In a world the place the music trade typically celebrates polish over objective, Sarah Herrera has at all times marched off-key—and gloriously so. Over time, her voice, each literal and metaphorical, has lower by the noise with jagged sincerity, biting satire, and an unapologetic disdain for the programs that commodify creativity. With bands like Pancreatic Most cancers and The Tommy Lasorda Expertise, and a discography that veers from hilarious to harrowing (typically inside the similar tune), Herrera has lengthy stood as a chaotic however crucial presence within the underground punk world.
However now, she’s pulling the plug. After yanking her total catalog off all paid streaming providers in an act of principled revolt—and successfully detonating her personal profession within the course of—Sarah has determined this shall be her final interview. Not simply the top of an album cycle or a break between excursions. The top.
In her personal phrases, Sarah Herrera walks us by the fallout, the ideology behind her decisions, the mechanics of her dead-end day job, and the inventive legacy of a profession that included songs about every thing from imperialism to pool to screaming obscenities at sluggish previous women at toll cubicles. True to type, she pulls no punches and spares nobody, least of all herself.
This isn’t a farewell tour. There’s no comeback deliberate. No rigorously managed rebrand. That is simply Sarah Herrera, uncooked and actual to the bitter finish. And we wouldn’t have it some other approach.
Welcome Sarah!
Thanks. At all times love speaking to Jamsphere. Once I wrote the tune “This Is My Jam!” (off the album “There Might Have Been Others”), which was truly one in every of our minor hits, it wasn’t about you, however you possibly can say it was.
Some individuals are saying you made a daring assertion whenever you pulled all of your music down off of Spotify final month. Some say it was probably 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 find out about probably the most punk rock transfer ever, you’d should dig up G. G. Allin and ask him, but it surely’s up there. And sure, I 100% tanked my very own profession. My label (Insurrectionary Data NYC) known as me a number 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 have been dropped. As in instantly. Don’t move go, don’t gather $200, whenever you hear from us subsequent, it will likely be coming from our attorneys 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 in search of AARP reductions or one thing. No matter. Sue me, you possibly can have my crappy microwave. If I see somebody in a go well with and tie by the peephole of my door, I’m going out the window like I often do – I’m on the second ground, so it’s solely a 15-20 foot drop to the bottom. Occurs quite a bit, possibly I ought to get a rope ladder. My knees are beginning to harm, though that could be from one thing else.
What was the pondering behind it?
Once I was a child, if I heard a band I favored and couldn’t illegally obtain them on a torrent website, I went out a purchased a CD at my native file retailer – I believe they have 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. Possibly two.
I’ve spoken (in all probability 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? Nicely, I can do what I did, I assume. That was my pondering. Nothing greater than a symbolic gesture, a small ripple within the ocean, however I felt it needed to be executed.
The NYC punk scene is a tight-knit group; we’re all buddies apart from a number of dicks right here and there. So let’s say you have got 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 without spending a dime. Don’t get me incorrect, 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 might have felt like extra of a whore than this trade already makes you are feeling like. However how sustainable is all of this for that hypothetical band? It’s not. Finally the one factor out there’s going to be unhealthy rappers mumbling right into a mobile phone over some rhythmic banging that their dishwasher is making and clicking “add”. That’s in all probability not a CD I’m going to expire and purchase.
Stroll us by a typical day for Sarah Herrera.
Certain. Alarm clock goes off at 6:30 AM. I ignore it. One the seventh strive I drag myself away from 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 offer me precisely 32 hours every week in order that they don’t have to provide me medical 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?”
Consumer: “Hey Sarah, the purpose of sale system is performing up, we are able to’t course of bank cards”
Me: “Did you flip it off and again on?”
Consumer: “A number of occasions”
Me: “What does it say within the guide? Trace: web page 4”
Consumer: silence
Me: “Jim, did you learn the guide?”
Consumer: “Nicely … “
Me: “Dude. Learn the fucking guide”
Consumer: “Sarah, there’s no want ….”
*click on*
Repeat 25 occasions a day. Very thrilling stuff.
I’m going house. Possibly we get collectively to rehearse, or possibly we now have 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 snigger at me. We lug in our gear and play the present. I’ll hang around on the merch desk afterwards, discuss to individuals, take a number of selfies. Our CD’s are priced at value, which is $8. That’s proper, I’ll pay you $8 to take one in every 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 form of a contest, and finally I move out. They wake me up by yelling into my ear that the bar is on fireplace, or that the NYPD is right here with a warrant. I drive us house (it’s me by advantage of the truth that Jimmy will not 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 Dangerous or scrolling by 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 yr. Yippee. Anybody wish to commerce lives, I’ll hearken to any supply. No insurance coverage salesmen.
What would you say has been the most important 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 really 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 more durable than crucial and lacking the pocket by 8 inches. I did I believe 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 truly principally an instruction guide set to music, you realize, 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, protecting your excessive beams off and your window defogged, you realize, the essential guidelines you’re presupposed to observe whenever you first be taught to drive. And the title is considerably correct, in the event you’re going to drive drunk, try to be severe about it. Amateurs simply give individuals like me a nasty identify. I truly 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 must write what you realize, proper? First rule of being a lyricist. However loads of 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 Nicely” seems like a goofy tune, but it surely’s an announcement in regards to the exploitative situations that systematic earnings 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 Taking place!, 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 girl 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 (Components 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 principally 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 different cadences and intonations.
After we launched the video for “I Like Your Afro”, we requested about 80 buddies and fellow musicians to go onto YouTube and depart probably the most horrible feedback they may, I believe the one which made me snigger probably 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!” time and again. My sister wrote “Sarah, you’re an exquisite sister and I’ve at all times been very supportive of you, but it surely’s actually unhappy to see what you’ve diminished 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 can in all probability lookup the lyrics on-line in the event you 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 known as vomitsemen. Yeah, I do know. That was myself, my first boyfriend D-Practice and my brother Matt on drums (he was 12 on the time). Matt’s a goofball, we truly performed collectively in Pancreatic Most cancers, however once I had a Fb web page, he would submit Joyful Birthday! on my timeline like twice a month, after which I’d get an entire bunch of individuals wishing me glad birthday, and I’d have to elucidate that it wasn’t my birthday, and finally I might simply sort “shut up, Matt”, after which everybody beginning typing “shut up, Matt”, so form of a operating joke. The remainder of the bands I’ll should do out of sequential order, as a result of who the hell remembers. I used to be in RAPE! subsequent, that I bear in mind.
Taking It In The Ass From John Holmes was an early on, additionally Demise 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 observe dodging beer bottles whereas on stage. Afterward, Exploited Cocks did properly, and Pancreatic Most cancers did properly sufficient for us to get signed and launch an album “Yelling Freebird! At Funerals”. After which after all I used to be in The Tommy Lasorda Expertise, which might be the one band you realize me from. Shaggy dog story, it’s been reported that the identify happened from me getting drunk and going to vote and writing in Tommy Lasorda for every thing from President to Metropolis Clerk. That’s truly 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 individual. Somebody talked about it a number of months later, and I used to be like oh, crap. I went to the file label, and I used to be mentioned Jackson, we now have to alter the identify 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 inquisitive about signing. I advised him we’d signal a contract for 7 albums for 200 bucks. I’m not a very good negotiator – we needed to stroll that again.
What’s subsequent for Sarah Herrera?
I don’t wish to make any grand bulletins, I’m only a dopey unknown punk musician. However I’m executed. That is my final interview. I’m so extremely jaded by what I’ve been by and what I’ve seen the music trade turn out to be in my lifetime, the urge is simply gone. My file contract and band are gone, I don’t have the center to start out over from scratch. My fantasy was at all times to be an expert pool participant, however that requires 8-10 hours a day of observe for years and years, I can’t spare greater than 2-3 hours an evening and that’s not going to get it executed, I’d by no means even crack high 50 on the planet. I’ve in all probability 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, in all probability they’ll sit on my pc till it inevitably crashes after which they’re gone, together with every thing else. So, what’s subsequent for me?
“Hey Sarah, our system is down once more, might you give us a hand?”
“Jim, did you learn the guide?”
OFFICIAL LINKS: www.sarahherreramusic.com