Phil Dick Tells Punks About Secession

Friday fun link: Dangerous Minds unearths a 1980 interview from the punk zine Slash. The interviewers: comics artist Gary Panter and writer/actress/Germs manager Nicole Panter. The interviewee: science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick. The topics: punk rock, condo meetings, and why Dick "would like to see this country break up into individual states."

[Hat tip: Bret McCabe.]

Comments

[Charlie Sheen]

Secession is like the end of the global browser paradigm. Flies are buzzing around our heads, but all we do is laugh like baby cobras. Well, I for one refuse to be a part of the Zionist conspiracy to love the life of the end of the toilet. Needless to say, me and Gillespie are like pods and lies. We love the life that has brought us together, and we hate the fact that Jerusalem is smelling like gasoline-soaked toilet paper in the minds of the redneck assholes in middle America. I know it seems odd that South Carolina would dare be a neo-techno-noirish hellhole, but it is. My god, it is! So let us all rejoice in the Dickishness of the this Phil and love the fact that one day mankind will understand the futility of the glass makers and bottle shapers that destroy our pussydrank.

Thanks.

[?]

DICK: Now the beach bands like the Circle Jerks?

Sweet.

[Nomic]

Oddly, by my reading of the Constitution, this country is broken up into individual states.
The question is why we coddle those who decide not to follow it.

[Charlie Sheen]

Exactly, the arduousness of the thalidomide catastrophe couldn't not in any endear the puppeteers and muppeteers to our cause for the breaking of the holy hand of matrimony between the states.

[GILMORE]

Opening lines.

"DICK: Um ? fuck.
JETER: Beer"

Poetry.

[rac]

I've done questionable things.

[Rock Action]

And here I just jabbered in another thread about loving the Circle Jerks' first album. Perhaps I'm now thin-skinned, but if you can say that with a straight face in front of anyone who had anything to do with the dumb-assed performance art troupe known as the Germs, well...go ahead then.

[SugarFree]

Yes, I didi like it and I still like it.

Dick was an opera fan. I wouldn't read to much in him joking about SoCal punk.

[Rock Action]

That's interesting about the opera. I did make sure to limit my criticism of him to that and that alone, but it was still thin-skinned of me. I guess I couldn't resist. Take a joke...

I still sorta stand by that Germs thing, though, only with a few qualifiers. And I once owned the MIA anthology they put out. On cassette, of course. Was I cheap or just a prescient hipster? I won't divulge.

[Gabe E]

I loved this. Thanks.

That part about the cat at the end is from Valis.

[SIV]

K.W. Jeter, one of Dick's close friends and author of the yet unpublished but excellent DR. ADDER, attended and added his comments.

That is a great book. Jeter wrote a couple of decent horror novels too.

[Jesse Walker]

He was one of the original steampunks too. Anyway, I second the Dr. Adder recommendation.

[SugarFree]

And 1985's The Glass Hammer features PKD as a character. (PKD is a character in quite a few stories and novels.)

[James Anderson Merritt]

At the website, there was a clickable link of Michael Nesmith in a Rhinestoney Cowboy getup. I clicked it and heard "Standing in THE lonely light of THE Silver Mooooooooooon": Truly a punk-country classic. PKD and the Nez in five minutes. It's hard to beat that combo.

[SugarFree]

DICK: I, like John Denver, can't turn down a good taco.

Solid gold.

[Jesse Walker]

That was my favorite line in the interview.

[Ken Shultz]

Here's the money quote:

"SLASH: The kids that trash the white House would probably be a bunch of dub shits out for a yuk. Is that a scary prospect?

DICK: Not for me it's not! I can't imagine how they could be more dangerous then the people that are there now. Carter has spoken of the Russians in relation to the Afghanistan war as atheists. That's holy war talk."

Oh really! Now why would that be dangerous in 1980?

Minority Report! Dick was a Time Cop, and we just caught him red handed!

[Neu Mejican]

Luv me some PKD.