Interview with JD Samson, Le Tigre.

March 9th. 2006. Bristol hotel, Oslo. 21:00. We search the luxury lounge for a quiet spot but soon find out it's impossible. "Not or scene" is the least we can say while trying to appear comfortable though we're feeling so misplaced.  We need relative quietness since we're recording the interview.... Muzack on live piano and bass (yes, it is possible), a real fountain, with really water making a really refreshing LOUD sound and really people... the latter having to be paid great attention to because the volume varies... no matter how expensive it is, no matter how many of it you can afford of it, after sipping A LOT of alcohol, human beings have the tendency to getting loud. A couple of them even got the point of doing a free style karaoke on "Yesterday", pure Bristol Hotel trash, who would have thought (yes, we are naive)?!?! Extremely entertaining, though. Anyway, we choose the table for the number of seats around it. A place where you're not allowed to take off your jacket unless you leave it at the cloakroom probably does not allow you to move the chesterfield armchairs around....JD is in town. She will be DJing the same night at Blå, at one of the city's Ladyfest event. We have loads of questions, but only half an hour. She appears on the side and we stand up to greet her.. and to show that we're the one she had an appointment with (lot like we have our faces all over the press). She does not seem surprised (I told you it was not our "scene"), puts our suitcase filled with records next to her and sits down deep in her armchair. We start straight away, though the very beginning as been lost, sorry. You will have to imagine it.... 2-3 minutes only, really, it was about the DIY workshop Chicks on Speed had in the afternoon, and it was going towards a label-oriented question:

OvaryAction: Is Le Tigre still distributed by Chicks on Speed records?
JD: Yes, and even our major record is still distributed, our vinyl that is, on Chicks on Speed record.

OA: So Universal don't want to deal with the vinyl situation ? Surprise, surprise!
JD: No, and the vinyl in the States, they don't do it either. We have an indie label putting out the vinyl in the States.

OA: How did you end up signing on Universal? Is it like you asked them, or did they come and beg?
JD: When Mr. Lady stopped, or when they sent an email saying they were not doing any records anymore, we thought "Okay, we have to find someone else". And we spent weeks, well months really, a long time, looking for a label. We looked at some indie labels, some tiny ones - so small that this would be the only record being put out that year....and we went to all the majors too...and the big thing was that we hired a manager that had come from a major...they had fired all their people and hired a whole new staff and so he was really awsome in helping us find a label that was not gonna sacrifice us as artists nor our content.

OA: So what are you going to play tonight?
JD: I was talking to Elin (DJ Sunshine - resident at Blå - where JD is going to play just a couple of hours after we had met her) that we might do a back and forth, so I might just...I don't know, I think it's just going to be fun and all over the place.

OA: But what kind of records did you bring then?
JD: All kinds. I am influenced by a lot of different stuff and I like to play my friends and familie's music. Lots of queer artists as Tracy and the Plastics even Junior Senior, The Gossip, Erase Errata, Gravy Train!!! and stuff like that. I usually mix it in with Madonna and Michael Jackson. I don't really like Madonna but I like that new song. I got a hung up on it....well I guess it's the old single now. My main reason why I'm DJing is that Le Tigre is taking a hiatus from touring and I'm super missing the feeling of going to a club or something and being with the group of people that are our fans, that community. And I realized when I went to LA this one weekend when I was kinda like: "I really need to make some money and I don't know what to do". So my friends told me to come and DJ and they would throw a party, they would promote it and stuff. All these kids came and it was so much fun. It was kind of easy. You just said to come to this place and everyone had a really good time. So it has been more like creating a space to dance for people who want to or in a certain kind of scene. Usually I can tell what people want to hear in the first couple of songs and then I...well I like all kinds of music and the most of anything I like to make people happy.

OA: So what are your golden rules when you are DJing? Is it things you never do, or is it things you always do?
JD: I guess....I....I don't really have any...It's weird. Sometimes when I'm in a bad mood and people are asking me to play stuff I answer: "I don't take requests". But then again last night I was totally....well everyone is in a really good mood and this person came up to me and said "can you play Pulp?" I just said "sure, I will play anything you really like".

OA: Do you often play at queer arrangements mainly?
JD: Of course I like it so much better...well wherever I play, queer kids come and most of the places are queer night, or the venues are completely queer run. But in the States I do way less queer stuff than I do here (in Europe). In the States I do industy parties and stuff like that and it gets stupid and then it gets really bad. But a couple of weeks ago I DJed in Toronto in this dance club that was massive, like 1500 people or something. And I was playing with this DJ called Tommy Sunshine - actually - that is one of my favourite DJs. He is totally amazing. And I was really nervous. And everyone was super beat matching electro and I just thought "oh no, what am I gonna do and this is totally not my scene". I felt so humiliated. I had a headspin all day in the airport cus my flight got cancelled. Then I just got up there and thought fuck these people, and I had the best time and played all this crazy pop music and everybody had so much fun! And then I got a review that I was way better than Tommy Sunshine because of the audience. I like to please the audience cus that is what matters.

OA: Do you get really stressed out when you play records?
JD: I get really stressed out beforehand, because I don't know what it's going to be like. I always say that I don't know what to play tonight and then as soon as I start I relax...and I always like to dance a lot when I'm playing and sing along and go crazy. Kind of like when I play a show...and I think people like that too. It's always like: when the DJ is having fun you are too.

OA: It even says so on your myspace.com profile, on the comments, that people have had a lot of fun! And people are indeed appreciating your DJdancing
JD: Yes, it's really cool.

OA: You say you miss touring, but you have a new band as well, yeah?
JD: It's kind of less like a new band but more like a fun thing I do with my friends. Maybe we will do something else some other time, but it was like we decided we had all this stuff and wanted to put it out. So we did and....we played probably seven shows. Four on the west coast and three on the east coast. All of us live in different cities and it's too hard for us get all together. I think everyone should come to New York and everyone wants the rest to go to their town....

OA: Are you actually from New York?
JD: No, I'm from Ohio, which is in the middle of the country. But I’ve lived in New York for about ten years.

OA: And why New York?
JD: I wanted to go to college. I went to this school called Sarah Lawrence College and went through film and video. That's how I met Sadie from Le Tigre and then I was in a band.

OA: You've never been in a band before that?
JD: No. It was...well, Le Tigre was more of an art project for us than a band. Like in the serious sense of that word. It was more like multimedia performance art.

OA: Were you influenced by the whole Riot Grrl movement or type of scene when you grew up? Did you know about Kathleen Hannah before you actually met her?
JD: I think that is the part of our band that makes it cool. I was not involved with Riot Grrl at all and I didn’t even know about it. Where I'm from and you're under 21 you can't really go to anything, no shows or anything like that. And it was no all age venues there until I had left Ohio. But I remember Bikini Kill came to town and one of my friends went to the show. But I had no idea what it was and I still didn't when I went to college. I got schooled in Riot Grrrl stuff there by this friend of mine and I was like "Oh cool!" but I never got into it. I have actually never listened to Bikini Kill once in my entire life.

OA: But were you listening to queer bands at all when you were going out? Like Team Dresch or something?
JD: Yeah! I actually listened to Tribe 8. Because I had read about them in this newspaper cuz they came Ohio and their show got cancelled and they got thrown out. And I thought that was so cool. And then I found one of their records at some store. And that was it. The internet didn't exist so I couldn't find the other bands through that. They played one time but I couldn't go cus I was not 21. Other than that I listened to Indigo Girls and Ani Di Franco and stuff like that. That was all I knew that was queer.

> page 2