Cold Gawd and Majesty Crush Speak the Same Code

Matthew Wainwright is fronts the Rancho Cucamonga-based post-hardcore/shoegaze band Cold Gawd; Odell Nails was the drummer for the legendary Detroit-based shoegaze band Majesty Crush, and the post-punk band Spahn Ranch. Cold Gawd’s new record, I’ll Drown On This Earth, is out today via Dais Records, so to celebrate, the two got on a Zoom call to chat about it. 
— Annie Fell, Editor-in-chief, Talkhouse Music

Matthew Wainwright: How you doing, man?

Odell Nails: I’m doing great. I gotta start it off with, I’m honored that you want to talk to me, and that clearly you look at Majesty Crush as something that was meaningful and important. Because I’m a fan of your band, man. Cold Gawd is bringing up the new torch. 

Matthew: Thank you. 

Odell: It’s beautiful music. So I’m very happy to talk to you and be a part of this.

Matthew: Well, I gotta extend the same thing back to you. I’m so surprised and just honored that you wanna hang out and talk with me for a little bit. I’ll tell you, too — here’s how I got hip to Majesty Crush. I hadn’t heard it before God Get Me had come out, but we put out the video for “Sweet Jesus,” and I think the first comment that was ever on that video said, “Wow, getting big Majesty Crush vibes here.” And I was like, What is that? The second I turned on “No. 1 Fan,” I got exactly what they were talking about. It sucks because I wish I had known earlier. I had gotten into shoegaze as a genre when I was 18 years old, and then fast forward to when I was 26 — had I known about you guys the whole time, I think it would have been so different. But I’m glad that I was able to find Majesty Crush when I did. 

Odell: That is beautiful, man. I’m an older dude, so my musical journey and obsession really started in the late ‘70s, and came to life in the ‘80s. I went to high school with Dave Stroughter who, rest in peace, was the singer of Majesty Crush. He and I and, funny enough, a group of other people of color at our high school — which was Southfield High School in a suburb of Detroit — for some reason that we didn’t even think about that much, most of the people who were obsessed with what was happening in underground music at that time, [like] punk rock, hardcore, post-punk, were all Black guys. And of course there were others, but the people that were driving that in our high school and obsessed with it were guys of color, Dave being one of them, and me being one of them. We were hooked at an early age. There was a DJ in Detroit called The Electrifying Mojo.

Matthew: I love the name.

Odell: This guy is the uncredited inventor of Detroit techno. Because a lot of the people who came up with that were listening to Mojo. He would play obscure British music and German music from start to finish on late night Black radio. This guy would play a Kraftwerk album from start to finish, Visage, OMD, B-52’s, Devo, Gary Numan — all of that was coming late night at us, and getting to ears that normally would not necessarily hear that. I was one of them. Gary Numan’s “Cars” became a hit in Detroit because of this DJ, so you’d hear it at these underground parties with primarily Black kids. And a lot of people stopped there. They just thought of it as any other novelty music — funky, good to dance to. I immediately saw it as a gate into some kind of world that I had to get into. I remember my mom dropping me and my friend off at a B-52’s concert. 

Matthew: [Laughs.] Hell yeah.

Odell: I saw some dude wearing a Black Flag t-shirt, and he just looked like something I’d never seen before. I knew this was a world I had to get into. And Decline of Western Civilization, which is the punk rock documentary—

Matthew: Who’s in that one again? I’ve seen it once before. That’s the one that Fear is in?

Odell: Yeah, Fear, Black Flag, X, Catholic Discipline, Circle Jerks, Alice Bag Band. Seeing that at this art house theater in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, and seeing how kids were dancing and dressing — that was a life changer as well. The floodgates opened. All this to say that Dave and I started early. And another thing that’s extremely important is he identified with European culture because his mom was German. His dad was African American. But he was fluent in German and always identified with music coming out of Europe. So we had early access and interest in all things underground. That was a magic time, man. The music coming out of that period was just incredible. Joy Division and anything on Factory Records, anything on 4AD. Cocteau Twins were an early obsession. I was destined to be in a band with Dave, I just didn’t know it at the time.

Matthew: Yeah. You guys were figuring all this stuff out at the same time. It was almost like it was the same trajectory, whether you knew it or not.

Odell: Exactly. And DIY — back then, you wanted to make music, you wanted to make clothes, you wanted to do whatever you wanted to do, and you just literally did it with no skill and no goal of any kind. There’s no money goal here. There’s no success goal. The goal is simply to make something. 

The first project was called Spahn Ranch, and that band was literally created because we wanted to do it. No one had any skills whatsoever. Bob [Sterner] did — Bob was a poet, Bob had skills and he had a voice. But I had never picked up drumsticks in my life. In fact, the first time we ever practiced, I was going to play guitar. Another guy, Kevin, was going to be in the band but he couldn’t keep time, so I just grabbed the drumsticks out of his hands and started hitting the floor. And I realized, Wait a minute, I can keep time here. Then the next thing you know, Brad [Horowitz] and I — my parents went to Jamaica and they had some souvenirs on a windowsill, kind of like bongos and different percussive stuff, and we just pulled it off the windowsill and I started hitting it. That was the first drum kit. I mean, this was the time of Einstürzende Neubauten — hit anything. Just swing, hit anything. We’d go to junkyards — coil springs, didn’t matter. Very DIY, very self-taught. 

Matthew: Yeah. And what you’re talking about, too, is creating out of necessity. Because I feel like I picked up drums the same way, where I knew I was going to be in a band and I kept trying to push myself to be a singer. But in Rancho Cucamonga, every kid in my high school was the singer or the guitar player, so… I knew how to air drum, but that’s about it. Never touched a drum kit, ever, but I was like, “I’m going to figure this out because I have to be in bands.” That’s the same way I figured out how to play bass. And then after a while, all the kids who wanted to be in bands moved away, started college, so I ran out of guitar players. So I was like, “OK, I guess I’ll learn how to play guitar too.” Then you figure out that you can play guitar and sing at the same time, so I was like, “Cool, now I can finally get to this singer part that I’ve been wanting to get to.” But in the meantime, [I was] picking up all these other skills because no one else was going to do it. And again, I had to do music.

Odell: It’s interesting you say that, because that’s exactly how I felt. Why do you think you had to do music?

Matthew: I think you touched on it a bit earlier when you were talking about how you felt about that DJ and the music that they were playing. It’s almost like this unspoken connectedness to it. I just knew once I really started to discover bands — like once I got into Green Day, I was like, “How do I just emulate what he’s [doing]?” It was was like copying. When I was growing up, it was Green Day and My Chemical Romance, the emo stuff. But then you also have Beyonce and Ye and Jay-Z all playing on the radio at the same time. It’s just constantly getting hit over the head with KISS FM. I was like, “This has to be doable.” And it was good seeing music videos with bands playing. I think it made it feel more real. Something that’s attainable.

Odell: Yeah. I totally get it. And not only was it the only thing I thought about and the only thing I aspired to do, but it was also my primary way of connecting to people. My friend circle was equally obsessed. And this is a pre-internet thing — it’s code. If you saw someone wearing a Bauhaus t-shirt, you knew you had something in common with that person.

Matthew: Right.

Odell: It’s those innocent days. As with any movement of art, things change. No problem there; I’m not one of these people who wants to get stuck in time. But one of the advantages of that was this feeling of wanting to get to know other people who listened to Dead Can Dance, because I knew that I had something in common with them and I could have a conversation with them.

Matthew: Yeah, exactly. Once I was in high school, the internet really started to pop off and become this thing that we all paid attention to, but even still, I was definitely the lone wolf being into pop punk and things like that when I was in middle school. So same thing — you see a kid walking around with a similar shirt and you’re like, “Hey.” And that’s how you make friends. That’s how I ended up in my first quote-unquote “band” — these kids were wearing shirts that I saw in Hot Topic, and I was like, OK, they know exactly what I’m into. Because I’d wear these shirts to church or to soccer practice, and no one knew what I was doing. Again, that code — I knew what they were trying to put out there, so I ran to those kids.

I work in Hollywood, so I see a lot of tourists throughout the day. When I see people from out of town wearing, like, the Smiths or My Bloody Valentine shirts, I want to stop and talk to them. I would say half of the time it’s received pretty well. But it is a bummer if someone comes in wearing a shirt and I’m like, “Oh, sick, I love the Smiths!” And they go, [flatly] “Oh, yeah.” Because it’s so commonplace now. We’re so used to having that conversation via the internet, that in-person connection is lost a little bit. 

Odell: Totally. Another important thing about Spahn Ranch and Majesty Crush is Detroit. Detroit had, and still to this day has, a very negative reputation. But one thing that no one could ever dispute was the music that came out of the Detroit area. Because a lot of it’s boredom, which anyone who grew up in the suburbs can relate to.

Matthew: Same here. 

Odell: Yeah. Just mundane shit that makes you want to make something or fantasize about being somewhere more exotic or or cool. 

Matthew: You’re hungry for culture.

Odell: Yeah, starving for culture. One of the effects it’s had on Detroit — and I’m talking about since the ‘50s and ‘60s, Motown — is creating incredible music. That’s the legacy. We’re surrounded by that stuff. Iggy and the MC5 — and eventually White Stripes, which came post Majesty Crush. But that vibe and that creativity and people doing different stuff [influenced] Majesty Crush. There were other ethereal rock bands when Majesty Crush existed in the ‘90s, but not a lot. Vulva Records was the name of the label we created — it was named after a fictional all-Black female metal band [from] an article in a fanzine called You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever. We put out not only our own music, but a few other bands that were doing similar stuff. Vulva released a record by a band called Spectacle that was very, very much into the ethereal stuff coming out of UK. We did a lot of shows with a band called Thirsty Forest Animals that were almost our brothers in arms. They were very, very influenced by Ride. But the point is, there wasn’t a lot of us doing this kind of music. 

Because, do your timeline here: You’ve got the birth of grunge. Soon, everybody wants to just sound like Soundgarden. That was not us. That was way too macho. There’s a heavy effeminate side to Majesty Crush, and to Stroughter and myself. So because of that, we’re playing gigs with bands that, on paper, have nothing to do with what we’re doing. Like, we would play shows with a band called Goober & the Peas — and one of their first drummers was Jack White.

Matthew: That’s insane.

Odell: Yeah. These guys dressed in cowboy outfits and threw hay on stage. I mean, [we had] nothing to do with them. But we would play with them, and they were one of our favorite bands to play with. The crowd loved it. Detroiters just really didn’t put things in boxes back then, and bands didn’t either. If you could help fill a room and get asses in the seats… It was a mix. There were very few rules in terms of who would play with who, who would hang out with who. That helped our acceptance. And of course, don’t get me wrong — anytime Mazzy Star or Curve or Verve or Lush is coming through town, we’re trying to get on that show. And we were successful a lot of the times. But there wasn’t this huge shoegaze scene, for lack of a better word.

Matthew: Yeah. But that’s cool, though. The idea of a mixed bill isn’t foreign anymore, but especially when you see the way kids talk on message boards, when you step outside of the box a little bit and you want to play a show with a rapper or something, everyone — instead of being like, “Cool, what a great night of music we’re about to have” — it’s like, “Well, why?” And more so the question is, “Why not?” Because we could always do a sick shoegaze gig top-to-bottom. That’s easy. But to be able to cultivate a show like that and just play with whoever as long as they’re down to rock… I feel like people aren’t really thinking about the fan experience. Like, I would imagine there’s somebody who saw Majesty Crush open for Goober & the Peas who’s been telling that story their whole life.

Odell: Right.

Matthew: And it’s because you guys were two opposites, but at the same time, kindred spirits in the fact that y’all just wanted to play music.

Odell: Yeah. And to some extent, look at some of the bands you’re playing with. I love Spiritual Cramp, Soft Kill — those are incredible, but look how different they are. Even those bands are different to what you’re doing. But it all works, you know?

Matthew: Yeah, exactly. Because we all speak the same code. Mike B from Spiritual Cramp, we’ll talk on the phone sometimes and — Spiritual Cramp is in a different subgenre as a whole, but him and I have that same code of, “Nah, but we’re really about to do this thing.” And that’s all you have to relate on. You don’t have to be making the same chords to get along.

Odell: Absolutely.

Matthew: I think growing up, coming from the suburbs, you’re just thirsty for the underground. So you’re not really thinking about the boxes that sometimes genres can be. And like you were saying, Detroit was super accepting, whereas I remember when I first started to get into music, everything was boxed up. It was like, there’s no way you could be into Slipknot but still listen to 50 Cent, for whatever reason. So for me, being into everything almost alienated me from the same groups that I should have been getting along with. But now I think with the advent of TikTok and Instagram and all those things, those boxes really don’t exist anymore. I actually watch people struggle to put things back into boxes, so that way they don’t have to think too hard as to why so-and-so is playing with so-and-so.

Odell: Yeah, exactly. Here’s an example of a band who was a huge influence on Majesty Crush, who purposely melded two things that you weren’t necessarily supposed to meld: A.R. Kane. I don’t know if you’re familiar with the band.

Matthew: Oh, yeah, I know them.

Odell: Soulful vocals with almost whale-sounding ambient, distorted, post-Jesus and Mary Chain noise. That 69 album is one of the most important and undiscovered — I mean, people say Majesty Crush is undiscovered, and we are. But A.R. Kane, man — they are undiscovered as hell. That’s the White Album. That’s an archetype piece of work that most people have no clue about.

Matthew: Yes. I remember I saw this thing on Instagram about A.R. Kane and how they influenced MBV and Slowdive. I forget the name of the song, but it’s either on Lolita or 69, and it has bongos on it. And you listen to Isn’t Anything by MBV and what do they have on there? Bongos. And A.R. Cane predates Isn’t Anything.

Odell: That’s right. I mean, I love MBV — people like you and I, we know we love MBV. Masters at what they do. But A.R. Kane came first, and I’m pretty confident that Kevin [Shields] heard A.R. Kane and it certainly influenced what they did. And at that point, of course, this was ‘88 that 69 came out — there was no term “shoegaze.” Talk about putting in boxes — the British music press at that time were notorious for building up trends to sell the paper, and then killing that trend so that they could build another one to market. In fact, “shoegaze” literally was an insult. They came up with that term to kill this kind of ethereal movement that was happening so that they could have another trend. For a very long time, the word “shoegaze” was derogatory.

Matthew: Oh, yeah. I mean, up until I’d say four years ago, “shoegaze” was always sort of a four letter word. 

Odell: It’s almost like taking the power back now. I went to a festival called Slide Away — it’s the first time I saw TAGABOW. And obviously Nothing, it’s their festival and they’ve been doing it for years. It was so good to see these younger bands doing this music and taking all the power back. Now “shoegaze” is a term of strength, not a term of negativity. It also meant a lot to me because there are kids of color — Black, Latino, all different kids of color — and I couldn’t believe how many of them knew about Majesty Crush. That is so validating, man. Because it’s not like Majesty Crush, by having two Black members — there was no manifesto about, “We’re going to turn Black kids onto this.” We just wanted to make good music and make the kind of music we would buy. But in 2024, now that I’m an older dude and unfortunately Dave is not here to share this time, I am proud when kids who normally may or may not have been associated with certain kinds of music are like, “Fuck that.”