friend of a friend: Amy Rose-Perkins

Friend of a Friend spotlights people of interest to the greater AMR community: poets, rockers, artists, aesthetes, and assorted bon vivants. The series is called Friend of a Friend because all the interviewees are my friends, and hopefully you’ll be their friend too once I introduce them to you. – Nick Courage




DISCUSSED IN THIS INTERVIEW: marriage vs. Dinosaur Island; Eric Clapton not being able to wail on my old guitar; the trouble with Boston; the mathematical realities of dating college girls; the genesis of Robespierre and the Reign of Terror/No Sexy Regrets; songs of innocence and experience; when it’s okay to punch people, buses; the ghost of Keith Moon saving rock and roll; Merkin’s origin myth; reconstructed 90s mix tapes; post-apocalyptic shopping lists; &c.

Nick Courage: I think if you do the math (note: i’m not going to) it’s been something like six years since i met you and we started playing together in Robespierre and the Reign of Terror. Can that be right? Do the Robespierre songs hold up, do you think? Should we start back up and get a drummer? Also: six years is a seriously long time.

Amy Rose-Perkins: Yeah woah. We met in August of 2004 I think. It was on the roof of BU law school, we were unwilling participants in a terrible mixer and I don’t think I even got a beer. Then we all rode the subway home together and realized we lived really close and were basically living reverse lives of each other. Then we talked about A.C. Newman (this was A.C. Newman “Slow Wonder” era) and you had your now ex-girlfriend give me a mix you made me at law school and Matt and I used to blast that in that black crumpled up Subaru he had.


And that mix had the Thermals on it, and it took me three years to admit that you were right about them, which is about the usual time frame for things like that. Then you invited me over to play guitars after school, but when I came over you were really cagey like “well, I’m already in a band, so we can’t start a band…but we can just play.” Which reminds me that when I first met Matt he was like “I guess we can date for the summer” and now we’re married so I guess you guys both like to play it safe.


But then we discovered that we can both play similar chords and we both loved Op Ivy and that was about it. Then we started Robespierre. I am not sure if the songs hold up. We were both much shyer about singing then and our songs were goofier more like novelty songs than rock songs. I am thinking particularly of “C. (Assless Chaps).” I think for No Sexy Regrets we really started rocking more and making songs that sound more like songs people might listen to on purpose. It has always been my dream to play with a drummer. I think if we had a four member band, like with someone on the bass (Joe?) and someone on the drums (Murray?) that would be really amazing. Also which band were you already in?

NC: I was totally lying about being in a band; i could barely play a G chord at that point, I think.

Band Practice in Brighton, MA (2005, M. Perkins on far right):



ARP: It’s good to have an out. I really respect that. Your action on your guitar was really high. Even Clapton couldn’t wail on that Epiphone.

NC: It’s true, the Danelectro has really changed my life a lot in terms of not having bruised fingers. And I also agree that we could conceivably play music that people would immediately recognize as rock and roll if we had a drummer/bassist. I’ve sort of realized lately that, as much as i love the two guitar dynamic, people just associate it with buskers and pimply YouTube videos. It’s sort of a “less than” feeling if you let it be.


So, question: If you could channel any band right now – in a new band – which would it be? I mean, i think I have a feel for the overarching Amy Oubliette aesthetic … but maybe give the people a top five and then an audience/venue you’d want to fucking explode with Japanese fender harmonics.

Pre-show (Astoria, 21 January 2008):



ARP: you definitely already know the answer, as most bands I like are because you recommend them. I would want to channel the Ergs. As you could have guessed. As everyone also could have guessed, I wish I were Ted Leo when he wrote the “Hearts of Oak” album and I wish I were Yo La Tengo for a mellow jam. I wish I were the Beatles for “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window,” the Kinks for “Village Green,” the Who for “Substitute.” But if I were those bands I would want to be way harder. Like everyone in the bands would be played by Keith Moon, even Yo La Tengo, played by Keith Moon.


Imagine all these songs as filtered through the ghost of Keith Moon:


SeeqPod – Playable Search

NC: So like, sweaty jersey kids just screaming along in a cinderblock rock show. I’m glad you picked something we can do, because i was a little worried you were gonna be like: oh hey, I’ve always really wanted to sound really technically precise and mock sincere like Boston and play Wembley Stadium.


J/P [ed: Just Playing], but speaking of Boston… let’s get straight up chronological. We met in Boston. Do you have a eulogy for the city you left behind? I know we both diss it pretty unrelentingly, but do you have any kind words?

ARP: Yeah. We do hate Boston, the place. I don’t know about the band, but since they picked that band name…you’ve got to wonder. I have happy memories of you, me, Merkin, Schedler and Bat there. I liked when we would go to the Other Side and of course the Model. I liked the parties at your friend Lisa’s apartment. I liked seeing Triple X State of the Union. The best was when we lived close by and we could play guitars and yell at that lady who would peek at us and play Monkey Ball and you used to drink a ton of carrot juice and then Merkin could come by after work and we could eat pizza. I think those were real youthful fun times.



BTW, Keith Moon’s head is alive:

NC: That’s funny – you know I continued to binge on carrot juice until 1) my sister told me that i should be careful over-eating root vegetables because they soak up everything in the soil; and 2) i chugged a bodega carrot juice not realizing that it was completely rotten and had the consistency of snot. super vile, haven’t touched it since!


Okay, so – good times in Boston, sort of like a chucklehead POW camp – then we both moved to Brooklyn (a year apart). We both did the whole disillusioned, unemployed stint. You got married somewhere in there and got a dog, Gilda. Bat got hepped up on haute-couture salon culture; I got a girlfriend. You moved seven or eight times because of circumstances and worked as a realtor for about ten days. We started the one track/one take rock collective No Sexy Regrets. You became, officially, an upholder of justice.


Then everyone ended up reaching Behind The Music breaking points for various reasons. Schedler started working for the state and, subsequently, began toying with a more bitter brand of blue humor. We almost made the mistake of cohabitating in a factory with our significant others and army of pets. You found out that a lot of the girls who you went to camp with when you were younger lived in Brooklyn. I moved out of Cobble Hill and started doing what amounts to a shitload of unpaid contractor work on a subleased apartment.


And yet, here we are… having this really real interview for A Mutual Respect Books and Music, the website you and Merkin bought for me before the ceiling fell in.


Thoughts? Is there another LP in the discography?

ARP: Yeah definitely. I have two William Blake related thoughts actually. First of all, getting in a fight was dumb. We shouldn’t have let it go on so long. (see: William Blake, “The Poison Tree”, which I totally do not understand but I think it means something about being mad at your friend). Secondly I think there should be a Nick and Amy Songs of Innocence/Songs of Experience double LP.


The Poison Tree, William Blake


I was angry with my friend:
I told my wrath, my wrath did end.
I was angry with my foe;
I told it not, my wrath did grow.


And I water’d it in fears,
Night & morning with my tears;
And I sunned it with my smiles
And with soft deceitful wiles.


And it grew both day and night,
Till it bore an apple bright;
And my foe beheld it shine,
And he knew that it was mine,


And into my garden stole
When the night had veil’d the pole:
In the morning glad I see
My foe outstretch’d beneath the tree

NC: I’m glad we were able to fix our friendship in a public forum – this means no take backs! I also have a few thoughts re: your few thoughts on William Blake. First of all, I’ve been totally obsessed with Blake Schwarzenbach’s new band, “Thorns of Life” (a Blake reference) – so it’s uncanny (german: unheimlich!) that you’d bring up a Blake themed double LP. Secondly, I want to do it, and i want to make it ten times better than whatever the eff Blake Deuce is coming up with; if he doesn’t have the decency to play a straight up Brooklyn show that your regular internet stalker can actually find out about beforehand then i won’t have the decency to play less good than him. I don’t know if I know enough chords for four full sides of rock, but i can definitely power through a seven inch.


So now that we straight up shot the elephant in the room, i want to maybe get a little familial. You hinted at it earlier, but can you tell us about (your husband) Merkin Perkin’s origin myth and your ensuing courtship? Pretend that I don’t know about the cat food and the fight club… this one’s for History.

ARP: Merkin is the name that we call my husband by, a contraction of his first and last names that also has surprising NSFW results in Google.


If there is a real life superhero it is Merkin, not because he has ever rescued a sack full of babies and kittens from a burning building, or threw an alien mother into an airlock, but because he has a mild mannered, bespectacled, scientist exterior that masks a feral beast that is all action and no talk.


I first met Merkin at an ultimate Frisbee party in a red house on Eddy Street in Ithaca. Neither of us enjoys Frisbee in the slightest. I was going through a phase where I wore only black. Merkin was standing near a keg that was down to the frothy dregs wearing a flannel shirt and a woolen cap I later learned he found the hat on a sewer grate on his way into the party. He had a matchbox car in his hand and we stood side by side for most of the night not saying a word to each other while he steered the car towards me and away from me.


The next time I saw him was a week later. I was sitting outside of a library and he walked by wearing a denim jacket with the American flag sewn onto the back. He sat down next to me and said “I got this before 9/11.” It took us forever to start actually dating because when I met Merkin he as feral. He lived among Pink Panther insulation in the attic of a house, the attic was not meant for living in. He wore shirts mysteriously crusted in blood, was part of an underground fight club, had lived on an island studying terns and had survived only on cat food until he got an illness from one of the birds.


He [also] drove a busted mini van. On our first outing together Merkin picked me up and when I got in the van he informed me that we were going to go see if we could get his crossbow restrung. What? That is the least Jewish thing I had ever heard. On the way back he ate a chocolate chip bagel with butter and jelly (the least Jewish thing I have ever seen) and gruffly dropped me back at my apartment. “I just want to go home now,” he said. What a charmer.


As any college girl can tell you, how much you want to date someone is inversely proportional to the affection and interest shown to you. If you’re a Jewish girl and you meet someone with a crossbow, you know you probably shouldn’t date him, which further tips the scales of the aforementioned proportional relationship.


Amy Rose-Perkins, Not Just “Any College Girl”:



Anyway, I didn’t know about the fight club until I was visiting a muscley friend of mine and he showed me the team picture from the fight club. “see this guy,” he said, “He came from the drama house, we thought he looked like Harry Potter and that we were going to wail on him, but then he broke one guy’s nose; that guy is really crazy.” Yeah, I knew that guy. That guy had kicked me out of his van.


Now Merkin and I are married, and while he no longer wears his blood encrusted sweatshirt, and has learned the comforts of sleeping on a bed with sheets on it, I am reminded sometimes that he is still feral. Here are two recent incidents:


1. At a Ratatat show in Boston Merkin watched some jerky white-panted loser dance into me really hard and before I knew it, Merkin had punched the guy square on the crown of his head. The guy fell down and was asked to leave the show.


2. Yesterday Merkin and I were riding our bikes from Brooklyn to my office in midtown to get my laptop (50% Olive Oyl, 50% Lois Lane), while in the bike lane on Chrystie Street a Chinatown bus veered into me in an aggressive move to teach me a lesson about riding a bike. He hit my back wheel. I hopped off my bike, stunned but unharmed only to see that without a word, Merkin had thrown his bike under the front wheel of the bus to get the driver to stop, the driver kept driving so Merkin jumped onto the front of the bus and somehow smashed the windshield using his fist and a windshield wiper.


A bunch of angry pedestrians came to our aid, pointing out to the driver that he had tried to run over my husband, the driver, with murderous rage in his eyes looked meaningfully at all of us and said “I should kill all of you!” Merkin collected our bike lock from under the rear wheel of the bus, made a quick report to the police and we were back on our way. He later realized his thumb was bleeding and poured a half of a bottle of alcohol on it, while saying “boy that smarts.”

NC: Holy shit. He punched the Fung Wah in the face.

ARP: Yeah, Merkin hulked that bus and broke the windshield.


Matthew “Merkins” Perkins Represents:

NC: So, like, other than having Thor avenge you in everyday shitty situations, what’s it like being married? A lot of my friends are married now and I’m starting to wonder if it’s a thing to do…

ARP: Yes, being married is a cool thing. Merkin and I were married pretty relatively young for two people who were not pregnant and from middle class families. When we got engaged people were like “are you religious or something?” and then when I was an intern in San Francisco everyone was like “what kind of loser gets married? Just live with your lover and tie some flowers around your forehead” and I really hated that attitude. We just wanted to get married.


We’d been already living together for three years I think and he’s definitely the most fun roommate I’ve ever had. There’s a nice security in being married, like if we get in a fight, and then we want to break up it would take so much paperwork. I find a lot of security in that, although I know he probably never thinks of it that way.


When we were dating I was constantly asking if we were going to break up which was probably so annoying. Like we’d be laughing really hard at something or eating spaghetti at a dining hall perfectly happy and I’d be like “hey, are we going to break up right now?” I couldn’t deal with the uncertainty. So we both benefited, because now there’s no uncertainty and he gets to live in peace and not have me talking about breaking up. I do make a lot of divorce jokes, but that’s kind of just my style. I think he saw that coming. He really deserves a medal when I think about it.


The other nice thing is that he gets health insurance, like the real kind. So yeah, being married is just like living together or dating someone for a long time. Like you know all of his cousins and favorite (whole milk yogurt) and least favorite foods (pralines and cream ice cream) and your lives are all lumped together in a really awesome way.

NC: A clarification and a query, and then to brass tacks:


1. I just want to point out that it sounds like Merk’s entire dietary spectrum is milk-based, which is alternately cracking me up and gagging me out.
2. Do you not get real health insurance as a lawyer working in NYC publishing?

[ed: I realize, in retrospect, that i misread her health insurance answer. hey, this is live tv, folks!]

3. Hard-hitting journalistic inquiry to follow.

ARP: Yeah I do have pretty nice insurance. I got my eyes checked and my teeth cleaned and the dentist and the dentist is so fancy that you also get a paraffin wax hand treatment while you’re there. Which is gross, but also very soothing.

NC: “Gross, but also very soothing” brings me to my next question:


You’re working 9-5ish in NYC publishing, getting occasional paraffin wax hand treatments and doing contracts for mostly tweedy books. It’s a life, and you’re not unhappy. Also you’re well off enough to become an Achewood Premium subscriber, which gives you something to look forward to on weekday mornings in the office. One day, as you’re eating a Honey Stinger 20g Protein Bar (“Dark Chocolate Almond Pro”) you realize that you haven’t actually talked to anyone in the office for a while outside of e-mails. You take another bite of your Honey Stinger and talk a walk around – ain’t nobody there.


You look outside the window from midway up your company’s skyrise, onto Madison Avenue. The streets seem pretty deserted. You go back to your office and call Merkin. He is in a laboratory, doing science with pipettes. You ask him if he’s seen anyone lately, and he admits that he hasn’t gotten out in the past few days. You allow yourself to acknowledge, verbally, the excitingly guilt-ridden possibility that you may be the last two people alive in the world (“it’s just us now” [whispered]). You would be right if not for Chris Onstad, who is still updating Achewood Premium with stuffed animal blogs and pictures of otter tattoos. It turns out that you’re only still getting e-mails from your colleagues because the server was backed up.


While you were working: an extremely potent humanophage virus was disseminated world wide via wind-driven “air sachets” – tiny subnuclear bombs engineered by parties unknown (note: it was the bees). The primary symptom of this virus is what looks to be immediate non-existence, but is, in fact, a tiny cellular civil war resulting in instantaneous and complete bodily dessication. The virus leaves no trace of it’s activities. Luckily (?) for you, the objectively disgusting Honey Stinger bars you’ve been eating for the past few days are hyper-hygroscopic and retrovirus resistant, and – in effect – saved you.

Bang Bang, Stang Stang:

NC: And Merkin, who you got hooked on them. And Chris Onstad, who enjoys some high-protein palate flagellation every once in a while (just to balance out the bacon of the month club and the bottom shelf bourbons). There are no zombies. There is no food apocalypse. There are, as far as you know, no people. You’re the only chuckleheads who’ve been eating “The Stang”. Maybe this isn’t really “gross, but also very soothing” so much as “another post-apocalyptic scenario” – but what would you do (short and long term)? Wishing for more wishes is not an option, and you’re not sad about losing anyone because the virus sent everyone to kitten heaven, where we’re all really happy and having a lot of themed parties. If you like, you may use your last and only phone call to outsource this question.

[ed: I am currently, if you couldn't guess, eating a Honey Stinger bar]


ARP: Is Gilda alive? The fact that you said that I am not sad really took the wind out of my sails and it makes suspending my disbelief a lot harder. I guess I would really like to go to Mexico and live by the ocean and swim a lot. I would have to make sure I got a lot of books and music to take with me. (see my post apocalyptic shopping list). But if I have everything I need, I would load up that Land Rover Defender equipped with snorkel and take Merkin and Gilda to Mexico where we could just swim and hang out and eat tropical fruits and fish.


Courage and Gilda’s Grand Day Out:



Amy’s Post-Apocalyptic Shopping List:


* whiskey, for drinking and cleaning cuts.
* a gun (possibly two guns), bullets (possible zombies even though you said no, or wild minks)
* a compass
* sweaters, blankets, sleeping bags, hats, mittens, long underwear, rain gear
* bandages, alcohol,aspirin, steroid cream if available, look behind prescription counter to see if looters have taken useful medicines like antibiotics, pain killers.. if not, take those.
* crank operated radio, CB radio
* those energy bars that seemed to have saved our lives
* flares
* tons of matches, flints, a really sharp knife, twine, needles and thread.
* canned goods, clean water, as much as will fit in the back of a…
* diesel powered off road capable vehicle, any fuel we can carry
* acoustic guitar and bongo drums, the post apocalypse world might be boring.
* books, paperbacks are lighter to carry and the bad ones can be used for fires
* tennis balls for fetch and throwing around

NC: Follow up question: And what if it was just you and Ian Mackaye [ed: notoriously abrasive Fugazi frontman, although he's mellowing out] on Dinosaur Island? Your backpack contains a canteen of high-life and a mini-bow. You don’t know what his supplies are. The freshwater lake is on the farside of the island, by the carnivores, and the whole island gets fire bombed by the US government in T-48 hours. Given an unknown mystical property of the island, you are able to (self-)conceive, gestate, and painlessly give birth to a full-grown child in only 36 hours. Due to complications, the child will be a vegan jerk. [ed: both a jerk and a vegan; no causality is implied].

Learn More About Dinosaur Island…:



ARP: Well first off, I don’t want to have that kid, that’s for sure. We’re already over our vegan jerk quota on the island. Are there dinosaurs on the island or is that just a clever name? I would say to Ian Mackaye “Hey, I was really moved by your reminisces about D. Boone in We Jam Econo (LIE!) and I think we should work together and build a raft because the gift of life is so precious.” Then I would find a lot of washed up milk cartons and build a raft a la Bear Grylls [ed: of Man vs. Wild (TV show)] and make Ian Mackaye help me or at least sing some Evens songs for me while I work. When we got to safety I would tell him that I had lied when I said I liked what he said in We Jam Econo but that I do really enjoy the Evens records but more for Amy Farina than for Ian Mackaye. If I am going to die in a firebombing I want to do so with a clean conscience.

NC: You’re right, I don’t think that kid would be much help either. I think there are a few flaws in your plan (e.g. assuming that Ian would work together with anyone regardless of dire straights; i think he’d be the guy who realizes the seriousness of the situation too late. it’s a story as old as the oceans: easily disliked, hubristic caricature meets grisly raptor death)… but let’s talk about that over beers some other time and wrap this piece up!:


We didn’t know each other in highschool, but lets go back in time for a minute and pretend that we had, and that i was in you and your brother’s ska punk band (on drums, sorry drum guy!). Can you make me a 1997 mixtape in preparation for 2009 summer stoop fun times?

ARP: Sometime you can hear our cassette tape demo which is truly awful. I hope I am not hurting anyone’s feelings by saying so.



SeeqPod – Playable Search

NC: Fuck yeah – good closer! Thanks for taking the time to shoot the breeze via e-mail these last couple of weeks… and Happy Birthday! (NB: Today, March 20th, is Amy’s birthday). I already got a few riffs I’m excited about trying out for Songs of Innocence/Experience.


Everyone else, if you’re interested in chatting with Amy about 90s ska-punk, legally binding contracts, or dinosaur islands, you can find her on Facebook and (sometimes) at www.mightyamy.com.

Next up: Scott Murray Lerch!

• Friend of a Friend: S.C.O.T.T. L.E.R.C.H.
• Friend of a Friend: Mark Fullmer
• friend of a friend: Edwin T Merrick V, “The Gov”