Keith Alexander | BME Radio Interview

In 2000 I was interviewed on BME Radio.
A web-based radio show hosted by Shannon Larratt.
As usual, I talked my ass off and was lucky enough to find that Danielle Clark actually transcribed the whole damn thing...

© BMEradio and Shannon Larratt

Shannon Larratt/BME: Alright, welcome back everyone I’m Shannon Larratt and you’re tuned into BME Radio today we’ve got Keith Alexander on the phone with us. This may be a little bit experimental it’s the first time we’ve ever used the phone interface.

Anyway, Keith is a former Gauntlet piercer, has his own sort of nebulous studio at this point called Modern American Body Arts which you can find online at modernamerican.com.

He’s an accomplished scarification artist, multimedia designer, rec.arts bodyart oracle and general shit disturber as well as being a guitar player in Dee Snider’s SMF. Keith we’ll start at the very beginning of the body modification for you. Your first piercing was a PA and you had to drive 100 miles to get it?

Keith Alexander: Correct, Pat Sinatra up in Woodstock, New York. We drove 100 miles there and 100 miles back to get it and that was back in probably 1990 and it was a lot of fun, so that’s kind of what got me started.

Thank you for that introduction by the way.

BME: [laugh] Did you continue on piercing or did you already have tattoos at that point?

KA: I got my first tattoo when I was 13 years old.

BME: Right.

KA: So I mean, being from Brooklyn I was exposed to tattoos from you know, both my grandfathers were tattooed and so on, I mean Hells Angels in New York City are prominent force so as soon as I was young enough, old enough to go into the city and saw bikers with tattoos, not that that was the reason I got tattooed but you know I’ve seen them for years and my first one was when I was thirteen and then 16 and then like 20, and then I really stopped.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Until you know relatively recently I guess, you know ‘87 or so.

BME: If I’m remembering your tattoos correctly there’s a lot of Nordic influence in your tattoos?

KA: Yeah, a lot of Nordic influence, I’m half Norwegian so…

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I’ve always been drawn to the Sagas and the Eddas and the runes and some of that lore, so that was a natural route for me to take when it came to designing stuff that was personal for me.

BME: [affirmative noise] Is your, your pubic lettering, that says, is it, was it Frida that is says?

KA: Oh Freya, that’s the English Saxon spelling f-r-e-y-a, Freya’s the goddess of love as well as the goddess of other things, but I thought it was an appropriate tattoo to have in that region.

BME: For sure. And it sort of goes with the PA and the frenum ladder.

KA: Exactly.

BME: Now, you, what made you decide to actually start piercing professionally?

KA: Really, nothing. It just happened.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I feel like I’ve told the story a thousand times. I was getting pierced at Gauntlet fairly regularly.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Dan Kopka, Lauren Pine, Mark Seitchik, Brian…I forget Brian’s…Brian Murphy, a whole bunch of people in the New York City shop, and I had been spending a lot of money there going you know, buying every PFIQ I could get my hands on, buying jewellery for my girlfriend at the time, you know just spending a lot of money up there and time and you know got to know the people and then one day I went up and out of nowhere they asked to speak to me privately. The manager at the time, and I thought they were going to offer me a wholesale account, and they actually did – but that was after they offered me the job.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So they asked if I wanted to apprentice up there and at first I was, you know I was pretty blown away because it had meant so much to me personally, I never even considered piercing because to me it was something that a skill that takes years to develop and you just don’t want to really, this was back in the day when it truly was something that there was an apprenticeship that you had to go through it was a real craft. There was a craftsmanship behind it and it was a lot in common with like ancient guilds of knowledge being passed from one person to the next. So I just never even considered it.

At the time I was a live sound engineer. I was mixing bands in a Cajun joint actually a really big dance hall called Louisiana Community. And I was doing Jazz, Rock, Zydeco all kinds of great music and that was at night starting at about 8 PM going till 4 AM. And the Gauntlet gig started at noon so it was just a perfect opportunity. I saw the future, I mean I didn’t really see it going where it had gone now but in retrospect I remember asking one of my first days, asking Dan Kopka you know a true master piercer, somebody who really in the end, you know when he got out of it he might have let a few people down, but this guy, you know he was the pinnacle of a piercer at the time. I asked him, “Where do you see this going in ten years?”

And he said, “Keith, one day it’s going to be like freakin’ nail salons, and it’s going to be on every corner.” And low and behold, in Manhattan, maybe not on every corner but it’s prevalent and they’re third rate shops and they’re very much like those nail salons that you see just pop up everywhere so he was right.

BME: Well I think at this point even every small town has a piercing studio.

KA: Well it’s one thing to have a piercing studio, and that’s great, every small town you know should have one hopefully they apply you know the same certain standards but it’s really heartbreaking to walk down 6th Avenue or St. Marks Place or 8th Street in Manhattan and I mean... there’s cigar shops that are now piercing.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know there’s just, you walk in and it’s just full of smoke and it’s just disgusting and it’s one of the things that kind of made me back out of it now because I just, my heart is really not into it on the mass level that it used to be. I used to be very much into educating the public and I used to really feel like a great source of information.

That’s why I get so upset when I’m on some of the usenet newsgroups you see people asking the same questions. The information is so out there, the information wasn’t out there in 1992 so it was important for the people who had the knowledge to share it. Now the information is everywhere. Some of it is disinformation, some of it wrong, but the majority of it is pretty good and solid and if you have skills you can wade your way through the crap and find the nuggets of information. But that’s why I have a reputation for you know breaking people’s chops about asking the same old friggin' questions.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: The answers are out there now, they weren’t back then, there was a little bit more mystery back then.

BME: Yeah, I think people forget. I mean it was only ten years ago but the piercing scene was really really different at that point in time. One of the things that sort of set you apart from a lot of piercers at that point in time, your generation of piercers, the vast majority of them are probably self taught.

KA: Right.

BME: I mean most of them didn’t have the privilege of going through that Gauntlet circle…

KA: Absolutely, yup, yup, yup. It’s one thing to…

BME: Do you think…what’s that?

KA: It’s one thing to take a seminar at Gauntlet and it’s great it’s five days but I mean I was put through the ringer, I did a couple hundred navels before I was allowed to do them alone. And we’re talking... it was intense. I mean there was a certain amount of... not competition but there was a lot of ball breaking by some of the people who taught me where if your dot was a little bit off you had to fix it.

Now, if my dot is a little off you know I know how to compensate, okay, I go, “Okay it looks a little to the right, you know I’ll pierce a little to the left.” I mean I’m not, I’m not rationalizing or saying that’s good practice but you know after these many piercings I can kind of break the rules but you know I was put through the ringer.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And you know I’m better for it, and I really can’t complain. I’m much better for it and I agree with you a lot of self taught and self taught you know teaching yourself is good and you can stumble upon…

BME: It’s a different time now though, I mean it may have been more appropriate back then but now there are…

KA: And it was harder back then, you had PFIQ or Pierce with a Pro, period. That was it. You had a couple things of Pleasurable Piercings put out that might not have been as good as the Pierce with the Pro but their hearts are in the right place. To teach yourself then was a little harder. Now, the information, I mean you know you run columns about how I wrote how to pierce a female nipple and so on.

BME: Yeah.

KA: The information is there now, it wasn’t back then. It was very much a secret society.

BME: Right. At the same time, now there are so many opportunities for people to apprentice there’s not really much of an excuse for someone you know to start experimenting on their friends.

KA: True, you’re only as good as the person who teaches you.

BME: That’s true.

KA: So when I hear about people are telling me, “Oh I apprenticed with so and so for 6-years.” I’m like, “Well you know what? He sucks!” Sorry, I mean he…

BME: Yeah, it’s true. Six years of getting bad technique drilled into you can’t…

KA: It doesn’t matter, I’ve been motherfucked into the ground by plenty of people for one crooked piercing or you know aftercare advice like saying you know, use you know Provon as opposed to something else I mean so the piercing community is a whole, I mean among the pro’s we’re a bunch of assholes you know what I mean?

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: There’s a lot of backstabbing and bullshit talk but it’s definitely a different time.

BME: Yeah. I gotta ask this BME question of the day thing constantly, the most common question probably is “How do I become a piercer?”

KA: Right.

BME: And now people started asking is “How much money can I make as a piercer?”

KA: Yeah, well yeah that’s a natural evolution but you have to ask yourself why do you want to be a piercer? I mean I get that question all the time…

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: As well. Especially via e-mail. Why? Why do you want to be a piercer? And if you tell me because it’s a cool gig – well it’s not. It may have been it’s just, if you’re buying into a certain cache it’s too late. I mean you’ve missed the tipping point, it’s over.

I was never, I never got into piercing or I never considered myself cool because I was a piercer – I consider myself cool because every dream I’ve ever had I’ve gone after. And you know all those types of blue sky bullshit but you know becoming a piercer, it’s, it’s almost a dead end now I mean I can say that, I can say that in all seriousness. Where are you going to go with it?

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Why do you want to do it? If you want to do it because you want to pierce some friends and so on that’s great, like there’s a lot of people in the SM scene that I’ve counseled and given some impromptu lessons but they would never say you know “trained by Keith Alexander” or something like that... but passing the knowledge on is very important.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: If the person’s motivation is right, if their motivation is because it’s cool or worse yet for the money, you know I mean I raised my prices to separate myself from some of the hacks in the city that were charging the same as me so I doubled my prices kind of get a little more like in Spinal Tap you know, our audience is a little more selective.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So I tried to set myself apart that way, and then there were a few local guys that raised their prices as well and it’s like the skill level wasn’t even there to justify it.

BME: Yeah.

KA: I almost feel bad for charging for piercings at times, it just... it hurt I never wanted to charge. That’s one of the reasons Modern American... while I was doing well, the overhead that I insisted on keeping as well as the décor. I mean I spent so much money just on making that place look, smell, and feel nice that I was giving piercings away.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know because it’s so important to me, for my heart, that it’s hard to charge for it and you kind of sully it when you get the money involved. If that’s your motivation from Jump Street from the word go screw you. I don’t have a problem saying, “Fuck you.” You know we don’t need that type of piercer.

BME: [affirmative noise] You’ve worked at a few studios as well as having your own the Modern American studio. What were the sort of joys and stresses of having your own – and it was truly a one man studio wasn’t it? A lot of time you didn’t even have any staff.

KA: Well I had a few.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Andrea Wolfe helped me, I had a guy named Nolan I had a few people but you know with all due respect to them they saw that it, that the future’s not there to spend the ten hours a day it takes answering every question.

BME: Yeah.

KA: Cleaning the sinks and all that. So the joys of owning your own place are to create the environment that you like, there was no death by committee, my shop was a true representation of me – at least at that time. So I was able to, cause I was spending eight to ten hours a day there I had to make sure that it was nice for me.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I had to make sure that the décor was soothing to me and that when I went home I wasn’t stressed out. Like when I was at Deviate I used to come home sometimes crazed because I was listening to techno music and it just, it wasn’t conducive to a calm piercing experience.

BME: Right.

KA: So the joy in my shop was just listening to the waterfall I had set up listening to the music, you know the incense that I would burn and that was the joy and the joy…

BME: I don’t know if you’ve heard Blair’s interview yet, his new business that he’s getting into is actually building waterfalls.

KA: Building them from scratch with little rocks and…

BME: Yeah that’s what he’s moved into from piercing.

KA: Right on. It’s all sculpture with the body.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I mean it’s all artistic the way you do a brand and the way you follow the contour of a body or a tattoo for that matter is very similar. My first large scale tattoo was a tattoo of water I mean the movement, I mean, you know we come from water, we’re made of water, it’s a natural progression that’s great.

BME: [affirmative noise] That, but then you ended up closing Modern America.

KA: Right. For the record Blair is probably the most talented brander/cutter I’ve ever met or see I met him up there with you last time I was up there…

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: But talented, talented, talented guy.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I mean he took it one step further, inspired me, I mean I remember leaving you guys like going wow you know like, I often say that the client is what makes you good. I did a cutting the other day and the guy’s back it’s just this big lion’s head I mean almost his whole back.

BME: Excellent.

KA: And I’m saying that it’s not me, almost anybody could trace a line you know and follow sterile procedure and biohazardous waste disposal it’s not that. It’s the person sitting in front of me who had the vision…

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And let’s face it the fortitude to sit there and go through the pain for the end result. So it’s as much about the clients, but so Blair seems to have a lot of really cool clients too.

BME: Well I think that’s exactly why we’re running that branding contest that he’s doing right now. You know about that?

KA: I saw it on the home page yeah.

BME: And it’s basically just, it’s just to find some of the best clients and bring them up here.

KA: Yup, yup. It’s all about them I mean I’ve always said it. I hate that when people go oh you know, “You’re such a great piercer.” Or that you know that blue-sky bullshit it’s about the person who took the ampallang. Yeah there’s a skill to doing the ampallang absolutely you know I’m not going to deny it and down play that but come on, the person who took it, they’re the one you should be congratulating. Don’t even look at me. Like when I watch other people get pierced, I don’t watch the piercer’s hands I watch the person being pierced their face.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know, that to me is where it’s all about. You know that’s the money shot – the person’s face that moment when the needle passes through – you’re transcending you’re breaking the veil you know. We can go on and on with all the metaphors whether you believe them or not, it’s not about the piercer. He has to have a certain skill level of course but it’s about the person who has the balls to accept the experience.

BME: [affirmative noise] Alright I’m going to play a song and when we come back, we’re going to talk a bit about how Keith got into scarification and some of the issues related to that.

KA: Right on.

BME: Alright Keith how did you move from doing piercing to doing scarification on people?

KA: There’s a guy name Darren, I really have to maybe credit him. There’s a guy named Darren, [cough], excuse me, I forget the Urban Primitives, I forget the name of his shop.

BME: Damian?

KA: No, it’s not Damian. It’s, he’s a guy up in New Patz New York and it’s a very small shop and I really, it kills me that I can’t remember his name but he’s a great guy right. He walks into Gaunlet one day and he has three scars on his face. He’s a pretty tough looking Spanish guy.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know hard edge intense looking, he has these three scars on his face and I’m thinking some kind of major gang ritual or something really heavy. You know he’s decked out in gold, I just gave him a PA with this big 10 ga gold ring and all that so when we’re done with that I ask him, “Darren, with all due respect and if I’m out of line please, you know, don’t tell me just tell me and don’t hit me the scars on your face you know, they’re so powerful what are they from?”

He goes, he builds up and he goes, “When I was a kid I was four years old I crawled underneath a fence and this is what I got.” This chain link fence and just, it was such a powerful image and when I, he just blew my mind with, “Oh my god that’s…” I’m expecting so much more so I don’t know how that really relates but he’s the first guy I saw with the scarification that maybe might be Yorba related even though he’s Spanish. So that got me thinking a bit about it and not long after that everyday at Gauntlet people were asking me, “Do you know any place where I can get scarification? Do you know anybody who does these things? Blah, blah, blah.”

And I kept getting so many requests for it that I figured you know I wasn’t charging for it I was like you know, “Let me practice or study a bit about it.” So I spoke briefly with Raylynn Galina, I certainly you know, devoured Modern Primitives. I did everything I could possibly do to you know get up to speed on the techniques and I found out that there wasn’t really much out there.

BME: There’s still very little out there.

KA: Very little. Al D helped me out a lot with choices of blades, I mean there are a few people and back then you could approach them and you know if you did it the right way.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So, I just go so many requests it’s like, “Let me try it.” What’s the worst that could happen? So I already had the, you know the biohazard mentality and the sterile field technique and so on so I felt comfortable about breaking the skin I just didn’t necessarily feel comfortable about working on just anybody so that you know, set me up with this reputation I have now of being somewhat elitist, so if I don’t like you I won’t work on you. And like this guy just e-mailed me the other day, he wanted – he’s probably listening to this [laugh] – he wanted misery, you know using his words carved into his back and I’m like you know, I’m not going to do it.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And he goes, “Well who are you to judge if it’s important to me?” It’s like, “I’m not judging you I’m just not going to do it you know.” I actually might have called him a loser, [laugh] sorry. But you know I’m not going to be a party to that, I’m not going to carve misery into your back because it’s not about a misery to me it’s about empowerment, and it’s about adornment and it’s about ritual and you know all these things that some things might poo-poo and some people buy into you know, and I’m kind of on the line with that. Some people I think they’re full of shit and some people I think really believe it therefore it’s true.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know, I think therefore I am. Or however you want to look at it, so I really started to chose the people I would work on carefully and I turned down way more than I actually work on and it’s even harder than ever for me to even talk to you about it because you have to get me in that first couple of lines of e-mail and you know here I am. It’s not something I ever saw myself doing; it’s not something that I consider any claim to fame.

It’s just one other thing that I’ve done in my life so far and I really have the people to thank that I’ve worked on, it’s not me, I don’t say, “Oh I have to do scarification.” I don’t. If I never did another cutting in my life so be it, I don’t have any problem with that. But luckily one out of fifty people are so centered and right on that you know I just want to hang out with them.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: It’s just like you know we’ll do the cutting but let’s hang out for a little bit you know tell me what you know.

BME: So, and there’s also a Shamanic element to this?

KA: Yeah, you know.

BME: A process, or is it the other way around where the client is the Shaman?

KA: Well, I’ve always said that the client is the Shaman because they’re the ones leaving the body.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I mean if you read anything about Shamanism it’s usually, I mean it’s always the Shaman that goes to the other side to bring back the cure for whatever ails the tribe.

BME: Right.

KA: I’ve never been one to trumpet the Shaman you know, bullshit. With all due respect to Fakir, I mean I think what he does is worlds apart than what most quote unquote self proclaimed Shaman do. Because he has put his body on the line. I love when people who do cutting and trumpet the Shaman thing and don’t even have a cutting, so you know how can you even say?

So you know, I’m a little iffy on that, I do absolutely buy into the power and I have had experiences that have been mind blowing. You know I have had experiences where I have seen things that, where, I have been supernatural experiences. But I don’t go looking for them.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I don’t say that they’re there for everybody I don’t say that we’ll ever see them again. It’s just at this point in time this is what happens. And you know, and this is…I remember when I did an upside down pentagram, something that I would normally never do, but it was on a guy that had a right-side up, right up pentagram whatever you want to call it on one shoulder and he wanted the other one branded and we did it on Passover one night, on a Passover evening with a full moon.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: It was like, nothing happened you know what I’m saying, but if any night the ground is going to open up and swallow me for this bloodletting ritual, this is going to be the night, and you know nothing happened. And then there’s been times when it’s just been so, just spontaneous and the Earth moves.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So you really can’t go into it one way or another you know, unless you’re you know truly taking from a Shamanistic approach where you do need to have the ritual leading up to it, the cleansing with the right water with all the synchronicities, the right incense, facing in the right direction, I mean all of the magic who-ha whether you believe in it or not needs to be in the right place if you really want to experiment with this. I mean I don’t even, I know a lot of people don’t respect what he has to say but Genesis P-Orridge or whatever, I mean he’s written extensively whether it’s bullshit or not about the steps you need to take to deal with that side of that unknown, that occult aspect. But I don’t really buy into it.

BME: Well, I think that part of Genesis’ writing there’s a lot of humor mixed in with what they’re trying to say and a lot of it is made up on purpose as well.

KA: Yeah, I agree, I agree.

BME: On a more technical level I think scarification is inherently somewhat unpredictable.

KA: Absolutely.

BME: Now, you did a compass cutting on Jon Cobb’s forehead.

KA: Yeah [laugh].

BME: What’s it like, doing you know, something where you really, no matter how good a job you do you’re always, you have to be a little unsure about how it’s going to turn out what’s it like you know working in such a public place where anything that goes wrong will be forever scarred on this persons face?

KA: Yeah, not only you know that but on Jon fucking Cobb! You know what I mean?!

BME: [laugh]

KA: It’s like, love him or hate him that’s the pinnacle of a radical extreme piercer…

BME: And a perfectionist.

KA: Yeah, talk about a perfectionist a little funny story about him too is his right eye is supposedly a little off or something.

BME: Not a little off, a lot off.

KA: Oh?

BME: It’s, not exists he sees nothing out of it but sort of waves of psychedelic colour.

KA: Oh, that’s uh…

BME: The back of the retina’s destroyed.

KA: That’s promising for his clients. But I mean I love Jon I have no problem with Jon. So I was honored that he came to me to do it when he could have gone to you know basically the cream of the crop in the world he wanted me to do it, so we get it on and I do it and to me it looks perfect, I mean talk about high pressure, I mean this was, his girlfriend’s there and you know there’s probably some press there you know I forget and you know there was a lot, there were some people there, the pressure was definitely on.

BME: That was the point in time where he was still, sort of had an ‘all-eyes-were-on-him’…

KA: Absolutely, definitely. So it was really high profile for me, at least in the piercing world you know amongst ourselves. So we do it and I think it’s perfect and I’m looking at it, yeah I’m pretty happy with this you know it might be simple but it’s not easy and he goes, “You know I think it’s off a little bit.” I’m like, “You’re fucking crazy, this is perfect!” Everybody else is looking at him going, “Jon it’s perfect.” I’m like I don’t want to touch this. He goes, “Let me be honest with you, I have a problem with one of my eyes and it looks off to me, so even if it looks off to you when you fix it for me it’s going to look right to me and ultimately that’s what counts right?” I’m like, “Yup you got that right.” So we kind of like opened it up a little more on the other side.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And then he had me, he had an Earl that looked perfect to me – but he wasn’t happy with how it was sitting so we just did a little scalpel you know, tap to fix that.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So yeah, that was very high pressure working on Jon even though he was a friend at the time it’s still, you know like I said Jon Cobb whether you’re into him or not he’s, he pushed the art further than anybody’s ever pushed it. I don’t give a shit what you say, I saw the video about, I saw the video of how he does the uvula piercing and I don’t care what Miceala has to say, I don’t care what anyone else in the world has to say, it’s flawless.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: It’s impossible to drop the needle, it’s impossible to drop the ring. Whether some kid in Idaho does it and dies from aspirating, swallowing the needle, whatever…Jon’s method was flawless. The trans-scrotal piercing, I was one of the first people, maybe the first person he showed it to. He came up to Gauntlet one day he’s like, “You got a minute?” I’m like, “Yeah, what do you want to show me?” Drops his pants, he’s got this thick-ass piece of Lucite slammed right through his scrotum, you can see he had a flashlight, he’s on his rollerblades – and he shows me and I’m like, “You mind if I have a few people come in a see this?”

And you know we brought Denise in, Mark and they walked out of there disgusted, they wanted nothing to do with this guy and I said, “Jon, how’d you do it?” And he told me how he did it by, “I was wrapping the flashlight around it and locating the veins, moving those veins out of the way, and then suturing it and then cutting it and then putting the Lucite in and leaving the sutures in so it would heal.” This guy was so well thought out, it was just, he’s unbelievable, unbelievable and here he is in my studio with me doing a compass cutting, you know the symbol of perfection and navigation on his forehead. You know! So yeah, it was pretty high pressure.

We played pool up in his old studio up on Canal Street and you know I learnt more in that one night about piercing and him, you know he’s a unique guy and you really gotta sit down and talk with him.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And I haven’t spoken to him in years, so I don’t know where he’s at or you know if he’s listening or what’s up but…

BME: He’s just come back online actually.

KA: Oh right on. That should be fun. I mean between him and Bertrang I’ll have a couple of people up in arms.

BME: [laughs]

KA: Not to mention those two in the same sentence, sorry Jon, but…

BME: I think there’s a world of difference.

KA: Oh absolutely. When it comes right down to the average punter you know online it’s still extreme.

BME: Yeah, it’s true.

KA: They don’t really make the distinction between a guy like Jon and a guy like Todd. I mean the more cerebral of us, you know if you read a word somebody has to got to say you know it’s a different story but they’re both extreme guys.

BME: Yeah, yeah I know it’s true, most people look at the pictures and they don’t know whether it’s done right or done wrong or how it’s thought out. I don’t know if this is related to scarification or not, you’re pretty avid a knife collector I’ve been told you’re in, I mean this may be part of the urban legend that is you but I’ve been told that your entire house is set up so that no matter where you happen to be standing there’s always at least one knife stashed within arms reach.

KA: Yeah, I’m pretty…yes.

BME: And a few days ago someone recounted a story, they were visiting your house late one night and an alarm is accidentally triggered and the next thing this person knows is they’re woken up by naked Keith dashing across the room in pursuit of this imaginary intruder with a huge bowie knife.

KA: Well you know, I live in Brooklyn, my neighborhood happens to be fairly nice but my house was robbed when I was a kid when I was very young.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And we were in the house when it happened and I think it might have traumatized me in that sense and I’ll be damned if anybody’s going to take what’s mine that I worked so hard for. I mean you know, not that there’s that much up here to take but I’m very territorial you know about my space, you have to be. I’m not a pacifist, I don’t like violence, I don’t like fighting but if somebody’s trying to break into my house I’m going to die or kill them you know. I don’t want to sound like a macho asshole but you know but I despise guns, so it would be really easy to get a gun and just you know shoot somebody but I really, to me that’s just not the way to go.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So yeah I’ve collected knives my whole life. My mother gave me my first knife. I mean I was a Cub Scout and a Boy Scout and I’ve always been outdoors and I’ve always used them. You know I see them as tools. So you know if an officer ever said to me, “You have any weapons on you?” it’d be, “No, I have a tool on me.” You know it’s like I could kill you with a pen, like there’s I’ve seen videos, knife fighting videos where they show you the same techniques with a pen and the knife fighter can kill you with a pen.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: I could kill you with a brick are we going to outlaw bricks? So knives have such an unsavoury reputation but they are some of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen, I mean read some of the knife magazines. Or I was just at a knife show with my friend John Loose (jloose.com) he does a lot of custom piercing jewellery and just great stuff and now he’s making knives. He’s doing damastic blades and so on, so we went to the knife show with our girlfriends up in the Crown Plaza hotel up here in New York City and you would not believe the level of craftsmanship and ultimately, can I kill somebody, yes. But you know it’s not about that, it’s a symbol of the choices that we make between good and evil.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: When you see some of these knives you see them, you know, you can see a prince with this knife and, or the sword for that matter, I mean you can really feel the power. I remember I had a custom blade made for me by Don Fog and Muryad Sayen… one’s in Maine and the other guy’s in Vermont I think, and when we were going through the design phase, I mean what really sold me on commissioning these guys to make this Viking dagger was the line, and I’m actually going to do a page on my website about this particular project.

He was talking about when he’s done with this knife if it will give anyone who holds it shivers up and down their spine and make the hair on their neck stand up because it’s going to bring back visions of Viking ships in the 10th century you know breaking the mist and you know it’s like, “Whoah.” These guys, they know what I want.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Low and behold the item that they made for me, you know unbelievable. So I don’t really see it as a weapon as much as I see it as symbolic. I could kill you with a hammer if I had to that’s not the point.

BME: I could pick up this iMac in front of me and smash someone over the head with it.

KA: Perfect handle for it too.

BME: Yeah.

KA: So yeah, I mean I’m into knives. It also it ties into piercing, not that this is a conscious thing to me... but breaking the skin. I’ve always said that on a microscopic level piercing is inherently violent. The skin cells are being blown apart by a sharp object. On the microscopic level there’s some serious damage being done. You know, at the very very small level. You look at the big picture not that big of a deal. It’s just a little 14 ga needle or whatever, but to the cell that’s being blasted by that needle it’s inherently violent.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: So there’s the whole penetration thing that might tie in with knives, but I don’t use knives for scarification and I’m certainly very anti violence but the power of the well-made art knife is incredible.

BME: Alright, we’re going to play another song and when we come back we’ll talk to Keith about his active roll in the music community.

BME: Alright Keith, one of your side projects is playing guitar in Dee Snider’s, Dee Snider of Twisted Sister’s SMF, where did you meet Dee and how did that ever come about?

KA: Well I met Dee at the Gauntlet and when I was a kid, when I was probably 15 years old Twisted Sister was the largest cover band on the East coast. They were drawing regularly, well not regularly they would sell out like 20,000 seat arenas, they would do outdoor concerts of over 20,000 people they would yearly sell out the Paladium. They were a huge band but they were doing covers. They were doing Judas Priest, they were doing Ozzy, Iron Maiden, UFO, they were doing songs like that so my first exposure to really heavy metal was Twisted Sister in the guise of a copy band and every now and then they would let out one of their originals but it was the same stage show the same five crazy looking transvestite you know sick mother fuckers SMF’s but playing Judas Priest and so on.

So Dee was a huge hero to me, the band itself didn’t mean too much to me, the music was fun and so on you know cover band but Dee was a very out spoken proponent of individualism. You had to be, I mean here’s this guy playing in front of bikers like you wouldn’t believe in full on drag you know, not that the Dolls hadn’t done it before I mean it had been done but they were playing heavy music, they were playing Judas Priest the Ripper you know as transvestites. So it made an impression in me that he had the balls to do that and I had seen him jump off stage and beat the shit out of people in the crowd when they threw bottles on the stage, one of his lines was “This ain’t an oil painting.” You know this isn’t a movie, it isn’t an oil painting mother fucker I’ll come down there and kick your ass and he did and I saw him jump off stage and fuck people up on a regular basis then I saw him testify in front of senate in Jon Denver and Frank Zappa.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: And he ripped Al Gore a new asshole, I mean he really carried himself well and I was always impressed with him in interviews and the raps he was doing between tunes on stage and he always really really impressed me.

So one day I’m in Gauntlet fixing the magazine rack and I look behind me and there’s fucking Dee, and I said, “Dee?” and he said he usually says “No.” because you know he’s a very, believe it or not he’s never done a drug in his life, he doesn’t drink he’s been married for 25 years he’s got a four beautiful kids, I mean he’s such a family guy it’s insane but he said, something in me told me to say “Yes.” So he said, “Yeah, I’m Dee.” I said, “Aw man you were a huge influence on me when I was a kid and you know what can I do for you?”

He told me about Strange Land, you know this is way back before the movie, they even had a production house or whatever you call it in the movie industry, which sucks by the way, so he asked me if I would want to if I would mind if he picked my brains for a little while and I said, “No, not at all.” And so we sat for around two hours and really went through it all and I asked him if he wanted to watch a PA, only he didn’t know it was a PA. I said, “Dee you wanna watch me do a piercing?”

BME: [affirmative noise, laugh]

KA: So he’s like sure, so we go in this, it’s this little like you know, the kid looked like he was about 18 years old. Hung like a bull and we go, [laugh] excuse me, we go in the back, the kid drops his pants and hops up on the GYN table and Dee’s sitting there and I look back and I just see Dee’s face go ashen you know he thought it was a nipple or an ear or something.

BME: [laughs]

KA: So the way the counter’s set he tells this story really well, the way the counter’s set he couldn’t really see the way things were going on, I’m about ready to do it and so I say, “Dee you wanna come over and take a closer look, watch what actually happens and like his face again, his jaw just hit the floor. Dee’s very hetero, you know.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: Not that he’s, he’s not anti-gay, I mean he’s not a homophobe but he’s just like a guy’s guy. This was very a very disturbing position for him to be in and he couldn’t say no because you know what are you doing here, you’re going to do strange land and all this crazy shit and you’re afraid to watch a PA? So we do the piercing and he sits back down and his face is white and I can tell that it really affected him but when we’re done he said, he really complimented me on the technique, the kid didn’t even flinch. A PA, as you know a PA’s an eight of an inch of tissue, when it’s done correctly it’s less tissue than an earlobe, it’s really no big deal.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: But it is so hilarious that it’s Dee Snider and he’s in this position of watching me pierce another guy’s penis. He was just upset about it. So you know three or four months went by of just consulting on the movies, dealing with the issues and you know, I still haven’t seen the movie but I have seen some of the stills and a lot of what I designed for his body was really fucked up by the people who did the prosthetics and so on.

BME: For those of you that haven’t seen the movie, in it Dee Snider plays Captain Howdy who’s a piercing covered serial killer who kills people and…

KA: He never kills anybody from my understanding.

BME: Alright, well then who does some pretty drastic things.

KA: Non-consentual SM.

BME: Yea, In a sort of ritualistic Fakiresque way.

KA: Right.

BME: And a bunch of people have got upset that it badly portrays people you know who are legitimately involved in these activities.

KA: And it does, but I’ve always said, “Are you going to tell me that we do not have modified serial killers, that because we’re tattooed and pierced we are above you know that?

BME: I think more importantly are you going to tell us that we don’t have a sense of humour and that we can’t do this?

KA: Yeah, well there’s that too and I want to shout out to Shawn Porter for giving me the, you know the ammunition to deal with that because I knew that I was in for some heavy flack when they come up and show me, “Like Keith did a fucking movie in Hollywood.” Dude you know do it, have fun, get your credit and take the money and run.

So I took about three or four months before I even told them I played guitar. At the time I wasn’t really actively playing any heavier styles, I was doing mostly acoustic stuff, I was doing drumming I was playing percussion with a reggae band and I was doing things like that and about four months into it I said, I remember the date, I still have the message from when he called and asked me, I told him I played guitar so if you ever wound up doing anything again keep me in mind. Next day he called and said, “I’m thinking about putting together a Twisted Sister cover band essentially.” It would be him obviously but we would do all Twisted Sister material only without Twisted Sister and we wouldn’t call it Twisted Sister, would I be interested? I was like, “Fuck yeah man, totally.”

So I figured out 22 songs in like 8 hours not that they were that hard to figure out but I figured out all the music and I went out and bought a Gibson SG and passed the audition and I joined the band. I spent you know three years pretty solid on the road with them, had a great time. Dee doesn’t get enough credit for what he’s about, the band was tight. We had Missaboogie endorsements so we were playing some really heavy gear but playing poppier music, so it was a lot of fun playing “We’re not gonna take it…” you know really poppy stuff but really heavy.

BME: [affirmative noise]

KA: You know, Pantera sound backing up this pop melody and at the time Dee was more into Pantera and Phil Antelema was a huge Twisted Sister fan and he really made the connection. J. J. French was managing Seven Dust, so you know, they still had their fingers in the pie. The Strange Land soundtrack isn’t a bad album either, so we went out and really kicked the shit out of these poppy Twisted Sister’s and I had a blast so I make no apologies for playing Twisted Sister music for three years.

BME: But that’s not really, left to you own devices that’s not really the music that you’re making?

KA: Oh no, no. I mean there’s a lot of, it’s not easy to take three songs and write a catchy tune. It’s not easy, I mean if it was easy everybody would be doing it. My father always told me, you know, “If you want that swimming pool in your back yard in the shape of a guitar, it’s not going to be playing Yngwie style metal you know, it’s going to be from a good 3 chord, 4 chord rock and roll tune.” Something people can hum, something that sums up a summer, a driving tune, you know music highway songs.You know, those are the things that really touch people forever.

And, but no, I would not, I don’t think I’m good enough to write that kind of stuff. I mean the stuff I do is, I have such a short attention span that I can’t do stuff like that. We had, Twisted Sister had one tune called I Am I’m Me and it’s 32 bars of E, I mean no shit 32 bars – thump thump thump thump thump thump thump thump for thirty two fucking bars, but it’s the melody that carries it.

BME: Yeah.

KA: Great words and the melody. And I remember I wrote a tune when... my dad’s a guitar player, and I wrote what I considered a song when I was a kid and my dad looked at me and broke my heart, he goes, “That’s not a song, that’s an accompaniment, you know fine you’ve got four chords there but what’s the melody that lays on top of that? What do the people walk away humming?” And I learnt that from Dee.

But no, left to my own devices I do more trance like electronic stuff and you know. Left to my own devices I’d be in a total aggressive noise rock you know just for a cathartic experience. You know fuck the record companies, fuck the audience for that matter and just go up and make as much noise as you can, rhythmically you know if you will.

BME: [Affirmative noise] Now, I don’t know if it’s on you’re webpage but when you first started your webpage, one of the things that you had listed was the type of music a person could expect to hear if they were being pierced in your studio.

KA: Right, on the Modern American site.

BME: That’s right.

KA: No, that page migrated over to my personal site, but no, it might, nah, no I don’t think it’s still up because when I updated the page when I made the move to DV8 I had no control over the music really.

BME: What uh, does the music playing in the background make a big difference?

KA: Huge difference, huge difference. It makes a difference just on imprinting the person with the experience.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: I try to appeal to all the senses; you know a place that smells nice a place that looks nice, you know a place that feels nice just a comfort as far as temperature goes, so those things are really important to me and the music definitely plays a part of it to bring people’s blood pressure down, I mean there’s plenty of institutes that music therapy where they’ll work with people who are recovering from illnesses or people in comas for that matter and things like that were they’ll play music for them to you know change their blood pressure to change their respiration rate and all that so I kind of took a little bit of that school of thought and applied that to my shop and at the very least it calms me down.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: I remember when I first started piercing I would ask my clients, “What do you want to hear?” and the majority of them would say Metallica you know Slayer and I love Metallica, I did security for Slayer for a couple of shows, I mean those are bands that I like, but there’s no way you want me piercing you to Slayer, because it just amps me up – you know my hands might start shaking and it sounds almost selfish but the environment is just as much for me as it is for you and it’s important that it’s tranquil because I want this to be right and it’s got to be right and without sounding melodramatic, the piercer’s life is in danger. Because if you pierce someone who’s hepatitis positive and you know and you get a needle stick it’s not fun so you want to be as, you want to have all the odds in your favor.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: And to me, choosing the right music and the right mood is one of those things.

BME: You said lack of control over that was part of the reason that you went away from Deviate?

KA: Yeah, I just didn’t have control over the environment, when I first started I did because they were so excited to have me in the income but after a couple of months there they, it was kind of like a change in management and they moved a leather maker who was downstairs they moved him upstairs and it’s like there’s no way I can be on the same floor as a sewing machine – piercing.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: There’s just no way. I mean, yes they would stop when I asked them to but I didn’t even like talking to people when there was somebody sewing in the back, [noise] as cool as it might be, and that was a clean shop, don’t get me wrong – you know, nobody got an inferior piercing there because they sold rubber corsets in the front of the place but when they moved the sewing machine from downstairs up you know I just had to go.

BME: At the same time as DV8 you were working at Fox and now you’re working at Atmosphere Interactive. What, you’re working mainstream media right now I guess?

KA: Well I mean, I guess if the web is main stream, although we’re trying to, you know, push the limits with a few things that we’re doing.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: One of the reasons I moved to DV8 was that I accepted an internship at Fox Newscorp America, digital publishing Rupert Murdoch’s empire in there Broadband Application Product Development Division which was, we were essentially doing, well not we I mean I was just an intern but what those mad scientists were doing was developing applications like real time baseball simulators – like if you didn’t have the rights to a particular baseball game they created a 3-D software that would actually simulate the game one pitch behind it happening. These crazy applications that the bandwidth isn’t even there for – like they’re thinking 3 years down the line, 4 years down the line.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: So it was just great to be in that environment, so that’s one of the reasons I closed Modern American and moved to DV8 because it was two block away from Fox and again, very much the you know, Gauntlet parallel that I was able to work you know the one job paying the rent you know during the day and then at night go and do something that piqued my interest only in this case it was backwards. So from Fox, when I finished the internship there I jumped to the Brooklyn Public Library, I did some web mastering stuff over there. When that proved a little too boring for me, 3-months later of doing Senator’s press releases on the web and you know, real boiler plate bullshit. You know, one Senator reading with you know eight different kids and then they bring the Congressman in to read to eight different kids, and they take, they’re photo opportunities.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: And it really annoyed me, so from there I went to a company called BlaBla.com and what they were was a content aggregator. I was the contents manager over there, which really mean stealing content, not stealing but aggregating content from all the users.

BME: From the partners and…

KA: You know trying to be their typical community portal. And that bored me right up quickly too so I really went on a resume sending blitz and I got this great position as a producer at a company called Atmosphere Interactive which is a division of BBDO which is the, I think the World’s #1 and the United States 3rd largest advertising agency – you know great creative work, they did the Doritos commercial, Pepsi, Visa, I mean just real – I’m really anti-advertising so like I almost kind of sold my soul by taking this job and I wouldn’t have done it if they didn’t just really – what they pushed about the web and how they wanted to change communication it wasn’t just about advertising, the agency isn’t just about advertising.

So I took this position, I’ve been here now for a little over 3-months, having a great time. You know, rose rapidly through the ranks, as they say, and really, you know, got my ideas listened to I’m pitching to a client in Belgium this week, you know ideas I have for – I can’t even say, we’re doing something I can’t even talk about and that, to me, is really exciting. A lot of people poo-poo the web but one day we’re not even going to talk about the Internet, it’s just going to be there, it’s just a delivery medium. Whether you want to use, it’s going to be more than UseNet and IRC, but all those things will still be there – so it’s a very exciting time for me and it really parallels my early days at Gauntlet, being low man on the totem pole, having a lot of great ideas, and grocking it and understanding it but not having the actual experience you know, behind me. So now I have about a year and a half of interactive production behind me, and I’m just having a great time – great time.

BME: [Affirmative noise] What’s the unifying interest that connects piercing, music, media development, and all the other things that you’re doing?

KA: Communication – dealing with people. One of the reasons, one of the things that really made me even take the job at Fox, I mean people say, “Well why would you even take an internship?” the power that the ModernAmerican.com site gave me, not power as in sense of influence other people but the power to reach people.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: I mean I don’t analyze the traffic logs as you know, but at one time when I was really into it and I was getting you know 50 e-mails a day, hundreds of e-mails a week. I mean it was crazy because I had my e-mail address on every page and I really encouraged people to write to me, now you gotta kinda hunt to find the address on there. But the fact that I was able to touch so many people via you know one simple website, I mean I remember the first time the guy who did my first site, the guy, a friend of mine Anthony, the first time he FTPed it was like magic to me.

I’m like, “You just hooked that up to this little ThinkPad and you put that on that big server over there in Nebraska,” and it’s like, it blew my mind and the amount of good response, and bad response, I love the hate mail, I love that shit, if you think you know, that poorly of me and you’ve gotta to put pen to paper or you know type me hate mail I love it, keep it coming. But the fact that you’re touching people is the unifying factor be it music, or any kind of “new media”, and the piercing stuff you’re touching people.

BME: [Affirmative noise] Now, when I last interviewed you that was probably four years ago I think, it was actually the first interview that BME ever did.

KA: Awesome, awesome.

BME: You told me that piercing would continue to become more mainstream, like your friend at Gauntlet was telling you, now obviously you’re right and that’s happened, but at the same time I think it’s safe to say that a lot of the people who are getting pierced they’re still doing it as a part of a trend.

KA: Yeah.

BME: You know that applies to tattooing as well.

KA: [Affirmative noise]

BME: What do you think it does on a societal level when a trend, an inherently temporary thing involves a permanent act?

KA: Well piercing’s not permanent.

BME: But tattooing is, so I’m sort of mixing this all up together.

KA: I think, I really think they’re two different issues. Tattooing can be dangerous if it’s hands, neck or face. If you’re going to, cause people do look at you differently. I have two full sleeves and everyday at work I wear a nice long sleeve shirt, not because I think people are going to think I’m stupid because I’m tattooed, I’m very proud of my work it’s first class work, or most of it’s first class – but people get distracted very easily. So if I’m in there with short sleeves and I have the cure for cancer, people still stare at the arms and go, “Woah, a lot of work. Woah, did that hurt?” You know, no matter what you’re saying, however good it is, however you know, poignant, potent, profound it is people still can’t go, “Did that one hurt on your wrist?” so I need to cover it up, I think tattoos…

BME: It’s like when a magician waves his one hand it’s to distract you from what’s really going on.

KA: Exactly, this guy, another one of my, what I loved when I was a kid. So the the tattoo thing you need to be careful of, it is forever, if you do large scale stuff – you do need to be careful. As far as its effect on society I think it’s a positive one because if you just take away the people that are going to regret it 20 years from now anyway fine you know, if you just take those people away, the people who thought about it and got a good piece of work, that will be with them forever and that will give them a reminder of this powerful time in their life. You know, I have very often I have concentrated on some of my tattoos in times of stress and they reminded me of the power I had when I got it, what I was thinking about, what the imagery means, what the symbology means, what the story behind the tattoo means and you know, all those things can really be used well.

I think on a societal level maybe consciousness is raised a little bit to where people are playing with their bodies a little bit more and hopefully, you know, I’m not Dr. Laura I really couldn’t tell you how society as a whole, I hope that consciousness has been raised enough now that people can play with their bodies a little bit more and realize that it’s not necessarily for criminals and deviants. Piercing on the other hand is a much more transient, trendy, mall chick, skate rat thing and that’s not necessarily a bad thing…

BME: But you know the skater kid who stretches his ears to half inch, which is not that uncommon…

KA: But easier to fix than a sleeve.

BME: But still surgery.

KA: But yes, definitely still surgery to get rid of it but snip-snip and it’s fixed or glue-glue.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: I’m not, if you’re talking extreme stuff on a 15-year old, yeah that’s not necessarily cool because you don’t know how you’re going to feel when you’re my age.

BME: You know I agree with you but I don’t know, I mean, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if a whole bunch of 15-year olds got their faces tattooed, got everything tattooed you know, because I think once a certain threshold, a threshold is hit there’s no looking at it as an oddity because it’s hit a large enough percentage of society that it’s just the way things are.

KA: Yea, but realistically, how many, I don’t know if a 15-year old kid should be doing anything…

BME: I agree with you that it should be adults but…

KA: I know what you’re saying, you know you reach a certain critical mass and you don’t look at as an oddity, absolutely, but the bottom line is we’re altering something that the majority of people will never do. I mean you’ll never even reach 10% facial tattooing you know what I mean? You just won’t. I mean…

BME: No but I think we’re approaching 10% pierced.

KA: Oh absolutely, I would say more than that, I mean god, you can’t walk down, I know so many lawyers, doctors, I mean norm… not normal but you know mainstream people that are pierced.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: You know we just hired a senior producer he comes in Joe Normal straight you know normal looking guy and you know after a week at the agency and he realizes we’re all pretty mellow he comes in with his earrings.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: But that’s different but society as a whole, it’s impossible to really nail it down because it’s so transient and it’s in flux. I hope that the people don’t, look my girlfriend has a nostril piercing and she works in a hardcore straight edge, Christian company – they think she’s a freak. Just for that one little beautiful peridot piercing, you know they think she’s a freak in that culture. So I think we’re somewhat balkanized, right, I don’t even know if that’s the right term, but somewhat tribal in the sense that there’s always going to be us and them. I mean it’s human nature, I don’t necessarily believe in duality but there is right and wrong so I guess I do believe in it, I don’t believe in relativism I think it’s – murder is wrong, killing somebody in cold blood is wrong, you can’t tell me that it’s right – you just can’t tell me that, you know with shout outs to po0k you really can’t say that to me, killing somebody in self-defense, fine, you know I see there are certain relative issues but you gotta take it, you can’t decontextualize a 15-year old kid with his ears being stretched, you have to put it in the context of where is he at that time, is he with other 15-year old kids Lord of the Fleas, on some island somewhere, fine that’s a different story but if he’s in mainstream America trying to operate – I’ve always said that you could do more damage from the inside, so if you really want to be a subversive mother fucker, look normal, get in, and do your damage.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: You’re, I mean, I remember reading when I was a kid like The Hacker’s Handbook or something like that, the PsyberPunk Fake Book and one of the lines in there was like, “Are you tattooed, pierced, branded well what is your Interpol ID?”

BME: I remember reading that as well.

KA: You know, it’s like you want to be anonymous but you can’t be being tattooed. I mean I have a tattoo on the back of my neck, I’m known as the guy with the tattoo on the back of his neck.

BME: The quote that I remember my father saying when I first started getting you know, getting visible work is, “If you’re going to be a sociopath don’t tell everybody.”

KA: [Laughs] Exactly! And what was that, South Park, you know Hank Hill goes, “You know what I like about people that are pierced? You just know they’re wrong, you just know they’re wrong right away, it’s a signifier.”

BME: [Laughs – Affirmative noise]

KA: So you know you can’t decontectualize these issues, you have to take them in the context that the kid is living in or you know, I mean I don’t want to be hypocrite either but I got my first tattoo when I was 15 so I, sorry 13. So but it was hidden, it’s such a fine line, and you know I know 15-year old kids who are more mature than some 30-year old men I know.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: So case-by-case basis so but do you have the death and breath of experience to know what symbol is good for you? Because some tribal shit looks like a magic marker and you just, somebody just drew on you with magic marker.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: But if you’re, if at 15 you’ve traveled the world and Philip Leu gives you that tattoo on your inner forearm when you’re in New Zealand with him, that’s a different story I mean... So you really have to, there’s so much, there’s no easy answers to those question.

BME: [Affirmative noise]

KA: I like to think that, as a whole, I like to think that society’s conscious has been raise, that we’ve done enough work with the, one of the reasons I’ve been accused of being egotistical is because of all the interviews I do, it’s not that, I mean sure there’s definitely, I won’t deny this, it’s a pleasure to see yourself on CNN or whatever but the bottom line is that we’re trying to get the good information out and counteract the assholes. It kind of, it’s similar to the hacker crap that’s going on right now where you know, Mobile Computing magazine the other day, “The Violent World of Hackers” bullshit – they’re a bunch of white geek kids, you know what I mean? It’s not a violent world you know, so I think that having people like myself, you know there’s a few other people who are outspoken proponents, you that can speak with a certain clarity and you know intelligence about why these issues are important so it’s very important to get that information out there well because if not we’re just going to get slammed from all sides by the Dr. Laura’s of this world.

BME: We’ve pretty much run out of time here, but just to finish this off. Just this morning the New York Times printed an article calling piercing “repulsive” and basically condemned it as something that basically “destroys young promising lives.”

KA: I don’t know if it’s repulsive but to the person who wrote that article, yup it’s repulsive but so is a comb-over and the author might have a comb-over. Repulsive is in the eye of the beholder. As far as ruining lives, oh maybe if you get an infection that kills you but a navel ring’s not going to ruin your life.

BME: And you’ve done alright with piercings, I think I’ve done alright.

KA: Exactly. Yeah exactly.

BME: You know with BME and the online world and the offline world is full of successful people covered in piercings, even if, even if you know their lives have forced them to keep them below the belt.

KA: That’s fine, I mean you gotta, like I said, you do more damage from the inside so cover them up and go say what you have to say when you have the ear of those in power, you can really get to people if you look normal enough to get into their office... you might be able to change their minds. If you care.

If you don’t give a fuck more power to you.

BME: Yeah, thanks a lot Keith, before we go let’s just we’ll remind everyone, Keith can be found online at www.modernamerican.com as well as behind the scenes in big media all over the world. Thanks for listening and we’ll see you next week.


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