In a world the place the music business typically celebrates polish over function, 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 music), Herrera has lengthy stood as a chaotic however mandatory presence within the underground punk world.
However now, she’s pulling the plug. After yanking her complete catalog off Spotify in an act of principled revolt—and successfully detonating her personal profession within the course of—Sarah has determined this can be her final interview. Not simply the tip of an album cycle or a break between excursions. The tip.
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a profession that included songs about every little thing from imperialism to pool to screaming obscenities at sluggish outdated girls at toll cubicles.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 another method.
Welcome Sarah!
Thanks. All the time love speaking to Jamsphere. After I wrote the music “This Is My Jam!” (off the album “There Could Have Been Others”), which was really certainly one of our minor hits, it wasn’t about you, however you may say it was.
Some persons are saying you made a daring assertion while 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 personal profession. What would you say?
I suppose it was a daring assertion. And I suppose 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, however it’s up there. And sure, I 100% tanked my very own profession. My label (Insurrectionary Information NYC) known as me a number of hours later, I held the cellphone away from my ear and allow them to yell for some time, I simply stated “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 cross go, don’t accumulate $200, while 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 by 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 loads, perhaps I ought to get a rope ladder. My knees are beginning to damage, though that could be from one thing else.
What was the considering behind it?
After I was a child, if I heard a band I favored 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 have been like 11 or 12 bucks. And the artist I suppose will get a greenback or two. Now, folks placed on Spotify or Apple Music or no matter. Let’s say 10,000 folks occur to dig the identical album I’m listening to. Or perhaps 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? Effectively, I can do what I did, I suppose. That was my considering. 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 neighborhood; we’re all associates aside 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 folks stream it without spending a dime. Don’t get me unsuitable, 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 business already makes you are 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 cellular phone 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 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 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 taking part in 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 so that they don’t have to present me medical health insurance. I seize some coagulated sludge out of the espresso pot and sit down at my desk to textual content my associates. Cellphone rings.
Me: “Yeah?”
Consumer: “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?”
Consumer: “A number of instances”
Me: “What does it say within the guide? Trace: web page 4”
Consumer: silence
Me: “Jim, did you learn the guide?”
Consumer: “Effectively … “
Me: “Dude. Learn the fucking guide”
Consumer: “Sarah, there’s no want ….”
*click on*
Repeat 25 instances a day. Very thrilling stuff.
I am going house. Perhaps we get collectively to rehearse, or perhaps we have now 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 gear and play the present. I’ll hang around on the merch desk afterwards, speak to folks, 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 certainly one of our CD’s, haha.
The venue proprietor stares at my chest whereas counting out dirty twenties that scent like a Bulgarian’s armpit. We exit for drinks, and it’s at all times sort of a contest, and ultimately I cross 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 house (it’s me by advantage of the truth that Jimmy isn’t 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 by porn websites or one thing.
That’s it. The Sarah Herrera Present, accessible 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 provide. 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 like pool, perhaps 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 sporting an excessive amount of cologne, hitting the ball 3 times tougher than mandatory and lacking the pocket by 8 inches. I did I feel 4 songs about my love for drunk driving, they usually began to get aggravated, so I wrote the music “It’s Time To Get Critical About Drunk Driving” and informed them it was an anti-drunk driving music – it was really mainly 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 bought a cruiser behind you, retaining your excessive beams off and your window defogged, you realize, the fundamental guidelines you’re speculated to observe while you first be taught to drive. And the title is considerably correct, if you happen to’re going to drive drunk, try to be critical about it. Amateurs simply give folks like me a nasty identify. I really bought away with that music, that was on our 2024 album “We’re Simply Ferocious, We Need Your Coronary heart, We Need To Eat Your Kids 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 numerous my songs are for the little man, the man getting screwed over by a system that I don’t consider in. Each “Help The Troops … Besides …” and “Eat Your Sacred Cows” name out imperialism, and “My First Journey To A Whorehouse Didn’t Go So Effectively” appears like a goofy music, however it’s a press release in regards to the exploitative situations that systematic revenue inequality forces upon marginalized folks. We by no means bought to launch it, however “I Help 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 folks within the crotch, and about an precise incident the place I screamed profanity at some outdated 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 pair of”). I wrote a music about touring again in time to satisfy Ponch and Jon from ChiPs. I wrote a music that was mainly a fill within the clean template for outdated folks to complain on nextdoor.com. I wrote the music 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 Could Have Been Others” and the label simply checked out me and shook their head. The music Drunk In The Studio (There Could Have Been Others)”, which was a Pancreatic Most cancers tune off of “Yelling Freebird! At Funerals”, was one single phrase sung about 25 instances in a row with assorted cadences and intonations.
After we launched the video for “I Like Your Afro”, we requested about 80 associates and fellow musicians to go onto YouTube and depart probably the most horrible feedback they might, I feel the one which made me chortle probably the most was “I work on the drugstore that she goes to, OMG is she on some heavy obligation stuff”. One pal, 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, however it’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 music “Don’t Give up Your Day Job (Or Your Evening One), additionally from “There Could Have Been Others”. You may most likely search for the lyrics on-line if you happen to felt prefer it.
After which once more, my favourite music 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 children aren’t studying this. Ahh, children don’t learn anymore, they’re too busy taking part in 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 really performed collectively in Pancreatic Most cancers, however after I had a Fb web page, he would submit Glad Birthday! on my timeline like twice a month, after which I’d get an entire bunch of individuals wishing me comfortable birthday, and I’d have to clarify that it wasn’t my birthday, and ultimately I might simply kind “shut up, Matt”, after which everybody beginning typing “shut up, Matt”, so sort of a working 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 Dying 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 effectively, and Pancreatic Most cancers did effectively 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. Comic story, it’s been reported that the identify 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 informed 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 number of months later, and I used to be like oh, crap. I went to the document label, and I used to be stated Jackson, we have now to alter the identify of our band, we are able to’t do that. He informed me to go screw.
How we bought signed was that the A&R man from Insurrectionary Information NYC noticed us after a present and requested me if I’d be focused on signing. I informed him we’d signal a contract for 7 albums for 200 bucks. I’m not 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 business grow to be in my lifetime, the urge is simply gone. My document contract and band are gone, I don’t have the guts to start out 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 executed, 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, perhaps 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 guide?”
OFFICIAL LINKS: www.sarahherreramusic.com
