If I haven't read it in a while, it's new to me

An interview I wrote a few years ago:

Here's an interview with me that I pulled from QRS-TUV, a pub. that features queer musicians.


Are You Talented?: An Interview with SVU guitarist Ming Wong
Colette Kohl

As a young itinerant amateur music journalist (so much more appealing a title than "groupie") I often woke up on Sunday mornings face down in a puddle of vomit. As I picked the remains of my dinner (or someone else's, if I had gotten un/lucky) out of my hair, I thought to myself - some day, some day I shall be paid to do this. I shall be paid to hang out with small independent bands with a lot of hope and little talent, to stay up until 4 am drinking increasingly mysterious blends of beer and liquor/cleaning products. So when I got a call from Jeremy asking me if I'd like to interview Ming Wong of SVU I immediately said: Who? But then when he told me they'd pay 5 cents a word, I did a quick google search, packed up my notebook and Caltrained over to Palo Alto, where Wong resides.

Colette: (ringing doorbell and waiting. ten minutes pass. I decide Wong is not home and start to leave, but just then the door bursts open, and in the doorway, wearing only a bathrobe and cradling a mesh bag filled with dirty sheets, is what would be a dreamy hunk of a man, if that man worked out more and shaved)
Ming: (yelps in surprise)
C: Hi. I'm Colette.
M: Who?
C: From QRSTUV.
M: What?
C: The music magazine.
M: Oh yeah, right. Come in. Sit down.
C: Nice place.
M: Thanks, we built those window covers ourselves during our lesbian home-depot phase.

C: So... let's just get started.
M: Okay.

C: What's the story behind Special Victims Unit?
M: Well, Rich and I met in Northampton, randomly, in this poster store. I actually went in with the intention to hit on him. Anyway, we started talking and it turned out he lived in Palo Alto, which is where I lived too. So I set up what I thought was a date, but then turned out to not be one, since he has a girlfriend. Anyway, we hung out some more, he had drums, I had a guitar, one thing led to another, and we formed SVU. It's like Chekov, but with a slightly happier ending.

C: How did you come up with the band's name?
M: I'd always loved watching SVU [Law and Order: Special Victims Unit is a series on NBC], mainly for Chris Meloni. Rich also likes SVU, partly because of Marissa Hargitay. By our projection of sexual desire onto television characters combined, we formed SVU. Also I can play the opening song on my guitar. Do you want to hear it?
C: That's ok.

C: What would you say is your favorite song?
M: You mean like ever, or from our album?

C: Both.
M: Well, my favorite song ever is probably a Beach Boys song - I can't pick one right now, they're all so good. I wish it were something more pretentious, even in a foreign language - Chinese would be ideal. Or something by a band with more violence. But the truth is, I fucking love the Beach Boys. "Surfer Girl" is awesome - with its sort of wistful melody that washes back and forth like the waves, the cathartic rhymes - it's comfort food for the post-feminist consciousness. Like eating a bowl of fried rice in an age of Atkins.

C: What about from your latest album?
M: I'd have to say the bonus hidden track - "Chang Chang Changity Chang". The story behind it is that Rich [Simpson, SVU's drummer] and I came up with a private language, and the whole song is in that language. It's actually The Internationale translated into SVU-ese, set to a different melody, of course. See, "she-bop" means humanity, and "Chang Chang Changity Chang" means The Internationale, so that the line "Chang Chang Changity Chang She Bop/ We'll always be as one" is, translated into English, "The Internationale unites the human race." Not that we're communists or anything, or in SVU-speak: "Doowah diddy diddy dum bang boom"

C: Sounds a bit like gibberish.
M: That's what every fading culture says about emergent culture.

C: What exactly are the politics behind SVU?
M: We aren't about politics - we're about anti-politics. While I personally am somewhat of an existentialist, I think music is an arena in which I subscribe to a theory in which individuals lose a lot of conceptual agency and become just a locus for the confluence of musical history. In other words, SVU is as inevitable as bad weather - we had nothing to do with it, and hence, our politics had nothing to do with it. I'm not saying we are mere mouthpieces for some kind of zeitgeist or movement - that's too simplistic. Rather, we're like the reverb on a noisy amp - nobody wanted us here, but we're here anyway, and you know what - people are going to have to deal with it.

C: Do you think being queer has influenced your music?
M: Well duh. Next question.

C: How do you think being queer has influenced your music?
M: Well aren't you just BBC-documentary persistent? I think being queer allowed me to develop the girlish shrieking that I utilize in at least two of the songs on [It's Never Too Late to Read] Hegel. Also sucking dick expands your vocal range.

C: Does the release of this album signal a new direction for SVU away from free live performances?
M: I doubt it. Frankly, to steal a phrase from that Marx brother - we wouldn't want to play for anyone who would pay us to play for them.

C: In a recent review, SVU's sound was described as "at once genuinely awful... and sublimely clever." Would you agree with that appraisal?
M: Holy crap. You read up on our reviews? Who are you, Terry Gross? Yeah, I'd agree with that appraisal. I agree with it so much I could have written it myself.

C: What do you think about the recent developments in the legalization of same-sex marriage?
M: You must mean in the U.S., since developments have been happening for a long time in other parts of the world. Frankly, the only important thing about legal marriage to me is the benefits - but of course the debate is hardly ever framed that way - it's all about love love love.
You know that couple [Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin] that has been together 50 years? They were the first ones to get married in San Francisco? Well, there's something weird about focussing on them as the reason why gay marriage should be legal. Now I don't have anything against them, I think it's fantastic they've stayed together that long, and that they got together in the 50s, and it's all very fabulous and heartwarming but you know what? What does legal recognition do for them? They stayed together this long without it - hello? unnecessary much? We need to be showing the people who would be, no, who are torn apart without legal marriage, to drive the point home that this isn't some fuzzy romantic icing on the gay love cake. Some people are in crisis mode here, and a lot of us are less photogenic than two harmless-looking old white american women. Some of us are bearded foreigners.

C: Are you in a relationship right now?
M: Oh, I am in many relationships right now. None of which is recognized by the U.S. government as granting me any rights whatsoever.

C: I meant a romantic relationship.
M: I'm not big on categorizing my relationships with people. My least favorite phrase is "He's just a friend." Just a friend? Well fuck you very much too.

C: If you could be an animal, what would you be?
M: First of all, I am an animal. Second of all - actually, there is no second of all. I was going to say we can skip the precious questions, but then I realised that would in itself be precious. Precious precious precious. The word "precious" is precious. So, in answer to your question, if I could be an animal, I would be Bjork.

C: Who are your biggest musical influences?
M: I was afraid you were going to ask that. And you know what, even after all this time, I still don't have a well thought out answer. I'm going to say... Gershwin, Radiohead and Beethoven. Of course, that's totally wrong.

C: What's next for SVU?
M: We'll probably practice this Friday and then possibly go out for some Indian food. That's as far as we've planned.