21:00):
guys creating these ads? It

RU Sirius (01:21:03):
could be from Logitech. It was after my time.
But Logitech always gave usinteresting ads. They gave us
one. They gave us one of a nakedbaby, a naked male baby, one
with the baby not peeing, andone with the baby peeing. I
can't remember. I can't rememberwhat it said. So clearly one of

(01:21:30):
one of our CO publishers, whoI'll let remain unnamed, thought
it really hurt our potential forselling ads to other
advertisers, because there was alittle pee pee in there, a
little baby and his pee pee alittle

Lisa Rein (01:21:46):
baby. It said it was just a little baby with a little
baby, pee pee, peeing. But scareaway advertisers? Well,

RU Sirius (01:21:53):
yeah, I don't know if it did scare away advertiser or
not. I don't think so. Did

Lisa Rein (01:21:58):
you run? Did you run the version with the PP, yeah,
yeah. Ran all the issuessomewhere. Oh, so they gave you
two verses, but you chose to dothe one that show no, it was

RU Sirius (01:22:08):
the one version that they gave us. Oh, baby side by
side, the baby not peeing andthe baby peeing.

Lisa Rein (01:22:16):
Oh, I see what you're saying. They were both. Oh,
okay, so, but you would, you didgo ahead and run it? Yeah,

RU Sirius (01:22:23):
we run it without without knowledge, and my
forethought, didn't really thinkabout it one or the other. But

Lisa Rein (01:22:29):
did it affect

RU Sirius (01:22:31):
anything? No, I don't think so. One of the one of the
one of the people had some moneyin the magazine thought it was
harmful, but I don't think yousaw it until after, after the
fact.

Lisa Rein (01:22:44):
Yeah, well, that's interesting.

RU Sirius (01:22:46):
Something for the something for the rumor version

Lisa Rein (01:22:48):
of our Yes, exactly.
Another thing, another story forthe rumor

RU Sirius (01:22:52):
mill, inside Mondo, 2000

Lisa Rein (01:22:56):
the inside scoop.
Let's see here. Okay, this isinteresting, and I don't even
know what this is. This is, isthat BART Nagel that did that?

RU Sirius (01:23:09):
This is, oh, yeah, it's an inside sleeve. Yeah,
that's probably Bart organizingit. But the image is probably
from something also inside themagazine. Oh, which could be by
anybody, could be by any of theartists that we used to work
with. Okay, well, could be byBarker. Could be by somebody

(01:23:33):
else, okay,

Lisa Rein (01:23:36):
all right. Well, it's cool.

RU Sirius (01:23:39):
Yay. Cocktail twins.
We love the talk Cocteau Twins.
You know, of course, thismortal, this mortal coil,
recorded Allison's theme songtarantula. So she had to find
out if they were into tarantulavenom, because she wrote several
articles about the use oftarantula Venom as an

(01:24:01):
intoxicant. That's

Lisa Rein (01:24:04):
right, because she's actually a scientist and an
anthropologist.

RU Sirius (01:24:08):
She is color A Gonzo anthropologist. She didn't
graduate or anything, but shelays claim to discovering the
property of DMT in toads beforeanybody else. And she did it by

(01:24:30):
reading iconography, Tomiciconography, rather than through
any other source. Uh,interesting. Yeah, you can, you
can. Yeah, too. I tried to tellthat guy who has a show about
psychedelics on TV about it,because he wrote a he had a

(01:24:53):
whole episode about whodiscovered DMT and toads and.
And made no mention of Queen Lubut he pooh poohed it.

Lisa Rein (01:25:09):
Well, she wrote a paper. She's written papers and
stuff. That

RU Sirius (01:25:13):
old paper definitely,

Lisa Rein (01:25:16):
oh, there isn't well.
She's written papers just,

RU Sirius (01:25:18):
it's just not quite explicit enough to get over the
top, but it's there, yeah, yeah,

Lisa Rein (01:25:26):
yeah. I found some papers that were enough to make
me be like, okay, she knows whatshe's talking about.

RU Sirius (01:25:33):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
She's done some great stuff.
Yeah, yeah.

Lisa Rein (01:25:38):
And then in here, let's see we've got, okay, that
was the John Perry. So theseagain. Now these were just kind
of in there they were. I wasn'tsure what stories they even
corresponded to, but this isjust the kind of thing that
you'd stick in there now that'ssent in the middle, right? Yes,

(01:25:58):
yeah, yeah. And this wholefashion thing was really cool
and really, really prevalent atthe time. See that again,

RU Sirius (01:26:13):
yeah, a lot of the hardcore nerds thought the
inclusion of that kind of stuffwas ridiculous. But we had fun,

Lisa Rein (01:26:22):
neat. All right, well, are you that has been
really great having you on theshow. It's amazing being able to
talk to you firsthand about allthis stuff. Here we go. And
yeah, I just want to reallythank thank you for coming on

(01:26:44):
the show, and we're going tohave you back in September with
Ben and Desdemona robot willalso be here. Desmond robot had
all sorts of things she wasgoing to ask you about, but I
told her that she she couldwait. And it was kind of good
anyway, because I really lovedhaving you all to myself, and

(01:27:05):
being able to just go throughsome of the Mondo, 2000 history
and have that there for anybodythat wants to come, you know.
And and now, as you write, oh,and you write, I forgot to
mention that you writeexcellent, uh, columns for
mindplex, too. It's been

RU Sirius (01:27:23):
a while, but I hope to get back to it soon. Yeah,

Lisa Rein (01:27:27):
yeah.

RU Sirius (01:27:29):
I do go into the yippies starting the digital
revolution. I believe in anarticle called still the
singularity, so people can tryto look that up. Yes, and

Lisa Rein (01:27:41):
they're all really interesting. The articles are
really amazing, and learn a lot.
Learn a lot when I read them,and even some of your more
controversial the tesserel, thearticle you did with Emile
Torres,

RU Sirius (01:27:53):
oh yeah.

Lisa Rein (01:27:56):
And, you know, it got a lot of criticism. I found it
fascinating, and it all checkedout when I researched it. It
all,

RU Sirius (01:28:07):
I think, I mean, I'm somewhere in between the guy who
complained about it and the guyinterviewed Emilio. You know,
more towards Emilio, but youknow, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well,
scary monsters and super creeps,exactly,

Lisa Rein (01:28:28):
exactly. It just you gave both sides of it. You
weren't really being for oragainst it. You were just
talking about what it was, andit was, you know, really well
done. So we love having you onthe team, and we look forward to
having you back. And I thinkthat's it, unless there's
anything else. Oh, I know onething I wanted to ask you any

(01:28:50):
advice for today's generation ofartists and creators and writers
and you know, think about likeyou in the 90s, if you are you
now, you know what any advicethat you would give writers,

RU Sirius (01:29:11):
writers

Lisa Rein (01:29:14):
or creators or artists or whatever, but just
about the Scene now,

RU Sirius (01:29:18):
not going to make any money. Yeah. My The one thing I
have an attitude about is that Imay agree with some of the
criticisms about using AI, butif you're a genuine artist, and

(01:29:39):
you have some originality inyour in your mind and your soul,
then you could, you shouldexploit the medium anyway. Use
it.

Lisa Rein (01:29:50):
Use it. Yeah, and you could do and you can do creative
things with it. It's not thatyou're handing everything.

RU Sirius (01:29:58):
In fact, I, I have a.
Song called I used to dancebetween the raindrops, and the
person I collaborated withpretty much made it all using
artificial intelligence, andprobably got one of the best
responses of anything withoutsaying, you know, who made it or

(01:30:20):
whatever, got one of the bestresponses of anything I tossed
out there.

Lisa Rein (01:30:28):
Well, yeah. I mean, yeah, Ben. And Ben uses AI.
Well, that's the one thing thatwe found out with these
generative tools, is they arealways leaning towards these
commercial sounds becausethey're just trying to make
people happy, right? And a lotof the people using these tools
can't do it with the regularmusician, you know, they don't,

(01:30:50):
can't, like, play an instrumentand record it or whatever,
normally, that's why they'reusing a tool. And so they're
just happy it came out so good,right? Even if it's just, you
know, repurposing training dataor whatever, that that's sort of
like the dark side, but, but,yeah, that's really great. I'll
link to that in the in thedescription, and thanks again

(01:31:14):
for coming on. I want to remindeverybody to to subscribe and
and we'll see you later. Thankyou RU.

RU Siri (01:31:20):
Thanks Lisa. Take Care.

Lisa Rein (01:31:22):
sweet dreams, everybody, bye, bye, bye.

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Episode 33: RU Sirius - Cyberpunk Legend

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Episode 33: RU Sirius - Cyberpunk Legend