Happy Couples Never Last Interview

Clark Giles and I first found common ground through our mutual love and respect for Ned's Atomic Dustbin.  Aside from his desire (which I strongly share) to reintroduce the late 80s, all bangs "skater haircut," Clark has a deep-rooted dedication to "from the heart and soul" musical composition, and strong ideas and opinions about the punk rock culture.

In addition, his independent record label Happy Couples Never Last Records based out of Indiana has made undeniable contributions on the forefront of eclectic, experimental indie rock and the emotional side of the screamo scene.  Not resting on past laurels, which include releases by Usurp Synapse, Lefty's Deceiver, Pg. 99, etc., HCNL promises highly anticipated releases, such as the upcoming Drop Science album, in the near future.  The website boasts, "We are in this for life," and I can't help but believe it.

Interview conducted via e-mail, July 2001.

Name: Clark Andrew Giles
Record Label: Happy Couples Never Last

Tim: Where are you from?  
Clark: Indianapolis, Indiana

T: Explain the name of your record label?  Why do Happy Couples Never Last?  
C: There is a longer explanation telling the whole story behind the name on the Naughty Secretaries Club zine website, but I'm going to give the quick and dirty answer here since this is a much longer interview than the one question that they asked me.  Back in college, I basically had a ton of money saved up to go to Europe with my girlfriend at the time.  We broke up before the trip so I couldn't think of a more noble cause to waste all of my hard-earned money on than putting out punk rock records.  So at its basest level, it is the name that I slapped on my first two CDs because it pretty much summed up my sentiment at the time. On more of a macro-level, however, I think it says something about the death of the Dream.  Punk rock had pretty much lost its "innocence" (can Punk rock even be innocent?) for me around that time.  I was disillusioned with the activist groups that I was involved with, all the bands of my youth had broken up and taken "straight" jobs, entropy just seemed to be setting in everywhere.  I just felt like I was stagnating in a college town with little to look forward to doing after college.  "Style over substance" definitely seemed to be the theme for the Indiana scene at the time.  Maybe it still is, I don't know...Regardless, I'm a lot more posi-core about things now.  I'm actually sick of the name to be completely honest.  Life is to short to be negative and bitter. Maybe I'll just change it to Happy Couples... 

T: What first inspired you to start the label?  When did you put out your first record and what was it?  
C: The first record that I ever put out was the Majhas full-length.  I want to say that it was around 1997.  I had pretty much participated in every other punk rock "job" already at that point- helping to run a collective, playing in a band, doing the "vegan warrior" activist thing, writing a zine, etc. so a record label was the last frontier for me.  I never really intended for any of it to turn into a full-time job though.  
Basically, the Majhas CD and the Vinyl Star CD came out within two weeks of each other.  The majority of the guys in Majhas used to play/sing in the Indianapolis band Ice Nine who are probably my favorite band to ever come out of Indiana so the opportunity to do their new record was something that I wanted to jump on right away.  I worked with a bunch of the guys from Vinyl Star at Indiana University and we'd always party together, plus I thought that their band was simply amazing musically and lyrically so they were an easy choice for a second release.  I decided early on that if I was going to spend all of this money to put out records, I didn't want to put out bands that sounded like everything else that was out at the time.  So these bands made a great statement for my first two records.  I am just not into the "one genre label" that just tries to put out whatever is "hot" at the time.  That is just completely boring to me.  Anyway, the records came out and did pretty well so I started thinking that maybe I'd just run with this thing and see where it would go.  The next 7" was the Usurp Synapse/Emotion Zero split and it has pretty much been all uphill from there.

T: What was the first record/tape/8 track you ever owned, and how is it different from the first record you released? (The think the first tape I ever owned was "Mousercise" so this should be funny...)
C: The first record I ever remember owning was a 7" that came with this Read Along book that had "Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier" on one side and "Remember the Alamo" on the other.  I think Johnny Horton sang one (or both) of the songs.  The first record that I remember actually buying with my own money was a 12" of Chuck Berry's Greatest Hits.
It is funny that you mention "Mousercise" though because I remember when I was really young that I'd always rock this 8-track of "Disco Duck" like 24-7 (that was to the tune of "Macho, Macho Man") so much that my dad ended up breaking it in half.
Obviously, I would say the major difference between the first record I owned and the first record I released is the fact that I don't recall Johnny Horton ever going through a grinding power-violence stage.

T: What plans do you have for the next six months (both for the label and personally)?  
C: For the label, I'd just like to get all the records out that I have planned to get out so that I can just sit back for a few months and concentrate on getting the word out about what I'm doing.
On a more personal front, probably the most exciting project that I have planned is the publishing imprint that I'm trying to get up and running. Young Hearts Fail Publishing (http://www.youngheartsfail.com/) is going to be kind of a literary imprint of HCNL. There are so many other awesome mediums out there for human expression (writing, painting, filmmaking, etc.) and being a writer has always been my "dream job" so putting out books seemed fairly logical to me.  In many ways, punk rock/hardcore can be an inspiring art form that can challenge social conventions but I also think it can be inherently limiting in that if you don't like that particular form of music, the message behind the music (if there is one) becomes totally lost in the translation.  I don't think you really have this barrier with books. You don't have to be into grind core or free-form jazz to enjoy what a great book has to say.  I'm just really into the idea of doing something different than churning out 10,000 records that are just more and more derivative copies of bands that sold well before.  So that's cool to me.

T: How do you decide to put out a band's music?  What inspires you about the bands you've released records by in the past?  
C: Music for me fulfills one of three basic needs.  1.  Catharsis- This is stuff like the Cure, Joy Division, Billy Holiday, Etta James, etc.  This is the music that helps me feel better when I have the Sunday blues or when I start thinking about the past and getting all nostalgic for the "old times", etc.  2.  Release- This is the category that encompasses all of the heavy music that I listen to...this is the soundtrack for the "bad day at the office".  When it is 100 degrees out and I'm stuck in traffic, listening to hardcore helps to prevent me from stabbing the woman in the SUV in front of me yapping on her cell phone with a rusty ice pick.  (If you drive and talk on the cell phone at the same time, I'm sorry, you should be shot.  At least get out of the fast lane.)  3.  Recreation- This is just all of music that I listen to when I just want to have a good time and not think about anything too deep.  I would include most hip-hop (save for the political stuff) and dance music in this category as well.  Let's face it, The Locust (while I think they rule) just isn't really great background music for a party with mixed company.  Conversely, I'm not going to throw on the Cure and just depress everyone.  So this is just the fun stuff that sets the mood for everyone to have a good time.  Rockabilly, 80s alternative, etc. all great party music.
I really don't understand music that doesn't fall into one of these three categories.  In general, I don't understand bands with nonsensical lyrics or what I can only describe as a math-rock sound that isn't quite rock but isn't quite hardcore and totally doesn't inspire me whatsoever.  Each band that I've put out has moved me in a different way and would pretty much require an individual explanation for each of them but my short answer would be that they all fell into one of the above three categories and they all floored me with their sound.

T: Have you ever been in a band?
C: Yes. I've had the distinction of being in about the three most horribly named bands in the world.  When I was like 14 or something, I was in a joke band called Chester and the Molestors which I think played two shows in the entire life of the band.  This was the band that we'd always get together when one of our friends "real" bands would have to cancel a show and someone still had to play.  It was horrible, but I was 14 so you know, whatever. Punk rock.  Then I was in another band called the Battery Pack which was like political emo-crust type stuff (is that a genre?  if not, we invented it) Basically it was a fun "hang-out" band with my friends, nothing very serious either.  I've played in a ton of bands since then that aren't really worth talking about since we didn't play shows.  My most recent band was the Drago Miette which I was in with most of the guys from Usurp Synapse.  I'm in a new band now with some of the guys from Burn It Down but nothing is too concrete with that yet.  Again, not worth talking about until the details are more solid...I've just always been cursed with bad luck with bands.  They always break up way too early or other people aren't very serious about doing the band "right".

T: I've noticed that kids in the screamo "scene" are sprinting in the direction of goth/industrial/80's electronic inspired music and paying less attention to the politically charged bands that have inspired us in the mid nineties. Do you think the "scene" is more interested in shaking our booties to the Faint than organizing a Food Not Bombs chapter with Kill the Man Who Questions?  
C: Very much so!  The state of modern hardcore just sucks though so I can't blame kids who don't get into third-rate tough guy shit or 10th-generation screamo clones for getting into bands like the Faint or Cursive, etc.  They are both great bands and in general tend to bring something new to the table so I think they deserve all of the success that they are getting right now.
Things move in cycles though.  Things are like they were back in the late Eighties right now when the NY hardcore sound dominated everything then some political bands like Born Against, Bikini Kill, etc. burst on the scene in the early 90s and brought the first Great Age of the Toughguy to a close. Thug core can only rule the scene for so long, the fuse is lit, the scene is set, things are just ripe right now for the return of Political Hardcore. It can't come soon enough.

T: How do you feel about kids who trade tapes/CDRs of records you've released?  
C: I'm all for kids trading tapes/CDRs of records that I've released...that is what punk rock is about...Punk rock would be a hollow thing without the "mixed tape".  What's lame though is when I see kids selling CDRs of my records (or CDRs containing songs from my records) on Skylab and Ebay.  I just look at that as stealing.  I wouldn't Xerox pages out of Punk Planet, etc. and sell it online as "Punk Planet, Issue 52-Xeroxed", that would be fucking stupid.  Why should it be any different with music?  If you are making someone a mixed tape, awesome!  If you are making CDRs of Usurp CDs and selling them online, you suck.

T: Who have you seen in the last year that really impressed you live?  Why were you impressed?  
C: Q and Not U were just awesome when I saw them a couple of months ago. Honestly, I didn't think that I was going to be into them at all going to the show (because I had never heard them) but  they just tore down the house.  The amount of energy that they exude on stage is just amazing.
Milemarker kicked my ass as well when I saw them play.  They actually played to the crowd instead of standing with their backs to the audience like most bands do these days.  They actually seemed into the music that they were playing and not just going through the motions like so many bands (especially bands on long tours) tend to do after playing a show night after night.

T: What is your current playlist?  
C: Well, I'm a compulsive CD-changer but the 5 CDs in my stereo right now are:
Morrissey- Maladjusted
Billy Holiday- Greatest Hits (The Early Years)
Clan of Xymox- s/t
Clikatat Ikatowi- "Orchestrated by..."
The Clash- London Calling

T: What question or questions didn't I ask that you wish I had?  
C: I wish you had asked me if I enjoyed the Ned's Atomic Dustbin B-sides CD that you made me to which I would respond with a resounding "yes!!!".  Ned's Atomic Dustbin, one of the punkest bands ever.  You never see anyone with that haircut anymore...I was always pretty into that old-school skateboarder style.

T: What is your web address?  How can people buy your records?  
C: http://www.hcnl.com is the main web page for the label.  
http://www.hcnl.com/board is the webstore where you can buy stuff on-line.
hcnl@hcnl.com is my email address if you just want to talk.

T: Do you have a profile on makeoutclub.com?  Why or why not?  
C: Hell, no.  I don't have a profile on makeoutclub.com because I don't need to use the internet to get laid.  No seriously, no disrespect to the MakeoutClub cats because I'm sure they started the website as a joke and it just exploded so they decided to just run with it which is cool but I've never been into the whole meat market scene. I'd be much more into a girl who just sat in her room and listened to the Cure than one who plastered pictures of herself on the Internet.

T: Can you share a "yo' mama" joke with me?  
C: Yo mama so fat she goes to a restaurant, looks at the menu, and says "okay!"