In a world the place the music business usually celebrates polish over goal, Sarah Herrera has at all times marched off-key—and gloriously so. Through the years, her voice, each literal and metaphorical, has lower via the noise with jagged sincerity, biting satire, and an unapologetic disdain for the techniques that commodify creativity. With bands like Pancreatic Most cancers and The Tommy Lasorda Expertise, and a discography that veers from hilarious to harrowing (usually inside the similar tune), Herrera has lengthy stood as a chaotic however vital presence within the underground punk world.
However now, she’s pulling the plug. After yanking her total catalog off Spotify in an act of principled riot—and successfully detonating her personal profession within the course of—Sarah has determined this will probably be her final interview. Not simply the tip of an album cycle or a break between excursions. The top.
In her personal phrases, Sarah Herrera walks us via the fallout, the ideology behind her selections, the mechanics of her dead-end day job, and the inventive legacy of a profession that included songs about every little thing from imperialism to pool to screaming obscenities at gradual previous women at toll cubicles. True to kind, she pulls no punches and spares nobody, least of all herself.
This isn’t a farewell tour. There’s no comeback deliberate. No fastidiously managed rebrand. That is simply Sarah Herrera, uncooked and actual to the bitter finish. And we wouldn’t have it another approach.
Welcome Sarah!
Thanks. All the time love speaking to Jamsphere. After I wrote the tune “This Is My Jam!” (off the album “There Might Have Been Others”), which was really considered one of our minor hits, it wasn’t about you, however you may say it was.
Some individuals are saying you made a daring assertion once you pulled all of your music down off of Spotify final month. Some say it was essentially the most punk rock transfer ever. And a few are saying all you probably did was tank your individual profession. What would you say?
I suppose it was a daring assertion. And I assume it was a punk rock transfer, I don’t learn about essentially the most punk rock transfer ever, you’d need to dig up G. G. Allin and ask him, nevertheless it’s up there. And sure, I 100% tanked my very own profession. My label (Insurrectionary Data NYC) referred to as me a couple of hours later, I held the telephone away from my ear and allow them to yell for some time, I simply mentioned “uh-huh” each 30 seconds or so, however the upshot is that each my band and myself as a solo artist had been dropped. As in instantly. Don’t go go, don’t acquire $200, once you hear from us subsequent, it is going to be coming from our legal professionals by licensed mail. I’ll by no means get it, junkies broke the locks on the mailboxes in my constructing a very long time in the past on the lookout for AARP reductions or one thing. No matter. Sue me, you may have my crappy microwave. If I see somebody in a swimsuit and tie via the peephole of my door, I’m going out the window like I often do – I’m on the second flooring, so it’s solely a 15-20 foot drop to the bottom. Occurs lots, possibly I ought to get a rope ladder. My knees are beginning to harm, though which may be from one thing else.
What was the considering behind it?
After I was a child, if I heard a band I appreciated and couldn’t illegally obtain them on a torrent web site, I went out a purchased a CD at my native document retailer – I feel they had been like 11 or 12 bucks. And the artist I assume will get a greenback or two. Now, individuals placed on Spotify or Apple Music or no matter. Let’s say 10,000 individuals occur to dig the identical album I’m listening to. Or possibly 100,000. And that band will get a test. For a penny. Perhaps two.
I’ve spoken (most likely advert nauseam) in regards to the issues I’ve with late-stage capitalism as a predatory financial system. And everybody says yeah, yeah, it sucks, however what are you able to do about it? Properly, I can do what I did, I assume. That was my considering. Nothing greater than a symbolic gesture, a small ripple within the ocean, however I felt it needed to be achieved.
The NYC punk scene is a tight-knit group; we’re all buddies aside from a couple of dicks right here and there. So let’s say you will have an unsigned band going right into a studio, paying an engineer, probably a producer, paying for studio time, journey time, paying for a distribution service, working for months to excellent an album. They’re out of pocket for hundreds of {dollars}, after which individuals stream it at no cost. Don’t get me fallacious, stream away, I’m all for artwork as a public good. Me personally, my bands and I by no means monetized on any streaming providers, getting a test for 40 bucks would have been an insult, I’d have felt like extra of a whore than this business already makes you’re feeling like. However how sustainable is all of this for that hypothetical band? It’s not. Ultimately the one factor out there’s going to be dangerous rappers mumbling right into a cellphone over some rhythmic banging that their dishwasher is making and clicking “add”. That’s most likely not a CD I’m going to expire and purchase.
Stroll us via a typical day for Sarah Herrera.
Positive. Alarm clock goes off at 6:30 AM. I ignore it. One the seventh strive I drag myself off the bed, head pounding, feeling like crap. 4 cups of espresso, handful of uppers, a fast joint or two, after which hop on the subway. Some man stares at my tits. I give him the finger. I get to work. I’m a small-time punk musician, I’m not going to be enjoying the Tremendous Bowl halftime present anytime quickly, so I’ve to work a hump job like everybody else. They provide me precisely 32 hours every week in order that they don’t have to provide me medical health insurance. I seize some coagulated sludge out of the espresso pot and sit down at my desk to textual content my buddies. Telephone rings.
Me: “Yeah?”
Shopper: “Hey Sarah, the purpose of sale system is appearing up, we are able to’t course of bank cards”
Me: “Did you flip it off and again on?”
Shopper: “A number of occasions”
Me: “What does it say within the handbook? Trace: web page 4”
Shopper: silence
Me: “Jim, did you learn the handbook?”
Shopper: “Properly … “
Me: “Dude. Learn the fucking handbook”
Shopper: “Sarah, there’s no want ….”
*click on*
Repeat 25 occasions a day. Very thrilling stuff.
I’m going dwelling. Perhaps we get collectively to rehearse, or possibly we’ve got a present that evening. We get within the van, drive out to Brooklyn or Queens or wherever. Somebody cuts me off on the BQE. I swerve and half my beer goes throughout on my crotch. I roll down the window and yell profanity. My bandmates chortle at me. We lug in our tools and play the present. I’ll hang around on the merch desk afterwards, speak to individuals, take a couple of selfies. Our CD’s are priced at price, which is $8. That’s proper, I’ll pay you $8 to take considered one of our CD’s, haha.
The venue proprietor stares at my chest whereas counting out dirty twenties that odor like a Bulgarian’s armpit. We exit for drinks, and it’s at all times type of a contest, and ultimately I go out. They wake me up by yelling into my ear that the bar is on hearth, or that the NYPD is right here with a warrant. I drive us dwelling (it’s me by advantage of the truth that Jimmy shouldn’t be an excellent drunk driver, and Miguel can’t even get the keys into the ignition when he’s that crazy). 4 AM and I go to sleep on the sofa watching Breaking Unhealthy or scrolling via porn websites or one thing.
That’s it. The Sarah Herrera Present, obtainable on Hulu or some second-rate streaming service. Held over for a record-breaking twenty fifth 12 months. Yippee. Anybody need to commerce lives, I’ll hearken to any provide. No insurance coverage salesmen.
What would you say has been the main theme of your work?
It actually runs the gamut. For starters, I wrote and launched 5 songs about pool, to the purpose the place the label needed to sit me down and inform me knock it off, no extra. I like pool, possibly greater than music. 9-ball solely, don’t waste my time with 8-ball, no person performs that shit anymore in my pool corridor aside from guys out with their dates on a Saturday evening and teams of drunken Armenian guys carrying an excessive amount of cologne, hitting the ball 3 times tougher than vital and lacking the pocket by 8 inches. I did I feel 4 songs about my love for drunk driving, and so they began to get irritated, so I wrote the tune “It’s Time To Get Critical About Drunk Driving” and advised them it was an anti-drunk driving tune – it was really mainly an instruction handbook set to music, , about staying out of the suburbs the place the cops don’t have anything else to do, discovering a spot on the door to wedge your elbow towards in case you’ve obtained a cruiser behind you, conserving your excessive beams off and your window defogged, , the essential guidelines you’re purported to observe once you first be taught to drive. And the title is considerably correct, for those who’re going to drive drunk, you have to be severe about it. Amateurs simply give individuals like me a nasty title. I really obtained away with that tune, that was on our 2024 album “We’re Simply Ferocious, We Need Your Coronary heart, We Need To Eat Your Youngsters and Stomp on Their Testicles”.
These are songs I wrote, as a result of these are my two hobbies – pool and drunk driving, and you need to write what , proper? First rule of being a lyricist. However numerous my songs are for the little man, the man getting screwed over by a system that I don’t imagine in. Each “Assist The Troops … Besides …” and “Eat Your Sacred Cows” name out imperialism, and “My First Journey To A Whorehouse Didn’t Go So Properly” seems like a goofy tune, nevertheless it’s an announcement in regards to the exploitative situations that systematic revenue inequality forces upon marginalized individuals. We by no means obtained to launch it, however “I Assist Trans Rights As a result of I’m Not An Fool” was going to be on our subsequent album.
Starting from the intense to the extra foolish, I wrote songs about Rerun from What’s Occurring!, about how a lot I hate Jay Leno, about punching individuals within the crotch, and about an precise incident the place I screamed profanity at some previous woman who took like 5 minutes to pay her 40 cents at a toll sales space on the Daniel Boone Parkway in Kentucky. We put out “We Stole Some Lyrics However Not Sufficient To Get Caught (Elements 1 and a couple of”). I wrote a tune about touring again in time to fulfill Ponch and Jon from ChiPs. I wrote a tune that was mainly a fill within the clean template for previous individuals to complain on nextdoor.com. I wrote the tune titled “I Know They’re Not Felt They’re Silk I Felt Silk And I Felt Felt I Felt Extra Silk Than I Felt Felt”, from the album “There Might Have Been Others” and the label simply checked out me and shook their head. The tune Drunk In The Studio (There Might Have Been Others)”, which was a Pancreatic Most cancers tune off of “Yelling Freebird! At Funerals”, was one single phrase sung about 25 occasions in a row with diverse cadences and intonations.
Once we launched the video for “I Like Your Afro”, we requested about 80 buddies and fellow musicians to go onto YouTube and depart essentially the most horrible feedback they might, I feel the one which made me chortle essentially the most was “I work on the drugstore that she goes to, OMG is she on some heavy responsibility stuff”. One buddy, he will need to have had a number of accounts, simply typed “JESUS CHRIST IS OUR LORD AND SAVIOR!” again and again. My sister wrote “Sarah, you’re a beautiful sister and I’ve at all times been very supportive of you, nevertheless it’s actually unhappy to see what you’ve decreased your self to. Please, the door is at all times open”. We took our favourite feedback on that video and used them as lyrics for the tune “Don’t Stop Your Day Job (Or Your Evening One), additionally from “There Might Have Been Others”. You would most likely search for the lyrics on-line for those who felt prefer it.
After which once more, my favourite tune that we ever did, “I Guess That’s What It All Got here Again To, Didn’t It?” is about committing suicide by blowing your self up with military-grade explosives. So there’s that.
What bands have you ever been in and carried out with?
Oh God, I hope youngsters aren’t studying this. Ahh, youngsters don’t learn anymore, they’re too busy enjoying Mario’s Smash Brothers on their telephones or no matter. So, my first band was referred to as vomitsemen. Yeah, I do know. That was myself, my first boyfriend D-Prepare and my brother Matt on drums (he was 12 on the time). Matt’s a goofball, we really performed collectively in Pancreatic Most cancers, however once I had a Fb web page, he would put up Pleased Birthday! on my timeline like twice a month, after which I’d get a complete bunch of individuals wishing me glad birthday, and I’d have to elucidate that it wasn’t my birthday, and ultimately I’d simply kind “shut up, Matt”, after which everybody beginning typing “shut up, Matt”, so type of a working joke. The remainder of the bands I’ll need to do out of sequential order, as a result of who the hell remembers. I used to be in RAPE! subsequent, that I keep in mind.
Taking It In The Ass From John Holmes was an early on, additionally Loss of life From A Thousand Cunts, which is when Miguel and I met. There was Anarchy in Azerbaijan, The Fabulous Starfuckers, Exile on the Cross Bronx Expressway. These bands went nowhere, they actually weren’t meant to, this was extra like follow dodging beer bottles whereas on stage. Afterward, Exploited Cocks did nicely, and Pancreatic Most cancers did nicely sufficient for us to get signed and launch an album “Yelling Freebird! At Funerals”. After which in fact I used to be in The Tommy Lasorda Expertise, which might be the one band me from. Joke, it’s been reported that the title took place from me getting drunk and going to vote and writing in Tommy Lasorda for every little thing from President to Metropolis Clerk. That’s really not true, that was my roommate who did that. She advised me the story, and I made a decision to call the band that. I’m not a baseball fan, I had no concept that was an actual particular person. Somebody talked about it a couple of months later, and I used to be like oh, crap. I went to the document label, and I used to be mentioned Jackson, we’ve got to alter the title of our band, we are able to’t do that. He advised me to go screw.
How we obtained signed was that the A&R man from Insurrectionary Data NYC noticed us after a present and requested me if I’d be involved in signing. I advised him we’d signal a contract for 7 albums for 200 bucks. I’m not a superb negotiator – we needed to stroll that again.
What’s subsequent for Sarah Herrera?
I don’t need to make any grand bulletins, I’m only a dopey unknown punk musician. However I’m achieved. That is my final interview. I’m so extremely jaded by what I’ve been via and what I’ve seen the music business grow to be in my lifetime, the urge is simply gone. My document contract and band are gone, I don’t have the center to begin over from scratch. My fantasy was at all times to be knowledgeable pool participant, however that requires 8-10 hours a day of follow for years and years, I can’t spare greater than 2-3 hours an evening and that’s not going to get it achieved, I’d by no means even crack high 50 on the earth. I’ve most likely 40-50 demos, some fairly near completed, some songs with no lyrics, some lyrics with no songs, possibly I’ll do one thing with them sometime, most likely they’ll sit on my laptop till it inevitably crashes after which they’re gone, together with every little thing else. So, what’s subsequent for me?
“Hey Sarah, our system is down once more, may you give us a hand?”
“Jim, did you learn the handbook?”
OFFICIAL LINKS: www.sarahherreramusic.com
