In a world the place the music business 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 minimize by way of the noise with jagged sincerity, biting satire, and an unapologetic disdain for the methods that commodify creativity. With bands like Pancreatic Most cancers and The Tommy Lasorda Expertise, and a discography that veers from hilarious to harrowing (typically throughout the similar music), Herrera has lengthy stood as a chaotic however essential 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 rebel—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 top.
In her personal phrases, Sarah Herrera walks us by way of 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of a profession that included songs about all the things from imperialism to pool to screaming obscenities at gradual outdated women at toll cubicles.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 every other means.
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 truly one in every of our minor hits, it wasn’t about you, however you possibly can 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 assume it was a punk rock transfer, I don’t learn 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 Information NYC) referred to as me a couple of hours later, I held the cellphone 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 cross go, don’t acquire $200, while you hear from us subsequent, it is going to 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 way of the peephole of my door, I’m going out the window like I normally do – I’m on the second flooring, so it’s solely a 15-20 foot drop to the bottom. Occurs rather a lot, 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 preferred and couldn’t illegally obtain them on a torrent website, I went out a purchased a CD at my native file retailer – I feel 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 perhaps 100,000. And that band will get a test. For a penny. Possibly two.
I’ve spoken (most likely advert nauseam) concerning 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 considering. Nothing greater than a symbolic gesture, a small ripple within the ocean, however I felt it needed to be performed.
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 have got an unsigned band going right into a studio, paying an engineer, presumably a producer, paying for studio time, journey time, paying for a distribution service, working for months to good an album. They’re out of pocket for hundreds of {dollars}, after which individuals stream it free of charge. 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 companies, 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’re feeling like. However how sustainable is all of this for that hypothetical band? It’s not. Finally the one factor out there may be 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 by way of a typical day for Sarah Herrera.
Certain. Alarm clock goes off at 6:30 AM. I ignore it. One the seventh attempt 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 provide me precisely 32 hours every week so that they don’t have to offer 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. Cellphone rings.
Me: “Yeah?”
Shopper: “Hey Sarah, the purpose of sale system is performing up, we will’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 guide? Trace: web page 4”
Shopper: silence
Me: “Jim, did you learn the guide?”
Shopper: “Nicely … “
Me: “Dude. Learn the fucking guide”
Shopper: “Sarah, there’s no want ….”
*click on*
Repeat 25 occasions a day. Very thrilling stuff.
I’m going residence. Possibly we get collectively to rehearse, or perhaps we have now a present that night time. 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 giggle at me. We lug in our tools and play the present. I’ll hang around on the merch desk afterwards, discuss 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 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 cross 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 residence (it’s me by advantage of the truth that Jimmy is just not 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 way of 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 12 months. 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 really 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 apart from guys out with their dates on a Saturday night time and teams of drunken Armenian guys sporting an excessive amount of cologne, hitting the ball thrice more durable than essential and lacking the pocket by 8 inches. I did I feel 4 songs about my love for drunk driving, they usually began to get irritated, 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 truly principally an instruction guide set to music, you already know, 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 in opposition to in case you’ve acquired a cruiser behind you, preserving your excessive beams off and your window defogged, you already know, the fundamental guidelines you’re speculated to observe while you first be taught to drive. And the title is considerably correct, should you’re going to drive drunk, you have to be critical about it. Amateurs simply give individuals like me a foul identify. I truly acquired 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 it’s a must to write what you already know, 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 Nicely” appears like a goofy music, but it surely’s a press release concerning the exploitative circumstances that systematic earnings inequality forces upon marginalized individuals. We by no means acquired 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 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 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 couple of”). I wrote a music about touring again in time to satisfy Ponch and Jon from ChiPs. I wrote a music that was principally a fill within the clean template for outdated individuals 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 occasions in a row with diverse 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 go away probably the most horrible feedback they might, I feel the one which made me giggle probably the most was “I work on the drugstore that she goes to, OMG is she on some heavy responsibility stuff”. One good friend, 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 music “Don’t Stop Your Day Job (Or Your Evening One), additionally from “There Could Have Been Others”. You may most likely search for the lyrics on-line should you 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 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-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 after I had a Fb web page, he would put up Completely happy Birthday! on my timeline like twice a month, after which I’d get an entire bunch of individuals wishing me completely satisfied birthday, and I’d have to clarify 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 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 apply 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 already know me from. Joke, it’s been reported that the identify happened from me getting drunk and going to vote and writing in Tommy Lasorda for all the things from President to Metropolis Clerk. That’s truly 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 individual. Somebody talked about it a couple 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 have now to vary the identify of our band, we will’t do that. He informed me to go screw.
How we acquired signed was that the A&R man from Insurrectionary Information NYC noticed us after a present and requested me if I’d be involved in signing. I informed him we’d signal a contract for 7 albums for 200 bucks. I’m not a great 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 performed. That is my final interview. I’m so extremely jaded by what I’ve been by way of and what I’ve seen the music business turn into in my lifetime, the urge is simply gone. My file contract and band are gone, I don’t have the guts to begin over from scratch. My fantasy was at all times to be an expert pool participant, however that requires 8-10 hours a day of apply for years and years, I can’t spare greater than 2-3 hours an evening and that’s not going to get it performed, I’d by no means even crack high 50 on this planet. 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 pc till it inevitably crashes after which they’re gone, together with all the things 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
