I met Bill at the Silverlake Lounge. We had a show one night with this South Bay punk band called The Beetles, two E’s. They played traditional Black Flag-type punk rock, but everything was wet. Reverb on everything, even the bass. They sucked, and not in a charming way. I got what they were aiming for, but they were awkward on stage, sticking their tongues out every two seconds. Try-hards. And their songs dragged—three-chord chuggers stretched to five minutes. Basically just overthinking everything. But they all had cool guitars and amps. The guitarist had this bright green double-cut Les Paul probably worth over three grand. Typical South Bay kids, of course. Bill was kind of with them, kind of not. I couldn’t tell if he was their friend or just some fan they tolerated. After their set, he helped them lug their amps off the stage and pack up their guitar pedals. As I was setting up my drums, I overheard him lecturing the bassist. Bill said something about how he needed to split the bass signal to two amps—one clean, one with reverb, preserving sub-100 Hz low-end on one and high-pass EQ-ing the other with verb. Actually not a bad idea, but he was going on and on and on. And the bassist was sick of it. He just stood there packing up and looking down while this guy monologued at him. Sorry, probably none of this stuff is relevant to your paper, huh? By the way, I didn’t even ask, do you want a soda or something? Anyway, after The Beetles played, we played. Have you seen our band? We’re like industrial punk. I drum, Chris is on bass, and Stephen sings. And we play with backing tracks, so we’re all playing to a click. Stephen set up a MIDI that runs into a light bulb, so this harsh light blinks to the tempo of the song. It’s become part of the arrangement, this light. And our set went alright. Someone dropped a beer mid-set and it burst across the floor, distracting everyone. And everything smelled awful, like bleach. That’s all just the Slake. But after we played, Bill came up and wanted to know how we did the lightbulb thing. He seemed genuinely impressed. And he was begging Stephen to show him how he routed it. Then he turned to me and started lecturing about drum tuning—snare and toms in the same key, detuning one lug for resonance control, that kind of thing. Kind of interesting stuff, sure, but I was trying to get my shit off stage and he wouldn’t stop talking. And he kept begging me for a cigarette too. I gave him one and asked him to give me some space, but he got all huffy and offended. Just, yeah, weird vibes. A couple weeks later, Stephen was telling us that Bill was going join our rehearsal space. He was excited about it. Apparently Bill had a bunch of vintage amps and guitars, and he cool with us using anything he brings in.

INTERVIEW #2Bill’s a fucking rich kid, just like every indie musician in LA. And he’s barely a musician—more like a collector. He owns twelve guitars and can barely play. Look, I’m no stranger to rich Angelenos with mommy and daddy’s Hollywood money starting shitty bands and making shitty records. I have a little bit of mommy and daddy cash myself. But Bill is in a different dimension. The first time I met him at the lockout, he shows up with four Jazzmasters from the 1960s. I was stoked, but then he wouldn’t shut the fuck up about them. And it’s not like he was telling me cool origin stories or anything. It was just this barrage of obsessive details, like, “This one has a special 240 Hz bump on the front pickup.” Shit like that. Eventually, he hands me one to mess around with, so I plug it into my Twin Verb. I’m messing around, enjoying it. Beautiful guitar. But after two minutes, he basically freaks out. He shouts something like, “I can’t hold it back! I hate Fender Twins!” Something like that. And he starts blabbering. Oh shit, I can’t quite remember. What was it he was saying? Something about how Silverface models post-1983 were ruined by changes in wattage or something. I can’t quite remember, he was talking so fast. Kooky shit. And he was practically shaking, covering his ears, shouting, “Listen! Listen! You don’t hear it? The resonance in the midrange is awful!” And like, begging me to stop playing. I had no idea what he was talking about. It was the weirdest shit I’ve ever seen. Honestly, fuck that guy.

INTERVIEW #3I came into Downtown Rehearsal one day and there were about thirteen new guitars in there, and like five new amps. There was also a Wurlitzer, a dobro, two new basses. I was stoked. I couldn’t wait to meet this mysterious Bill dude. Stephen seemed to like him. Alex hated him, but Alex hates everyone so that didn’t mean anything. I’d heard Bill was eccentric, but, to my ears, it just sounded like he was a gear nerd. And I’m a total gear nerd too, so I figured we’d get along fine. Do you want me to go into detail about, like, my relationship with music? I just don’t exactly know what information is useful for your paper. You’re specifically interested in the psychological stuff, right? Well, I’ll just cut to the chase. I had the space booked one night and was gonna demo some of my own songs for this project I’ve been working on. I’m calling it Hypno Sex-ism. That’s the name of the group. It’s on Instagram. @hypno_sexism. And I’m gonna be dropping an EP in March. And we’re playing a release show at Gold Diggers. You should come! It’s @hypno_sexism. Oh, okay. Alright, so, okay, I was recording at the lockout. And then Bill called me. We were all in a group chat, so he had my number. He asked if he could drop in for a second and grab a few things. Two minutes later, he was there. He was a lot cuter than I imagined. We chatted for a second about where we were from. He’s an Angeleno, like me. He saw my bass, a Rickenbacker 4003, and got really excited, telling me I had great taste in basses, yada yada. I thought he was flirting with me at first. But it wasn’t about me—it was about the Rickenbacker. He kept staring, fingering the knobs, asking questions I didn’t have time to answer. I felt this weird pressure to let him play it, which was annoying since I was trying to record. Then he asked to open it up. Like, actually unscrew the pickguard and look inside. I said no. He asked me why I chose that one, and I told him the truth: I wanted the same bass the girl from FLCL plays. It’s this anime I like. He frowned, grabbed his pedals, and left.

INTERVIEW #4

At first, I guess I was just into the fact that he had so much stuff. I met him at the Silverlake Lounge, and we talked for a while about this setup our band uses, where we link a MIDI-track to a flashing lightbulb. Oh, you talked to Gil, right? Well, yeah, it’s true—I invited him to the lockout. Partially because he showed me pictures of his gear and basically said we could use whatever as long as we did the same for him. I thought everyone would be excited. But then I heard Alex didn’t like him, which I kind of wrote off since Alex is, let’s be real, a very judgmental person. But when I heard Christina had a weird interaction with him, I got nervous. Christina never talks poorly about anyone. I didn’t have any weird interactions with him in the beginning, per se. I assumed he was a little autistic. But I started getting this unsettled feeling from the state of the room right after he’d been in there. One time, I came in just after his session—he had it from 3 to 6, and I’d booked it 6 to midnight. When I walked in—well, I guess the only way to describe it is that everything was moist. Like he’d been sweating a lot or something. The air was thick, humid, like a locker room. The gear felt damp too. Strings tacky. Another time, I found one of my keyboards with a few keys stuck together. I started getting concerned, and also kind of curious about what the hell he was doing in there. I figured he was just blowing off steam, jumping around with the guitars, strumming his little heart out. Playing rockstar. But then I talked to Alex, who I guess heard from one of the guys in The Beetles—those guys knew Bill pretty well—that he doesn’t even play music. And he doesn’t really care to. He’s mostly just a gearhead who likes instruments and amps. So one day, I was in the area and saw that Bill had booked the space. I decided to stop in and take a peek. I figured I’d just grab my synth and leave. Alex does stuff like that to me all the time during my rehearsals—we don’t exactly have a privacy policy. Anyway, I open the door and see him—pants halfway down, his fully erect penis resting on Christina’s bass like it's an altar. He’s unscrewing the pickguard, slow and focused, like a surgeon. Swear to God. I was like, “Dude!” And he looks up, instantly starts buttoning his pants. We’re looking at each other, and he know it’s over. So, for the next twenty minutes, we gather up as many of his guitars and amps as we can fit in our cars. We don’t say a word, but I help him. We carry down whatever we can, and somehow manage to fit all his stuff between us. Then I drive his gear to his house in Echo Park and ask for the lockout key back. He gives it to me. That was the last time I talked to him.

INTERVIEW #5Me and my brother grew up on Cali punk. The Germs, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Kennedys, The Adolescents, Circle Jerks. Obviously Black Flag. He got into Minutemen—I never really did. But we were punks. Like, proper punks. The Beetles started out punk, too. But then Connor—my brother’s friend—got all into drenching shit in reverb. It got a little bit confused, honestly. Connor was the one who met Bill. I think they met at a twelve-step. And then one day, Bill was just around all the time. I think Connor mostly kept him around for the gear. I know Bill has hundreds of guitars and amps and pedals. My brother never really used any of it. He didn’t like Bill from day one. Always thought he was a little off. I went to a couple of Beetles shows and met him, and I agreed with my brother. Something about the guy just bothered me. I got a little bit obsessed with him. Not, like, stalker obsessed. Just... curious. I found his Facebook, Instagram, scrolled way back. It bugged me how normal he looked. I wanted to know what the fuck was really going on. One time I basically Google-searched every Instagram and Facebook post he ever made—and found his anonymous Twitter and Reddit accounts. The Twitter was normal. But on Reddit? Dude was insanely active. Like highly, highly, highly active. Always on these boards about music gear. Looked like that was basically his whole life. Hundreds of thousands of Karma points. Posting on these boards literally once an hour. Answering people’s questions. Posting pictures of his guitars. Getting into arguments. It was like his full-time job. And he had followers. People actually called him “the Gear Wizard." I think people online found it endearing, but it creeped me the fuck out. He was totally and openly obsessed. So I kept digging. He posted detailed pictures of like all his guitars, and on a few of his Fenders I was able to make out serial numbers on their headstocks. So I started tracking them down. Turns out, four of the five were bought from this dude Dennis Spillane in Nevada. So I dig into him too. He was an older guy—totally clueless that all the weird stuff he followed and posted online was public. It became apparent that he was a total off-his-rocker creep. Super active in these niche corners of the internet. The gist of it all was “sound and sexuality.” He wrote long, almost academic papers on the sexual desirability of specific frequencies. Like, he was personally attracted to sounds in the 200-400 Hz range. I should try to turn up this article he wrote. I bet you’d find it cool for your paper, since your sick twisted mind is interested in this shit. He wrote this huge essay on how Mahler’s low-end frequencies gave him more satisfying orgasms than anything by Beethoven or Mozart. Specifically, the Dudamel recordings. He said Bernstein’s were more emotionally nuanced, but didn’t have the “sonic architecture” he needed to finish. Freaky shit. Anyways, Bill might’ve been even wackier. There’s a whole community for this shit. My brother got deep into the psychology stuff. He started looking into what kind of porn these people watched and found some dark web videos. Just weird-ass sound collages—frequencies rising and falling, people jerking off on guitars, fucking kick drums, licking saxophones, cumming on amps. Seriously. I didn’t watch them, I swear. I really didn’t. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Bill made a few. And look—I’m not trying to shame him. Honestly. There’s way worse shit out there. At least he’s not hurting anyone. I mean, his kink? Weird? Sure. Harmful? Absolutely not. It’s kind of the least harmful kink possible when you think about it. It’s all a little disturbing, yeah—but I’m trying to keep an open mind. And I hope Bill’s not feeling super embarrassed now, with Stephen catching him and telling everyone about it. And now with you writing this paper. He probably feels really fucking exposed. Maybe you could reach out to him? I didn’t like him, but…he was nice enough. And he’s lonely. You can tell.

INTERVIEW #6You talked with Jimmy’s brother, yeah? Well, it’s true. Bill’s obsessed with gear, and I’m obsessed with Bill. Seems like you are too, given your paper. You’ve obviously read Ballard’s Crash?... Fuck off, dude, seriously? Okay, I’ll lend you my copy. Don’t write a word of your paper until you’ve read that. It’s a good primer on techno-fetishism. But Bill is specifically interesting because you can frame him through the lens of affective disorders in post-authentic subcultures. DIY-music culture in LA is already so tangled up with consumerist signifiers. It’s a hotbed for this kind of Late Capitalist psychology. Everyone in the scene has a fetish, whether they act on it or not. Vintage amplifiers, rare pedals, analog authenticity. Most musicians I know are only a few loose screws away from jerking off on their instruments. You should explore that angle. You should read Fukuyama if you haven’t. And Mark Fisher, obviously. And all the literature on objectophilia and fetish theory. Have you read Lacan? You literally cannot write this paper unless you’ve read The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. Here, give me a second… Okay, take this. A little Lacan, some Jane Bennett. Graham Harman. Benjamin. Baudrillard. You should at least try to read Anti-Oedipus, but it might be difficult for you since you don’t seem to have much of the foundation. You should try, though. Mel Y. Chen—definitely read this one right here. And Erotism by Bataille. You haven’t read any of these? Could I read what you have so far? I can help you with it if you want. Or maybe, given how much you’ve read, maybe I should just write it for you.

INTERVIEW #7As a professor of psychology, yes, it’s fascinating. But, as a human being, it raises some ethical concerns. You’ve created a detailed portrait of Bill, but it’s entirely from the outside, based on what your friends have said about him. Without Bill’s voice in the mix, it starts to feel exploitative—like you’re dissecting someone’s behavior without giving them a chance to speak for themselves. I’d strongly encourage you to interview him, if possible, and work his perspective into the piece. Otherwise, it risks feeling less like thoughtful analysis and more like gossip dressed up in theory.

INTERVIEW #8I don’t really have much to say. Yes, I’m embarrassed. No, I don’t want to help you with your paper. Yes, I feel bad about Christina’s bass. Yes, I’ve known since I was a kid. Now please leave me alone.

[FICTION]
[08/04/25]

IAN MINORU GREEN is a writer based in Los Angeles. He also releases music under the name Ian the Idiot. He lives with his wife and two children.

HOME

SHUFFLE