by David Lee Beowulf"Whip Me, Beat Me, SPIT On Me"
by David Lee Beowulf
from Ink 19 Magazine - October 1997
While generally, I do not care for pornography, I do appreciate it as an art form, a form of expression and certainly, I'm a man, and I like looking at "nice forms." I also live for those times when I can spring music like the Mentors or SPIT on people, especially when they're forced to listen! A lot of the time, that's hard to do with the Mentors because the people I want to shock aren't into hard rock or metal--the music they like keeps 'em flaccid. So with SPIT, who touch upon nearly every single musical genre out there, from classical to metal to industrial to disco to bluegrass to rap, I'm armed to the teeth against the Philistines! That is, a SPIT song will start out with a nice, danceable groove and then, wham! "...bark like a dog for me, baby!" The best experience was playing a SPIT CD for my cardplaying pals who rarely listen to anything other than Latin disco and Howard Stern. The latter is a plus concerning SPIT, but these guys also know what kind of music I like (no, they don't actually, but they think they do) and were really hesitant at me bringing over a CD for the poker game. "Here, this one's called 'My Big Dick...'"
Of course it was a success! And even more so because they made their wives listen to it all night!
Recently, the extremely versatile musical prodigy, Vinnie SPIT, the genius behind what has now become the art troupe, SPIT, released the tenth SPIT album, Godfather of Smut, which happens to be dedicated to Ron Jeremy, the legendary porn star. I was able to speak with Mr. SPIT from his in-home studio somewhere outside of Hollywood.
I understand that you've dedicated the title song to Ron Jeremy...
Yes. Ron Jeremy is the horniest guy I know! His sexual appetite is enormous and pornography is the only way for him to live comfortably.
I also understand you were pursuing a professional career before abandoning it for the life you now lead.
Yes -- both my wife, Mistress Jacqueline, and I were school teachers! I taught high school English, history and some special education. My wife, who has a BA in education and a master's in clinical psychology, used to teach elementary school. She's also a licensed therapist and was doing that for a while. The S&M lifestyle is something that comes very natural for us and before we met she was doing a lot of playing on her own and then we got together...
The educational background would account for the extremely articulate, literary nature of your songs, I must say. They're something...
As long as you get a laugh!
Where did SPIT get its start?
I grew up between Delaware and Philadelphia. I went to Millersville University in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. It was hard for me to gig in the area...
I went to college around there and I understand that's were the band Live came from.
Those guys! What a bunch of Bozos! And they're like, huge! Well, I used to gig around the Baltimore, Washington, Delaware, Philly and New York area. You can hit a lot of cities with just your car! I was in college in 1985-86 when my first record, called Thrust and Disgust, came out.
Was it you alone or did you have a band?
I started by myself. I'd make two recordings, one with the vocals for the album and one without the vocals for my show, where I'd knock the vocals out live. This was before DAT so I'd sing to a cassette and do some kind of performance art thing as well. But that only lasted a year or two and I started getting more and more people involved! After about four years I had a full band. And now the band is huge! I have like eight people, including a horn section and it's ridiculous. I've done the full United Sates a few times and I've hit almost every city, and now since I moved out here I'm doing the west coast, the Los Angeles scene and San Francisco, San Diego a lot, Portland, Seattle, I even make it up to Boise, Idaho every now and then!
Boy, what are they like?
They're rowdy! They're starving for anything! And you can still see me for 3 to 5 bucks, which is what the market calls for!
Something about Boise, Idaho...Farmboys and potatoes and SPIT...
So I was spanking some girl up there one time (we do all kinds of shit), and so, we do like an on-stage spanking thing, and we invite people up from the audience to get spanked. So this girl comes up and so I'm spanking her and she's chewing on something and I asked her if she's chewing on gum and she says "nope" and spits this big wad of tobacco right on the floor in front of me! I'd never met a girl who chewed tobacco before!
Was she hot?
Oh, yeah, she was really good looking! A really good looking girl chewing tobacco! Sort of an oxymoron!
Could be good material for a few songs... Do you have a lucrative recording contract that would allow for all the touring support?
My label, Pacific Force, actually does a lot of adult fetish production, we have a large fetish video company that I started with my wife about five years ago. We have several employees and we do fetish videos, magazines, and CD-ROMs. I used to be on a bunch of labels--Cargo, etc. I do all the magazine layout on a Mac with Photoshop and Jacqueline writes it.
At the radio station where I DJ'd, your records always said "do not play"...
There's a few playable things on them...Persecution of Genius was on Cargo, and then I was on Vinyl Communications and I said to Jacqueline, "I wonder if I could do this myself," so I got in touch with all the distributors I knew, and I said, "take them from me" and they said "sure!" And I've already sold almost 2,000 of Godfather through mail order, gigs and on my own. Then Cargo called and said they'd like to license it! They want to re-release Persecution of Genius and You Would If You Loved Me, and maybe a live record [Tao of SPIT ]. They sell a lot of records and they're doing a deal with MCA right now. I just signed with Hot Entertainment out of Florida and they do a lot of disco and parody records! So, yeah, I fit in really good... And they're putting out the dirtiest of SPIT, called Crude, Rude Dude and it's like just all dirty songs, you know. I do some political songs and some serious songs and there's none of that! All the filth. The cover is really funny; picture this: I'm in a hotel room, naked in bed with a female blow-up love doll and on the bed are all these sex toys and rubbers and stuff, and we're smoking cigarettes! And coming in the door is a male blow-up love doll in a three-piece suit, carrying a briefcase! Basically he's come in and caught me in bed with his wife! And you know how the fuck dolls have their mouths open wide... It's really funny! So this is going to do really well, I'm sure. This company's distribution is really strong, too. Things are humming along!
The record I'm working on now is all swing, all punk swing. Like G-string Swing! It's really aggressive swing, though. Not really like the Squirrel Nut Zippers, it's kind of like Royal Crown Review with more attitude. It has full drums and horns and fretless bass and it really kicks ass! I think a lot of people who aren't into swing who like punk or cyberpunk or industrial will really like this. It has the same elements of those musical styles the meter is different, it all has a triplet feel.
You sound as though you're a classically-trained musician.
I play, like, 30 instruments. I played upright bass in the Lancaster symphony orchestra! I was actually 7th bass (out of 8)... you get seated by your ability. And I was really good, but I'm playing with guys who'd been playing for like years and years. I was 18 and they were 50, so these guys had chops-plus! In my 4th year I moved up to 5, but the only guy worse than me was this old drunk man who used to talk to me all the time! And that music's really hard and you have to pay attention! And he'd be over there telling me dirty joke after dirty joke and taking a snort from this little flask in his jacket every time we took a break!
Did your parents push you into music?
No, no! My parents were really against it! They were afraid I was going to be a musician. So instead I became a pornographer!
Speaking of pornography, apparently you direct and star in lots of films.
I mostly do fetish stuff. The difference is that you can't show any fetish activity (b&d, feet, etc.) with any kind of penetration, because then it's considered rape. Even if it's a husband and wife, it's still rape. There's a lot of screwy laws around this business. So we do mostly the fetish stuff without any penetration. We do a lot of spanking, bondage, whipping. You may have seen it on HBO... We come from a very educational point of view, too. Jacqueline is pretty famous, she wrote a book calledWhips and Kisses and she's been on TV talk shows like Phil Donahue, Sally, Oprah, before they became white trash forums. She consulted with Madonna on Body of Evidence, so Jacqueline taught Madonna everything!
Which brings us back to Godfather of Smut , which is dedicated to Ron Jeremy...
He was best man at my wedding and I can't call myself the Godfather of Smut as long as he's alive! I've known him four or five years... I know all these people, I could drop names all afternoon. Believe it, though, this business is a lot smaller and tighter than you'd think. We help each other out and sell our stuff. Our clientele is middle class and upper class; you can't afford our products if you don't have money. Especially fetish stuff, those people are of a different mindset than the regular porn people...
Some of your songs, though, are very political and don't necessarily focus on porn at all. And you're challenging radio stations to play the song "Anita Long Dong," which is about the Clarence Thomas Supreme court hearings.
That's because there's really no dirty words other than what's already been broadcast all over the world at ten in the morning on a Saturday when the kids are watching cartoons! It was a public forum and that's public. Now if you take something from a movie, like on the song 'Blue Velvet,' for instance; I took samples [of Dennis Hopper... ] from that movie, and if they wanted, there's a percentage to pay, and you have to understand that it's such a small amount of money that they don't even care unless the song became a hit. But we haven't sold more than 20,000 of that album [You Would If You Loved Me ], so it would work out to like $100-200 and I'd be glad to pay it. But in reality I tried to contact Columbia Pictures and good luck trying to get through! So I figured, if they want me they can find me. And I'd be happy to pay! The only reason they sue you is if you refuse to pay. And this isn't a lot, it's just a couple of phrases! And if they did care I'd pay them! And another thing, the Anita Hill testimony is in the public domain. I can see Anita Hill getting pissed, but she brought the stuff out in public... I'm not taking anybody's side, I'm just saying how stupid the whole thing was! Just like inTo Kill A Mockingbird, white people love a boxing match between two black people!
I was surprised at the amount of women I know who took Clarence Thomas's side.
Well, there's appropriate and inappropriate behavior, and what is and isn't sexual harassment. We've all been bad pick-up artists, we've all said things, and this guy just doesn't have any chops when it comes to women! And it seemed like this was a very extreme way for her to deal with it. I just don't believe that she followed him from this job to that job and it was all that bad! I think all of it was true, but she was just trying to make a name for herself in some other ways.
On "Totalitarian State," you get into the ever-increasing fascism looming over our day-to-day lives; do you really see problems like that in LA?
All over the place! I wrote that song back in 1992. In California, you can't smoke in any restaurant. I don't smoke, but I really care about people's rights to make those decisions themselves. And if you're a merchant who wants to allow people to smoke, fine; don't go if you don't like it. But now smokers have nowhere to go. And their right to choose was taken away. It's not like they could pick a restaurant. And they're taking your rights away little by little. I've had my own bout with censorship and people smashing my records and mailing them back to me. If someone sees my show and listens to the records, they'll know that basically I'm a really horny guy and it's all a joke! And I'm married; more than half my band is women, they're all into what we're doing. My movies are very female-positive, most of the women are dominant... These are just my versions of love songs! None of the films is demeaning to women and I basically consider myself a feminist! But some people don't get past the surface and all they see is the girl's butt with a CD in it. They're so uptight... So anything anybody does now is sexual harassment!
Were you friends with the Mentors?
I just got to see the Mentors play at a place owned by a friend of mine named TK. He owns two buildings with rehearsal studios and one of the bands was the Mentors! Every so often he'd give a free beer and band show and last New Years the Mentors closed the show.
Are you able, though, to manage a successful full-time career out of what you're doing?
I own my own home, I own stock! I'm together! I have my own studio! I'm stable and we have an off-the-wall sexual lifestyle! We have a dungeon in our basement! We have a couple of 1-900 numbers, too, and people think we're millionaires. You have your good months and bad months, it's a rough and competitive business like anything else. I have to pay benefits to my workers! But when you take all these things we do it makes a nice living.
Mr. SPIT, I thank you for the interview and also for using your college degrees to their fullest extent, proving that an education certainly has practical usage in the world of rock and roll!
Anyone who wants can contact Vinnie SPIT by e-mail at VinnieSPIT@aol.com