Earlier this year, Justin Pearson released a book called G.G. Alien and the Mystery Meat, an impossible-to-put-down mad dash through crusty clubs, social politics, poverty, and dance music, with much of it surrounding his time at Rich’s, a prominent gay bar in San Diego during the 2010’s.
“Wait,” we hear you ask, “why was the guy from bands like The Locust, Retox, Deaf Club, and Some Girls working the bar? Why would he need an another job?”
Well, as you may have heard or even experienced yourself, playing in bands is not necessarily seen as working in bands by the outside world, and it makes a big difference. Pearson’s book intimately details how being in a band simply doesn’t pay that well, or even several – yes, Justin Pearson was / is in a handful of known bands, but their schedules are syncopated, so any gaps in the itinerary means gaps in pay, and as they say, the legend of the rent was way past due.
Any creative person who’s ever had to juggle their pastime with holding a job they didn’t like, or even a job they did like, can relate to the way Pearson describes his search for stability – the ideas that come up, the pros and cons, where and how to apply… it’s all there. But even more relatable is that despite the situation, Pearson actually becomes inspired to start another band while working at Rich’s, this one called All Leather.
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But beyond the antics you might expect, this is actually where shit gets crazy, as somehow the band got hooked up with Dim Mak Records for their debut, and for those unaware, Dim Mak is owned by Steve Aoki. Of Las Vegas billboard fame. Yes, really.
Apparently one of the band’s songs even sold close to two million copies (pre-streaming, mind you), which you would think might prompt a ‘hello, how are you’ from the label, but in seems the opposite occurred… for over a decade. Fourteen years later, the band was hit with a statement from Dim Mak stating they owed double the label’s original investment, and more than likely that’s when it occurred to All Leathers to take back what was theirs, which brings us to Amateur Surgery on Half-Hog Abortion Island.
Best anthology name ever, as far as we’re concerned.
Before we get into it, have a look at the updated press release from Three One G:
“ALL LEATHER is the soundtrack to a dance party at the epicenter of doom and destruction: heavy distortions, sharp, grating guitars, bitter, angry shouts fused with sexual slurs. In the span of its limited time as an active band, All Leather consisted of Nathan Joyner (Psychic Graveyard, Hot Nerds, Some Girls, ) on guitar, either Jung Sing (Silent, Maniqui Lazer) or Tin Cagayat on drums, and Justin Pearson (The Locust, Deaf Club, Dead Cross) on vocals. The genre is self-described as, bluntly stated: “annoying.”
This anthology, titled Amateur Surgery on Half-Hog Abortion Island (in classic All Leather fashion), is a complete collection of their odd and brief existence. All of the songs in this collection have been either re-recorded, recorded over, and/or revamped, presenting an invigorated vision to their body of music. This re-imagining showcases All Leather’s unique perspective in the only way they know how: with snarling grit and electronic grime.
Amateur Surgery On Half-Hog Abortion Island recorded by Mike Kamoo at Earthling, Brent Asbury at Singing Serpent, and Nathan Joyner at Cereal and Soda in San Diego, CA. Mixed, remixed, and mastered by Nathan Joyner. Pressed on limited edition color vinyl w/ faux leather cover. Layout and design by Displaced/ Replaced.
Despite the band’s brief existence, they brought a fair amount of filth to the table, and looking at the track listing we were flabbergasted to see a David Bowie cover that we certainly can’t wait to hear. But truth be told, we’re most stoked of all to present this QnA with Justin Pearson himself regarding the saga of All Leather.
FB: All Leather’s a distinctly dirty and funky take on dance and electro-punk – in a way would you consider the project sort of the culmination of the sounds you encountered over the speakers during your time at Rich’s?
JP: Yes, that is exactly what happened. A lot of the “stuff” was there, in general, in life. But it was hearing Ida Corr Vs. Fredde Le Grand “Let Me Think About It” night after night while at work got me thinking about the concept of the band. Nathan Joyner and I were on the same shitty page in music, and it sort of made sense at the time for both of us who were extremely poor to attempt doing an actual band, with kind of weird and janky instruments fumbling through electronic dance music.
FB: What was it about “Let Me Think About It” from Ida Corr x Freddy Le Grand that convinced you and Nathan Joyner to start the band?
JP: It was the percussion, and also the prominent synth line. And as much as I was not a fan of the vocals, the “Rrrraaat” thing she does resonated vocally. As for the first time I heard it, I think it was there in the background, among the dick sucking and barfing. Then I heard it the next night, and the next, and the next, and the next… as the club basically played the same shit night after night no matter who the DJ was.
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FB: In your most recent book, you describe how the recording sessions were fairly chaotic. When did you first start thinking about reclaiming the band and putting it out through Three One G? Was it difficult to “get the band back together?”
JP: Well shit, this is a loaded multi part question. Let’s see…
The recording sessions weren’t really chaotic, in retrospect. The EP was a mess. We had no idea what we were doing, and well, I’ll just leave it at that. It’s ok, but the LP was when we figured some shit out. We would demo the material, and then song by song, whenever Brent Ashbury could get us into the studio during his day job, we’d work on stuff. Basically we’d bring the demos, and the drum brain, which was a lower tiered Roland V drum set. We’d grab the sounds we picked for the kit, resequenced them on a grid in typical electronic dance music fashion, and then add guitar and vocals. The reason for the sequenced drums was not only to try as hard as we could to be a legit EDM band, but Jung Sing lived in Mexicali and it was a pain in the ass for him, and Nathan and I, to get him to San Diego as much as we wanted, and as frequent as we needed.
We never got the band back together. Nathan and I revisited the stems to the LP, and took a shot at making things better, different, and probably more like it should have been all along. We had this holier than thou bullshit attitude that if we could not do it live, then we would not record it. We had “beef” with the label so we had this hodgepodge of thoughts that all meshed together… 1, can we make the music we created better? and 2, can we “disguise” it enough so we can just re-release it since Dim Mac has sucked at accounting to us, and we’ve been on an email thread with six or seven people from the label, all who can’t seem to communicate with us when we ask about the confusing, and seemingly janky accounting they have? Well, when we get accounting. There was a fourteen year stretch when we could not get anyone to correspond with us. So yeah, the band is not together.
FB: Do both drummers feature on the upcoming version?
JP: Tin Cagayat only wrote and played on the EP. So the five tracks that she played on, she actually ran her electronic kit direct into the mixing board and tracked that way. After we departed with her, Jung wrote with us, but never actually recorded on the album, as it was sequenced. There were a couple tracks that just Nathan and I wrote. But for the most part, we wrote the bulk of the material with one drummer in mind.
FB: It looks like there’s a David Bowie cover in the track listing – how did that come about?
JP: We were asked to be on a tribute compilation called We Were So Turned On released by Manimal. There is a bit to unpack there as well. One, we should not have covered a Bowie song. Two, we were fairly arrogant in some ways. And three, we were struggling to survive and when someone asked you to be on a comp with Duran Duran, Viv Albertine, Rainbow Arabia, Halloween Swim Team, and that guy Devandra Banheart, you should take it. I mean, we shit the bed without our track for sure, but the new version is decent. I wish we had known then what we know now, but well… that is life on this planet.
FB: The band’s debut happened via Dim Mak Records, Steve Aoki’s original label – did you meet him back in the Pickle Patch days?
JP: Yes, The Locust played the living room of the apartment he lived in over in Isla Vista, which was an area in the Santa Barbara area I frequented with my first band Struggle. I never really knew who he was, aside from one of the people who lived in the apartment. I later on found out he was a singer in a band, and then became the popular DJ that people seem to love.
FB: You mention in G.G. Alien… that the label was more into hype and social media than musicianship. Was this something they asked the band to take part in? Or was fairly hands off kind of contract considering they’d signed All Leather as “a Locust band?”
JP: Somehow there was a bit of online hype, probably some sort of MySpace bullshit, where there was talk of the band, and how it was EDM. Steve hit us up, and said he heard there was a “new Locust band” and offered to put it out before we played a show, or even recorded anything for him, or anyone to hear. Seemed like a bad idea on his part, but we didn’t give a shit since he offered a little money to pay for us to record and bought us pizza. Calling it “a Locust band” was humiliating for me and pissed Nathan off, which got us off to a weird start that would essentially haunt the band for quite some time.
FB: So when Dim Mak stopped accounting to All Leathers, it was after a track sold nearly 2 million times on iTunes, Beatport, and other pre-streaming services?
JP: When the Beetroots remix came out, it charted as #4 on iTunes and #1 on Beatport. So that is $.99 per download on iTunes and $3.99 on Beatport. We had not seen the accounting for that remix track, or anything in the way of sales till at least a decade and a half later. The sales overall were grim, with what was actually listed, aside from the “Mystery Meat” remix. There was no accounting for any of the physical sales, and the CDs they manufactured skipped as well as was missing the printing inside the CD jacket, so we were not allowed to sell them. But the accounting did say that the remix sold just shy of two million digital whatever… but not saying which platform the sales were from. It showed that we made a little over $300 for that remix’s sales. The weird thing is, the remix contract that Dim Man used said that the artist gets the sales from the remix, and the remixer does the work for free. We know this because Nathan and I, like typical assholes, remixed an All Leather song as Leg Lifters, our even weirder alter ego EDM thing.
FB: And now after 14 years, the label sent a statement with the band owing twice the label’s original investment (14,000 over 7,000), including a free photo shoot that ended up invoiced at about $2,000?
JP: The LP’s recording budget was $7K. And on the half assed, confusing last statement, there was a charge to us for a photoshoot, which the only shoots we did were with friends, and for free as far as I knew.
FB: To top it all off, they sampled your vocals / stems on a Religion song called “Burn the Bar Down” without consent, during the period they were “not accounting” to you?
JP: That thing was bullshit. A song came out, with a vocal stem from “Mystery Meat” with another DJ duo called Religion. The actual lyric was “burnt the barn down”, and they thought I was saying “burn the bar down”, so they made a pretty sub par dance track using that line, which accompanied a video of some nerd burning a bar down after he was not allowed to go into the club. I asked how it happened, why it happened, and was never part of the process. Dim Mak sent me $100 and said they were sorry. Again, I was a bit too poor to hire a lawyer, and figured there was nothing I could do about it. In relation to this, my brief stint in the world of EDM was pretty stupid. I think All Leather was cool, and I enjoyed it, but the stuff I did with Dim Mac adjacent artists was all pretty dumb. Especially when I was not in on it, but somehow happened to be part of it.
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FB: Did the deal with Dim Mak help you formulate any ideas on how you would, or would not, want to run Three One G?
JP: Oh, I had already formulated most of the do and don’ts of Three One G. The reason I was not rushing to put it out was because I was a barback at a gay club for minimum wage and tips or whatever case I’d find on the ground that drunk people would drop. Being on the poor side of music, when someone offers a little cash, or pizza, you sort of end up taking the offer, which is not always so good.
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FB: Do you think that All Leather was almost ahead of their time, considering how grimy, dirty sounds have infiltrated dance and club music over the years?
JP: I will say what is in my brain, and I think I’ll come off as a dick, which is fine. Let’s see, the fact that Aoki agreed to put out the band before he had heard a single song, and how the whole Bloody Beetroots crock of shit came about… I suppose. But I’m certainly not trying to suck our own dicks over here.
As I said, we really tried to create EDM that we could perform live without a laptop or a DJ. Then after the Beetroots remixed “Mystery Meat” and were coming to San Diego, I had to ask them if we could open. They hesitated, but agreed as long as we were ten decibels quieter than they are. So having that stipulation come from a self prescribed mask-wearing anarchist, and I’m not talking about myself, we opted to take the opening slot knowing we’d hire our own sound engineer to be way too loud. We also decided to play “Mystery Meat” with three live drummers just for the hell of it. Their fans absolutely hated us, which was amusing. Especially seeing our merch thrown and landing on stage as we played.
Then the Beetroots took the stage and eventually performed (with air quotes there) “Mystery Meat”. The dude was playing bass, the drummer had an acoustic kit, and well, we had no bass, and there were drill sounds and bullshit we had from the V drums that were not being played at all during the live version of the remix. Oh, and vocals were in the PA and there were no vocalists singing, as I was on the side of the stage realizing that we just played that same song, way better, with three live drummers, and the DJ poseurs had a bunch of stupid shit on stage pretending.
So perhaps we were ahead of something, or maybe we were always the “help”. Or maybe I should have fucked off since art is subjective and it really comes down to whatever you can get away with. Unfortunately, you can get away with so much more when you are rich.
(Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to pre-order the goods from All Leather here. If you’re looking for more music, check out our Bandcamp compilations here. If you like us, or possibly even love us, donations are always appreciated at the Buy Me A Coffee page here, but if you’re in a generous mood you can also donate to folks like Doctors Without Borders, the PCRF, Charity Water, Kindness Ranch, One Tail at A Time, Canopy Cat Rescue, or Best Friends Animal Sanctuary that could probably use it more – click on their names above to check ‘em out if you’re so inclined. Thanks again!)