From Sonic Youth to Lana Del Rey: Record Shopping with Sean Bonnette of AJJ

Interview by Parisa Eshrati

Before embarking on the Disposable Everything tour, we went record shopping with AJJ frontman Sean Bonnette at Wooden Tooth Records in Tucson, AZ. We spoke about his record selections, his favorite karaoke songs, Rod Stewart's mullet, multiverse theories, gnarly skateboard combos, and so much more. 

This interview was originally an exclusive interview for our latest zine issue! You can check out the print version here, or send us a message to have a zine shipped to you (free + $3 shipped anywhere in the states). 

Tim Hardin - 2

Sean Bonnette: This was Tim Hardin’s second album. He went up to four before he started titling his albums something other than the release number. He wrote so many great songs. You might know him from “Reason to Believe”, which was later popularized by Rod Stewart on Sing It Again Rod. He also wrote the song “Black Sheep Boy”, which inspired the album of the same name by Okkervil River. One of his most popular songs is “If I Were a Carpenter”, but that’s kind of a nondescript song for me. Tim Hardin is kind of monotone and has a lot of songs that sound similar. “Red Balloon”, for example, sounds a lot like “If I Were a Carpenter”. “Lady Came to Baltimore is kind of the laziest song ever, it’s awesome. He’ll just use a lot of the same words instead of coming up with rhymes.  He does a lot of “la la la”s but does rhyme “out” with “about” so I’ll give him credit for that. 

He played Woodstock really strung out, and a lot of his live recordings don’t have structure. It’ll just jump from verse to chorus to maybe another verse and then jam out for a bit. He’s really easy going and I like that a lot. The song “Tribute to Hank Williams” opens up with the line, “Goodbye Hank Williams, my friend/I never met you but I’ve been places you’ve been”. Any time AJJ plays a venue with some history, I think of that song because that song really captures that feeling. 

T&E: Do you have a favorite Hank Williams? Or are you a fan of all three?

You know, I’m kind of a Hank agnostic. I like football Hank. I respect OG Hank because he’s influenced so many artists I like, but similar to Gram Parsons, it’s someone who I’m coming to appreciate the older I get and can understand the magnitude of his music. He’s also got a pretty fuckin’ perfect yodel. 

More importantly, what are your thoughts on Rod Stewart? 

Oh, I love Rod Stewart. I love Sing It Again Rod. I love Faces. All the eras! Even soulless sellout glitzy Rod is honestly pretty kickass.He reminds me of my grandma [laughs] If my grandma were a singer, she would be Rod Stewart. She’s a fancy lady.

Do they have the same haircut?

Oh yeah, definitely. You know, fashion mullets are coming back in trend, but if you were Rod Stewart, they never went out. He’s always been in style. 

I wonder what Tim Hardin thought about Rod covering one of his songs.

I think Tim Hardin would be alright with the fact that Rod Stewart made his song more popular than he did. Although, he was dead before “Glitzy Rod” happened. He must’ve known about “Scumbag Rocker Rod”, which is definitely my favorite Rod music-wise for sure. Oh, there’s also the track “You Upset the Grace of Living When You Lie” on this album, which is equally a great song as it is a great title. 

I love a full sentence as a song title. 

Oh yes, AJJ is no stranger to that. 
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Lana Del Rey - Paradise

I feel like this record shares a spiritual kinship to the previous. Lana Del Rey is kind of like if you took 70s scumbag Rod and glitzy Rod and made them into one amazing woman. The hit on this one is definitely “Ride”. It’s an epic. The video is incredible. The song is fuckin’ something else! When I got an electric piano, the first thing I did was learn how to play “Ride” and “Video Games”.

Is this your favorite Lana record?

I love Paradise, but I’d have to say my favorite Lana album is Ultraviolence. It’s really beautifully realized. At first I missed the electronic elements of her previous releases, but it’s really good production nonetheless.

If you could sing any Lana song for karaoke, which would you pick?

Probably “Ride”. I could also see myself doing great “Blue Jeans”. I probably couldn’t do anything off of Ultraviolence for karaoke just because it’s too slow, but “Video Games” could be a winner.

Ringo Starr - Ringo

I picked this one because I was recently reminded that The Beatles had routine group masturbation sessions. It was the pre-internet days, so they’d mention actresses to each other while it was going down, like…”Doris Day, ay??” You just had to use a little imagination and…get a little help from your friends. Anyway, Ringo came out and said that that all happened before he was in the band, but I’m pretty sure that’s what the song “Come Together” is all about. HEYOOO!!

Welp, I could honestly just leave the interview there but since we’re on the subject, can you tell me more about your bootleg Beatles human centipede mug? Did that image come to you in a fever dream? 

It came to me from a song that I got stuck in my head that goes, [in the style of “Yellow Submarine”] “We all live in a human centipede”, so I drew a human centipede around a globe to generally get the idea, but I figured the Beatles-specific centipede was better since the Beatles are back to licensed character territory. 

So what’s your ideal musician centipede rotation?

Ringo, Ira Kaplan, Lana Del Rey, and Ringo again - in that order. The reason I picked Ringo for the end is that he’s got the best attitude. He’s not gonna get all shitty about it. He’s just there to party. If I made a “favorite guitarists” human centipede, I would definitely have Thurston Moore in there, but I would have to put Lee Ronaldo in front of him. And Steve Shelley can ride on his back.

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Sonic Youth - Evol

This was the first Sonic Youth album I bought after reading about them in skate magazines and skate videos. I was taken aback because it wasn’t the rocking Sonic Youth that I was expecting. This one is moody, with a lot of open tuning, out-of-tune piano and droney. I was a freshman in high school when I first heard this and it was such a treat to hear SST-era, edgy Sonic Youth before hearing their rad pop music. “Tom Violence” such a fucking awesome song. When I used to work at this record store, this was the first record I bought with my employee discount. I had to own it again.

What skate magazines were your favorites growing up?

The big one was Thrasher, which I still read today. The newest issue had a feature on the comedian Tim Robinson. The newest season of I Think You Should Leave is so great.
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​Open Mike Eagle - Component System With the Auto Reverse

This is Open Mike Eagle’s newest album on his own label Auto Reverse Records. This guy is something else. I love his art. I also love his partnership with his hype man and VJ, Video Dave. He was playing the song “I’ll Fight You” a lot during the last shows we did with him. I’m assuming that it’s about depression and how you have to fight it and battle it into submission, it has a really emotional tone and I like it a lot. There are so many great credits on here.  Features from Serengeti,  Armand Hammer, and mixed by Kenny Segal who’s a badass.

How long have you and Open Mike Eagle known each other for now?

I think it’s been about two years. I just emailed him out of the blue to see if he’d want to play a show with us. He’s a big indie rock fan. His favorite band is They Might Be Giants, and I knew he loves The Pixies and The Breeders so I just had a feeling we’d get along. We’re playing some more shows together coming up on tour and I really want him to cover a Pixies song with us and sing the lead.

Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One

For my last pick, I had to mention is my favorite Yo La Tengo record. I first got this record at the Burton Barr library in Phoenix, which is where I got a lot of music throughout my life. So many great songs on this album, like “Sugar Cube”, “Stockholm Syndrome”, “Autumn Sweater” really had big single energy, and that walking-ass-bassline in “Moby Octopad” is unreal. There’s this great documentary called The Parking Lot Movie about parking lot attendants at a lot in Charlottesburg, Virginia, and James McNew [bassist of Yo La Tengo] talks about how he used to work there, and how it was a total fuck off job where he would just daydream about writing basslines all day. I did buy a hat with the new album art on it, but I haven’t even heard the album yet. It’s true…I’m actually a big poser.  

What are some of your other favorite movie soundtracks?

The Crow and Judgement Night are my two favorites. I also love The Mallrats soundtrack and Angus. One of my favorite musical movie scenes is in Idle Hands where The Offspring play the prom scene and cover an AFI song. 


Finally, here are two questions to end the interview that have nothing to do with the records you picked...

If you could describe the progression of AJJ as a band in terms of a super gnarly skateboard combo, what would that look like?

Our arch would be a really long multi-tricked line in a skate plaza, or maybe in a ditch somewhere. So say we’re at the Tucson Presidio area, I’m picturing it would start off with a nose slide down the hubble ledge, then a flatground trick, frontside 360, followed by some pushing, backside tailslide on one of the benches. Then I think we’d ollie on top of that one bench at the park, do a nose blunt popcover on the little outledge there, then a flatground trick like a 360 flip…you know, just something tasteful. If the band had more steam we’ll try and go really fast and do a trick down the 16th stairs and probably eat shit and then roll into the fence [laughs]. Basically, it would be a long meandering combo that’s not super concerned with perfection.

AJJ makes mention of multiverse theories lately in your music and interviews. If you could explore three different multiverse AJJ realities, which ones would you want to check out?

Well, any possible idea of what AJJ could be would be out there. I would most want to see “Top Hat AJJ”, one where we all wear top hats but everything else is the same. There’d be “Glitzy Glam AJJ” where we have the Rod Stewart mullets and outfits, but also a lot of botox. We’d have really smooth faces in that multiverse. And finally, I’d like to see the AJJ if we stayed punk. I have no idea what that would look like. 
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Disposable Everything is out now on Hopeless Records.