Bonnie Bloomgarden of Death Valley Girls: She Cares About You...And Her Magazine Collection

Bonnie Bloomgarden of the Death Valley Girls was Tower Record's very first guest for the Instagram Livestream shows that launched shortly after our online store opened. She took us through a fascinating "quarantine collection" of her favorite objects, from magazines to skeleton earrings, and shared spooky stories from her travels as the singer in a relentlessly touring band.

Death Valley Girls is a band that seems to embrace all aspects of cool. An LA-based outfit, they span Rock, Psychedelia, and Pop, with a fair dose of Punk DNA in there. Their aesthetic fits right in with their self-identification as "California Doom Boogie" and they just ooze a love for B-movies, weird culture, and exotica.

Bonnie Bloomgarden has been indulgent enough to rejoin us for an extensive double-interview, chatting more about her personality as a "collector", the allure of cassettes, developing album art, and her philosophy on making sense of so much time off the road.

Buckle up for the first of our double-interviews!

Hannah Means-Shannon: Thank you for doing not just a Tower Instagram Livestream with us as our very first guest, but also a follow-up interview! We’re just on our way back into the world and a lot of people don’t even know we’re back yet.

Bonnie Bloomgarden: Everyone was super-psyched after I went on. The one on Sunset is such a big part of everyone from here’s history. It’s so exciting. I don’t know how it was for other people in other areas of the country, but here Tower was a hotspot.

HMS: Yes, I’m in the New York area, and though I didn’t grow up here, a lot of my friends did. And the minute I mention Tower, they just start telling their stories about the New York locations that they grew up going to. Though I lived in Japan for a while, and I went to several of the Japanese locations, too. I recognized them when I watched the documentary.

BB: That’s so cool.

HMS: In your live show you talked about several of the things that you like to collect, and one of them was magazines. What does it take to capture your attention and get you to collect a print magazine? Or are you just interested in all kinds of magazines, no matter the subject?

BB: I’ve always collected magazines. Like I had, when I was younger, every single National Geographic up until the 1980’s. Every Playboy from the beginning, from the late 1970’s onwards. I just loved the ads. I thought they were so cool. I was making a lot of collages and those seemed like the best magazines to get collages from. I think people don’t really know how cool Playboys were, and the cool ads in the 60’s and 70’s. There was so much counter-culture, but in a silly way. So, there was so much exaggerated “Hippy Culture!” and “Rock and Roll Culture!” Now, Rock and Roll magazines from that time period are super expensive, but if you buy Playboys, they are like five bucks.

I think people don’t recognize how cool these magazines are, and though there are multiple sides to everything, the joke that there are “so many great articles” in them is true. There are super cool artists who were part of this wonderful time in sub-culture and counter-culture and it’s all in these magazines. From that era, those are the cheapest, and you can collect so many. You can get a whole year for super cheap, especially if there aren’t any centerfolds, since that’s what people mainly collect.

But I also collect paranormal, supernatural, UFO, psychic magazines, and some movie magazines. Some music magazines if we’re on tour and I can find them cheap. But for me it’s quality and quantity! This is the only thing I’ve continuously collected my whole life.

I collected records, too, but I had to stop. Sorry Tower! But it just got to be too expensive and you can’t really collect it on the road. And we’re tour all year. I made the mistake of doing that once and then they melted. I then I said I’d never do that again. So I haven’t really been collecting them for four years.

HMS: Oh no, that’s terrible! Melted vinyl.

BB: It would be cool to collect CDs again, maybe. Something like that.

HMS: It’s starting to be cassettes again, which initially surprised me. I was not hip and cool enough to see that coming, I guess. Tower just added a bunch!

BB: Oh, yeah. We’ve always released cassettes as well! The only thing that stinks about them is---well, I have a Walkman to listen to them, and Berger Records has this thing called a Berger Buddy that is a cassette player that also makes MP3s if you plug it in to digitize your cassettes. But the thing that sucks is that our van doesn’t have a cassette player. The van is our home, so you gotta do what “Judy” wants. That’s her name. And the only thing she likes are CDs so that’s all we get.

HMS: I totally hear you on that. Yes, Death Valley Girls have been doing cassettes for a while, long before we’ve started seeing new cassettes turning up in shops again. You must have been one of the earliest adopters going back to cassette release.

BB: Yes. Well I think one of the reasons that people did that is that bands all have vans. Or cars with cassette players. A lot of kids had cars with cassette players. So, it’s more the driving culture kind of thing. Mix tape culture is so cool. I went from a cassette car to one where you plug in your phone. I don’t even know what to call that!

HMS: Yeah, absolutely! Purely digital.

BB: I don’t even know how to use Bluetooth, honestly. But I’m sure it’s cool. I’m just not good at figuring that stuff out. I like the smell of records, the smell of cassettes. Maybe not so much the smell of CDs, but maybe that’s acquired!

HMS: All of those forms also have paper involved, too. Artwork. Things you can pull out and look at. Record sleeves, or gatefolds. Since you like magazines, you probably like all that stuff, too.

BB: Oh, man. Oh boy do I! For me, the best part of listening to a record as a kid was putting on a record and staring at the record cover, or the gatefold, or whatever was inside. Just staring at it the whole time, listening. We just finished the art for our new record, and there are so many pieces to it. You may make videos and things [as a band] but there’s one object you get to make, if you’re lucky. Maybe five of them in your life. And you want someone to hold it in their hands. It’s so cool to go out and slap down, and say, “Here is my fifteen dollars! Give me that object! I can’t live without it.” [Laughter] You know?

HMS: Oh, man. Now you’re going to make me miss being able to walk into a record store. I’m lucky enough to have a couple in my area and I go.

BB: Oh, I’m sorry! Well, soon enough. Soon enough we will be other places. But right now, we are where we are.

HMS: What are your thoughts on trying to put together the artwork for an album? What does the band think about or do in that case? Fans have such an expectation that it has to be surprising or different. How do you get to that point?

BB: Well, luckily that’s not my department. Larry [Schemel], the guitar player, does all the art for the records. That would be too much for me. I usually make the inserts, like the poster on the inside. Because I make collages, with like, twenty images. I don’t think about it too much. There are so many dynamics in a band, and if someone is super into something, it’s right for them. If someone’s passionate about it, then why not let them do it?

HMS: Yeah, I’ve seen some of your album art and it’s really cool. I didn’t realize you were making it all yourselves! Now I’ve even more impressed.

BB: Oh, thanks. There are a lot of tiny little secret things in it. We’re really bad at remembering to do stuff when we’re supposed to. Things seem so far away. If the record comes out in October, in our mind we think we have until August to do the art, but no, actually it’s due in one week. So we try to put as many little secret and fun things as we can, and we do, but certainly if it were up to me, but it would be like a three year expedition to find, like, a true fossil of something. I’m not a timely person. I don’t use reality when it comes to time. That’s why I’m in a band and I don’t work by myself. We all have our different strengths.

HMS: I love that description, “a three year expedition”. I’m totally with you on a lot of this stuff. I’m with you on the magazines. That’s my life, too.

BB: You collect stuff?

HMS: Oh yes. I’ve collected magazines from a very young age, and I would read just about anything too. I would read anything that was a magazine or a comic. I can’t explain it. But in my life, I’ve had the opportunity to run three different magazines so far and I can’t believe I’ve gotten to do that. For me, if it’s a magazine, I want in. I love paper stuff so much.

BB: Yes, it’s like I’m addicted to paper! People come over, and I’m like, “Here are my five favorite pieces of paper. And here are my five record albums.” I don’t know what it is either, really, but it’s hoarding. I mean, that’s definitely what it is! I had to get out of my place for this Corona virus, and I had to bring things that I needed. So, that’ll be 200 magazines, and I guess maybe a bed?? I have to move again tomorrow, and it’s like, “Are you serious? This is what you need?”

HMS: Are you going to put the mattress on top of the magazine boxes? Because that can be done, or so I’ve heard…

BB: I should probably do that, right?

HMS: So have you already left your place once and you’re having to move again?

BB: No. I left my place once because my roommate is an ER nurse. He’s doing fine, but with the first confirmed case that they had, they sent him home for two weeks to quarantine. And we were surprised they were sending nurses home, but we thought maybe we should get out of there, too. At that time, nobody else we knew had it. And we realized he was going to be exposed a lot. Now things seem more manageable, just in terms of the hospitals not being too overwhelmed. Now it seems safe for us to be there and he feels safe being with us.

HMS: Well, it’s all terrible. But within that, California is doing, I think, an impressive job on a lot of fronts.

BB: Yeah, it’s cool. They did do a really good job. We don’t get political, but it’s beyond politics now. I feel really happy, though it might be mean, that we’re here. Whatever it is that we do, I’m happy to be in California. Where they are using science and math to determine our fate, I’m down!

HMS: Well said!

BB: Yeah, that stuff’s cool when it comes to lives and saving them! [Laughter]

HMS: I think there’s a lot of solidarity in California among the citizens right now, too. That’s really nice and kind of a good example to the rest of the country.

BB: I think we have it pretty easy, particularly in Los Angeles. Some people say that it would be hard to walk outside where it’s 60 or 70 degrees and remember to wear a mask. But we’re just lucky that it’s visually bright out. There are still people here who don’t believe it, but a lot of people wear masks, and I think that’s cool. There’s no reason not to. I think that it’s cool to wear a mask because it says, “Hey, I care about you.” And that’s a cool sentiment to have. To say, “Hey buddy”, while we pass each other in the street, “I care about you. And you care about me! That’s awesome.” I think we should wear masks because it shows people that we care.

HMS: That’s a really great way of putting it. Thank you for saying that. There are so many ways of looking at it, and I like that explanation best of anything I’ve heard. Because it’s just basic, and true, and human. Talking to other musicians and hearing what they are saying right now, everyone is talking about how you have to get down to the basic, human stuff right now. You just have to be a human being. And try to figure out how to do that and be kind. It’s hard, but it's very revealing, and maybe it can benefit us in some way.

BB: Yeah, I totally do believe that. Not to dismiss any of the horror and the tragey of it. But a major feeling about that which I have is that this is a great opportunity to evaluate: What is our body? What are other bodies? What is our purpose? Your purpose here—is it spiritual? Is it to help other people? Or should we look to other plagues that have happened? I never really respected fully until now that in other plagues people have had to die. Maybe we have been living our whole lives and maybe we’re just here as soldiers to find the cure. And maybe we die, but because of us, others don’t die later.

We don’t know. But we have the opportunity to consider things we’ve never had the time to consider before. Also, there is so much messed up stuff [in the world] that we could kind of ignore. That we don’t know how to fix. Like homelessness, which is not the number one thing we think about. The list goes on and on, obviously. The planet needs to be fixed. We could choose any of those things to focus on at this time, or we could just focus on saying, “This is my life. What is that?” It’s taking us down to a very basic level. What matters? What am I going to do? Or maybe I can spend this time daydreaming and figuring out what to do later. If that makes sense…

HMS: Oh, absolutely. It does. The perspective that we have right now, we can take it as an opportunity. Because what else are we going to do with it? We might as well. Could we use it for something good? But never in my life up to this point could I have imagined that I would be looking at my life and the lives of others in this way. It’s a totally different perspective than we otherwise would have had. It casts everything in a different light.