MOST FOLKS KNOW CHRIS BROKAW FROM HIS BIG 3 INDIE BANDS (CODEINE, COME AND THE NEW YEAR) BUT HE HAS DONE THAT AND SO MUCH MUCH MORE (SEVERAL TERRIFIC SOLO RECORDS). ENJOY THIS VERY INTERESTING INTERVIEW...

Where were you born and where did you grow up?
I was born in Harlem, New York City. I grew up in Scarsdale, 30 miles north. My father moved to Manhattan when I was 14 and I spent much of high school there too.

What was your introduction to music? Did your parents play?
My father had been a be-bop drummer, and worked for 5 years at RCA records when i was young. He went to Woodstock on business, saw music all the time at the Fillmore east, etc. I was exposed to things like blue cheer and the MC5 when i was five years old. apparently i hated all that stuff and only enjoyed the soundtrack to "Mary Poppins" - i would drum along on my high chair while my sister and her friends would dance around the living room. - I saw the New York Dolls on tv when i was 9 and that made a big impression on me, that's when I really became interested in rock music.

What was the first record you bought with your own money? Where?
“Monster Mash" by Bobby 'Boris' Pickett; followed shortly thereafter by "bad bad leroy brown" by jim croce and "heartbeat, it's a love beat" by the defranco family. i bought them at a place called discount records, in eastchester, new york. there were a couple of guys there in their late teens who steered me to the "spiral scratch" ep by the buzzcocks and "raw power" by the stooges, when i was 12, hugely important records for me then + now. record stores became really important places for me.

What was your first band?
I had a band called "lizzy borden" with a drummer named doug aronson. i was 12, and had been playing guitar for a few months. we had another guitar player named todd but threw him out and went it as a duo. we never played live and we only played covers.

What were some early gigs you saw that had an impact on you?
I saw johnny thunders, jorma kaukonen, and iggy pop a lot when i was in high school. those 3 made a big impression on me. other pivotal shows: minor threat at great gildersleeves, van halen at madison square garden, bad brains at irving plaza, glenn branca at sanders theater, these immortal souls at green street station, diamanda galas at nightstage, the leaving trains at the middle east, joe mcphee at first parish church, archie shepp at the knitting factory, mr. butch and brother blue at the middle east, ernst reijeseger at zeitgeist, merzbow + masonna at mama kin, chris smither at somerville theater, keith rowe at ica...the list goes on + on.

Was Codeine your first band that had any recognition? How did that band come about?
Steve immerwahr (bass/vocals) and i both went to oberlin and knew each other peripherally. sooyoung park (bitch magnet, seam) played me some early proto-codeine material, which i liked a lot, and steve + i eventually discussed playing together. we had both graduated school by then - steve was in new york, where he linked up with guitarist john engle - i was in boston but we decided to work together. for the two-odd years i was in codeine i mostly took the greyhound back + forth for rehearsals, recordings, shows.

Were you living in NYC then? If so what was that experience like?
I spent a few months in new york in early 1990, when we really began working on the band; we recorded side one of 'frigid stars lp' in january, i moved back to boston in late march, we recorded side two in june. new york seemed fine then but i was really focussed on music and my own life and not paying much attention to what was happening in the city.

Why did you leave the band before they broke up?
I was playing with Come and Codeine concurrently for about 2 years, which was super fun, incredibly exciting - i'd never made records before, and i felt like the two bands were really different and challenging in different ways. Come was in some ways more "my" band, insofar as i was writing a lot of the music; and eventually it reached a point where the two bands became too busy for me to give enough time to each - i didn't want john + steve to have to wait around for 6 or 8 months while i toured with Come on "11:11", so, i left the band right before 'barely real' came out. they were understanding and totally supportive of what i was doing with Come. i'm still good pals with those guys (and the Come people, too).

Was Come next? How did you meet Thalia?
I met thalia through some guys i'd gone to high school with, adam gaynor and jerry dirienzo, who were playing with thalia in a boston-based band called Via (who only played 2 shows). she was also singing in live skull at the time. the 4 of us got together and jammed, and the rapport between thalia and i was immediate, super-intense, telepathic - i knew we had to do something together, and for the next year or so we'd get together from time to time and jam, talk about what we wanted to do - we were both interested in doing something more traditional, more rock + roll, than what we were each doing at the time - we were both interested in bands like the rolling stones, the gun club, the jacobites, the only ones, the bad seeds - eventually live skull split up in mid 1989 and we began trying to get something together - it took a while, but eventually we found arthur + sean and started working on music. we practiced for about 5 months and then did our first show in march 1991.

Umm..did you really play with GG Allin?
Yes.

If so why/how?
Why not? hm....when i moved to boston in 1986 i had a really hard time finding a drummer to play with. i had moved there with a band from oberlin called Pay The Man. our drummer, orestes, immediately quit and returned to oberlin (and joined bitch magnet), and we spent 6 months fruitlessly looking for a drummer. i decided that boston obviously needed more drummers and that i should get a drumset and focus more on drumming. i bought a set, and the first ad i saw for someone looking for a drummer was gg alllin. i was somewhat familiar with his rep - he wasn’t super well known at the time, but had done the famous shit-throwing show in new york, had linked with homestead and new rose records, etc - his brother merle lived around the corner from me and i went over and watched the videos and listened to the records. the whole thing made me really uncomfortable, and seemed like something i should do...i was in a fairly confrontational period of my life, and what he was doing made sense, seemed valid - i liked the idea of taking punk rock performance/confrontation to the next level, etc - i found his songs funny and unsettling at the same time. i also thought they were good punk rock songs. i liked him, and we had a good time together. we rehearsed for 2 months and recorded the "expose yourself to kids" ep for homestead. this was december 1987. afterwards he disappeared for a while, but in august 1989 he asked me to play guitar on a show with him at the middle east, in cambridge. we did the show in drag and incognito and actually got through a whole set without incident - he told me beforehand "chris, i really want to just sing a set of songs. i haven't played a show in 6 years that's lasted more than two minutes!" the show was eventually released as a live cd. it was a very brief tenure, but it's kind of amazing how many people continue to ask me about it.

What was your favorite moment of being in Come?
Making the records. writing the songs, which we labored tirelessly over. playing shows that felt like something really intense happened, something that only the people in the room that night could understand. playing 2 nights upstairs at the middle east on our last tour and thinking: "we're the best band on earth right now. no one can touch us." i really felt that way! it was great. i felt so lucky to play with that band.

Why did Come break up?
I felt, for about 8 or 9 years, like i knew exactly what to do next with the band - and after the last record i felt like i didn't know what to do next. eventually i started writing rock music that i didn't want to be a Come record (and which eventually became my first solo album, 'red cities') - the band went on hiatus for a while; thalia started work on a solo album - she eventually really wanted some sort of resolution or closure, and we decided to officially call it quits in april 2001. it had been 10 years, we'd had a good run - i thought "gently down the stream" was our best album and a great note to go out on...i was happy with it all but felt like we were moving on to new things, and that that was ok. i continued playing with thalia for a little while after; our friendship probably got better having put the band to rest. i still consider her a great friend, i'm still a huge fan, i consider our musical partnership one of the highlights of my life.

..and then reform?
Matador asked us to play this thing in vegas. we said yes! i was flattered that they asked us, and was happy that they thought to include us in a festival honoring the legacy of the label. we added a 2nd show on our own in boston, a week from tomorrow (sept 26 - thalia's birthday). i'm fairly certain that the reunion won't go beyond the 2 shows, but i'm really looking forward to playing with thalia and arthur and sean, i think it'll be great.

to be continued....

thx chris....xo tim