Interview: John Sharkey III (Dark Blue, Clockcleaner, Puerto Rico Flowers)

"I never felt that much disappointment in the eyes of the delusional than that night."
(Photo by Tim Owen.)

I saw Clockcleaner play the Silent Barn in Brooklyn with Rusted Shut in 2007. Halfway through the set Sharkey took a bat out and started blindly swinging it as the bassist and drummer trudged through the remainder of their set. Eventually he picked up empty beer cans and started hitting them into the crowd with the baseball bat. By then the room was near empty. From what I hear, this set was pa for Clockcleaner. With records like Nevermind and Babylon Rules, Clockcleaner will be remembered for what they did on stage and off.

Seven years later Sharkey is back in Philly playing guitar and singing in the much more mellow Dark Blue. If you heard Clockcleaner cover "Frogrammer" by Remo Voor you'd know that Sharkey has quite the singing voice. His baritone soars in Dark Blue over the smoothed midtempo skinhead tracks. With their Katorga Works seven inch and Jade Tree seven inch you should be floored with excitement for their upcoming full length on Jade Tree, Pure Reality.

We chatted over the phone about his family lineage, his wild days of past, Pure Reality, and his soon to be running screen printing company, Good Penny Printing.


Oh, and here's a track from Pure Reality.
facebook.com/darkblueskins

Painful Burning:
You're John Sharkey the third?

John Sharkey III:
Yes.

Painful Burning:
Are you the best John Sharkey?

John Sharkey III:
No, definitely not. Of the first three, yes, I am definitely the best of them. I'm not trying to sound like a proud, snooty, delusional father, but my son John the fourth is very smart and very gifted at many things. I believe he will outshine his father by his teenage years. As it stands, I guess my record does live up to itself a little bit. Of the first three I am definitely the best John Sharkey but my son will soon be the best, he's an ample heir to the throne.

Painful Burning:
How old is he?

John Sharkey III:
He just turned four in May.

Painful Burning:
He's four and he's already threatening your reign?

John Sharkey III:
He's very charismatic, he's very brutish and bullheaded. He doesn't understand the word "no" very well, which is odd for a four year old. Some would call that a behavioral issue but I don't see stubborn to be a drawback, a poor characteristic of someone's being. He's very stubborn. He fucking loves Echo and the Bunnymen and The Smiths already. And I didn't like that shit until I was in high school. He's gonna be over the asshole shit by the time he's ten. He'll be listening to classical music by then.

Painful Burning:
Classical or he's going to get into Throbbing Gristle and all that kind of stuff.

John Sharkey III:
He'll be a pretentious little cunt by the time he's twelve, I guarantee it. But I'm okay with that.

Painful Burning:
Right now you're in first place, soon to be second. But between your father and his father, who is the next best John Sharkey?

John Sharkey III:
This is a question I might not answer on record because I feel like if my father ever read this he would feel very alienated by his son. I have many conflicting feelings about my grandfather and the way he treated my father and now they're starting to come back to terms with each other, and being apart of each other's lives. My feelings haven't changed and I feel like if I start spouting off now it may get ugly and I may upset one of my family members. So yes, I think I will pass on that question.

Painful Burning:
That's valid.

John Sharkey III:
Because you know, Thanksgiving is coming up and I don't need that bullshit.

Painful Burning:
I just imagined you guys sitting around Thanksgiving dinner and being like, "Oh hey, John, did you do any interviews three months ago that we could all look at?"

John Sharkey III:
Yeah, "John, I was surfing the net three months ago and came upon an interview where you called my dad a fucking bastard."

Painful Burning:
That would be great.

John Sharkey III:
I don't want that floating around in the public record anywhere. I could say I come from a long line of working class intellectuals. I myself, am a working class intellectual. That's the only way I can describe myself.

Painful Burning:
I was going to ask you next if you consider yourself a working class intellectual but it looks like you already answered that.

John Sharkey III:
Yes, it's very true. It's the most accurate description of my personality and my lifestyle.

Painful Burning:
I don't know if you've always liked skinhead punk but it seems like you're infatuated with it right now. Do the "working class intellectual" and skinhead punk go hand in hand?

John Sharkey III:
That's what appealed to me when I was younger. I grew up in a working class environment. My father was a cable guy when I was a kid then he was an air traffic controller. Yes, they make a pretty decent living but it's also a hellish experience being an air traffic controller. He always considered himself to be of the government workers more along the blue collar, but I don't know if other people would describe it that way. I grew up in a row home in South Delaware County which is a suburb just outside of South West Philadelphia. It's not very glamorous, it's filthy and filled with ignorant assholes. When I was young and started getting infatuated with skinhead rock and punk I was really into second wave British punk like the Four Skins and Blitz and even ridiculous shit like Anti-Nowhere League. It did appeal to me because it felt like they were singing a similar feeling that I felt every day. That does sound very corny. But it has stuck with me over the years. The whole working class aesthetic. I've never really strayed from it, I never could. I went to community college. I didn't go to university. I've never had an office job. I've worked with my hands my whole life. Everything I have is because I've worked my fucking ass off for it. I kinda subscribe to that ethos.

Painful Burning:
It seems like musically you weren't following that sound but more recently you have been. Why do you think you came back to it now?

John Sharkey III:
I thought it was time to pay homage to my youth. I'm a man with children now. It's been a great time for reflection for me. I'm trying to fulfill an age old prophecy.

Painful Burning:
Do you think having kids was a real boot to the butt for getting back to things of your yesteryear like this?

John Sharkey III:
It made me appreciate it more. It made me more reflective upon my own youth and therefore taking a trip down memory lane and listening to Sham 69, Vice Squad and bands like that again. Shit that I really latched onto as a child. I never have let go but it's been a while since I've listened to that. A lot of the music that Dark Blue is doing now I wrote while walking around in the dark revisiting these records and in turn writing a new record inspired by it all.

Painful Burning:
One of the guys from Blitz heard your stuff and liked it?

John Sharkey III:
Mackie from Blitz, the bass player, said he was floored by it. What brought a tear to my eye was that he said he liked the vocals in particular. That's what's up.

Painful Burning:
That's awesome.

John Sharkey III:
I was very impressed by it. It's something to hang your hat on. I did gauchely e-mail and call a few of my old punker friends from back in the neighborhood and brag a little bit. "Hey, Brett, guess what? You're a fucking lawyer now. The bass player from Blitz liked my band. Fuck you!"

Dark Blue playing in "The Matrix."
(Photo by unknown.)

Painful Burning:
You mentioned hanging your hat and I've noticed you've gone through a lot of hat changes throughout the years.

John Sharkey III:
Changes? Is that figurative or literal?

Painful Burning:
I don't know what that would mean figuratively. But Andy Nelson mentioned that you've changed your hat style throughout the years. Was that a conscious change?

John Sharkey III:
No, I wore the fedora while in Clockcleaner. I liked the way it looked. It almost looked Freddy Kruger-esque against the silhouette of the strobe light. I eventually outgrew it, I felt like I looked childish wearing it so I stopped. You know, now that I'm a fully bald man it feels good to chuck a Jeff cap on top in the winter. I throw one of those on in the winter because they're wool and they keep my head warm. But in the summer I pretty much go full hatless. Where it used to be an everyday thing it's now more utilitarian than anything.

Painful Burning:
Is there a certain point when you plan to tell John Sharkey IV about Clockcleaner? Because I feel like there's a lot about that band that you can't tell someone when they're too young.

John Sharkey III:
I'm sure he'll rifle through the records and find that stuff. I'll just be honest with him. "I was a young man, John, I had a lot to prove in a world that I didn't approve of. So some things about your father may seem a little harsh and shocking at first but I'm sure you'll be able to relate to when you're a little older." That's Clockcleaner. As of now, he is a large critic already of what Dark Blue has done. I don't think he likes the LP as much as he liked the first single. Like I told you, he's already an asshole. "Their first single was good, but I don't know about that LP on Jade Tree. It's wack."

Painful Burning:
You said by the age of ten he's going to be pretentious.

John Sharkey III:
He's already a shithead. "Not enough glockenspiel on this new record. Not for me."

Painful Burning:
He's already bringing up the Dark Blue practice tape which I gather you never released?

John Sharkey III:
"That practice tape you had, Dad, I don't think you're going to be able to live up to that. This shit, studio? Nah. Nonsense."

Painful Burning:
Even with some of the offensive stuff that Clockcleaner did that he wouldn't get, there's also things like the time you opened for Negative Approach in Brooklyn that might fly over his head. That's my favorite story of something a band has ever done on stage.

John Sharkey III:
Were you there at that show?

Painful Burning:
No, I was working that night.

John Sharkey III:
It was a great idea and the recording of it turned out really well. About eight minutes in and that crowd started to get fucking furious. You could feel the anger and tension growing palpably. There were skinheads lined up outside waiting for us to come out the band door. I remember getting out and laughing about it. Like, "What the fuck are you going to do?" There was a sense of invincibility after that set. And the fact that the drummer of Negative Approach came up to me afterwards and said it was the best thing he saw in years. Opie Moore thought it was fucking hilarious. He was like, "I haven't seen anything that offensive since Flipper."

Painful Burning:
That's the highest praise. Oddly enough that wasn't nearly the most offensive thing you guys did.

John Sharkey III:
I wouldn't exactly call it offensive.

Painful Burning:
Sorry, the phrasing would be that people were more offended by that than anything else you did.

John Sharkey III:
I don't understand. Listening back on it, musically, it's pretty triumphant sounding. It's really epic, long. My guitar sounds great on it. There's no vocals, so that's good. The fact that it offended so many people just shows you how fucking stupid every fucking person in the audience who didn't laugh was. If you didn't get what we were doing and you were offended it's just like, "Man, I have fucking nothing for you, I can't help you."

Painful Burning:
It reminds me of how online right now there was a person who took a photograph of Neil deGrasse Tyson and captioned it, "Some guy using his laptop on the train like a Dumbass nerd lol," and the internet exploded on this person. The person's screen name was dogboner and it was very obvious it was a joke.

John Sharkey III:
It's that feeling of mob mentality. People want to jump on something. And if there's right there in front of you don't understand it slightly you're gonna have an emergence to it. And I will be there to reap the reward from people's incredulity when those situations arise. And if I'm the cause of it, even better. Even better.

Painful Burning:
Do you plan anything like that for Dark Blue ever?

John Sharkey III:
No. I think those days are gone. Not gone, I can't say that because some nights I get drunk and I'm like, "Why don't we cover the other band's song? Why don't we do that again?" They're like, "Alright, Sharkey, you're drunk. Calm down. You already did that." I still have a blue streak in me but it has been a little more finely tuned than most realize at this point.

Dark Blue playing a rock show.
(Photo by unknown.)

Painful Burning:
As a result of all of that, what is it like being a perpetual disappointment?

John Sharkey III:
What do you mean? Oh, oh. I understand what you're saying fully. I've felt this. People expect me, or did at one point, to get on stage and be this fucking animal that pisses on people's merch and punches cripples. That says "bitch" and "faggot" all the time. This weird myth that was built around me with little substantiality. But I'd thrive on it. I'd love when people would say, "What's the big deal with that guy?" I'm like, "There was never a big deal, you're just a fucking idiot that believes everything you hear." It was never worse than one of the last Clockcleaner shows of 2008 in Cleveland when all these younger Cleveland kids who had heard all the stories about crazy Sharkey met me. I was with my future wife, she was my then girlfriend at the time. What do you expect me to do? Run through the crowd with my dick out with fireworks sticking up my ass? Really? Sorry, but it wasn't gonna happen anymore. I never felt that much disappointment in the eyes of the delusional than that night.

Painful Burning:
You offended people by not doing anything offensive.

John Sharkey III:
Yeah.

Painful Burning:
That's also hilarious.

John Sharkey III:
Like I said, people are real easy to piss off. You don't have to try hard. I guess you could say that's the easy way out, being a provocateur. But I've always enjoyed it. I always did.

Painful Burning:
Cleveland has a history of wild hardcore shows and you used to play in 9 Shocks Terror which are said to have legendary shows... Did this all catapult you into Clockcleaner's performances?

John Sharkey III:
Living in Cleveland was a big part of my youth. I pushed a lot of boundaries and made a lot of enemies. It was just a time in my life where I could freely push anyone's buttons and see... It was experimental in that regard. I climbed the the top of the mountain. I did what I could. I made a lot of friends, I made a lot of enemies. And then I left Cleveland. It served a great purpose and I'm forever grateful. My heart is in Cleveland's debt.

Painful Burning:
And what you're describing, would you consider that to be pure reality?

John Sharkey III:
No. That is a part of the pure reality, it was the purest reality. Very little holding back any emotion or feeling or words or actions.

Painful Burning:
Is that what pure reality is? What is pure reality?

John Sharkey III:
Pure reality is your pure reality. It's my pure reality. This record is exactly what pure reality is. I know that sounds really pretentious and open ended. But this record, simply put, is very personal. It's a very sad record. That is the sad fact of it all. Life is a series of highs and tragedies and you have to weather the storm until it finally crashes into the rocks.

Painful Burning:
Is Pure Reality going to be more along the lines of the two seven inches released so far?

John Sharkey III:
All these songs were written around the same time. A few of the newer ones on the LP are a little poppier, they're not straight forward. It's an album so you can expound on ideas. It doesn't stray too far from the original material. It does get a little special in there. You can't just have the same song eight times in a row on a record.

Painful Burning:
Would you say it doesn't fall that far from the Jade Tree?

John Sharkey III:
If you look at Jade Tree's catalog, this apple couldn't have been put in a cannon and fired further away from that.

Painful Burning:
What's up with that, it seems like such a weird fit.

John Sharkey III:
Darren and Tim reached out to us very early on and we were very anxious to work with a label that was willing to pay us a lot of money and not have to tour. Those were the two guys who said they'd do it. I wasn't going to fuck around waiting. Everyone has a wishlist for labels you want to work with for your first record. But I didn't have the luxury nor the patience to wait for those people to come knocking at my door. Jade Tree were there with a contract and Darin has taken me to a few Union games. They're the Major League Soccer team in Philadelphia. They're very poor. But it's a fun time.

Painful Burning:
You seem to like sports a lot, I saw the Noisey interview that was primarily about sports.

John Sharkey III:
That was my buddy Tim in Australia. Me and him have lengthy conversations about sports. It's a large portion of my personality. I follow, vehemently, many codes of football. I'm an avid Australian sports fan, like rugby league. I sort of like Aussie rules football. It's a little wimpy. I watch soccer.

Painful Burning:
I don't actually care about sports so I don't really want to know too much about this.

John Sharkey III:
It's fine, you don't have to talk about the sports thing. I don't want it to become a schtick. I never wanted it to become a schtick but some people saw it that way at first. But it's like, "Hey look, I'm a thirty two year old man with two kids, yeah I'm gonna watch the Eagles on Saturday, asshole. Yes, sometimes dad likes to have fun so he goes to watch Liverpool play and gets fucking wasted on a Saturday morning." Yes I do that. That's all I'm doing... is drinking, raising children, watching sports, writing songs, and working a shitty job. That's life right there.

Painful Burning:
It sounds like you're weathering the storm.

John Sharkey III:
Right now I'm in the process of opening my own business. Which is another new exciting thing going on in my life. I'm starting my own screen printing business. I've been doing it for seventeen years. I'm tired of making other deplorable pieces of shit that have hired me over the years money when I could be making it all myself because I know what I'm doing and I know how to do it.

Painful Burning:
What's the name going to be?

John Sharkey III:
It's going to be Good Penny Printing. You're the first person to write that besides me. We're going to be a very old school ethical kind of business. I want to be as transparent and demystifying as possible. T-shirts to some people are still a mystery. It's fucking easy to do this. It doesn't cost this much, those other people are charging you for bullshit. I'll walk you through each step. You can come drink and watch me make your shirts. You can pay ten more dollars to come and drink a few of my beers and watch me do it. An another thing I'm going to do is for touring bands, if you're on the road and you need shirts I'll give you a ten percent discount. There's a lounge room above my workshop and I'm going to offer that to touring bands. If they want to buy shirts they'll get a little discount. They can come upstairs and chill out on the couch and decompress because tour is fucking awful and any chance you can get to relax is a good one. We can talk turkey.

Painful Burning:
What does that phrase mean?

John Sharkey III:
Talk turkey? Like shoot the shit.

Painful Burning:
Okay.

John Sharkey III:
You never heard talk turkey before?

Painful Burning:
No.

John Sharkey III:
Really?

Painful Burning:
Maybe it's an East Coast thing.

John Sharkey III:
It might be an East Coast thing. Talking turkey. I'm trying to think of others... chewing the fat, shooting the bull.

Dark Blue is spectacular, pun intended.
(Photo by Tim Owen.)

Painful Burning:
Before we talk too much turkey I have one last question for you, who do you dislike more, Andrew Mackie Nelson or Mike Sneeringer?

John Sharkey III:
Who do I dislike more?

Painful Burning:
Yeah.

John Sharkey III:
I dislike them both on equal levels. Mike is annoyingly talented at drums and therefore constantly touring with other bands that make a lot of money. Like his new band, Panda Blokes or Strands of Artichoke. Have you heard them yet?

Painful Burning:
No, I have not.

John Sharkey III:
Mans of Yolks. That annoys me heavily. Sometimes Andy dresses like he works at Pep Boys. Then he shows up for photo shoots like that and that's fucking annoying.

Painful Burning:
Pep Boys the car place?

John Sharkey III:
Yeah, he did that the other day. I'm just kidding. He had a Lonsdale on, like a Fred Perry type shirt, a polo shirt. But it had a huge Lonsdale logo on it and it looked like a Pep Boys shirt. He got really butt hurt I mentioned that and I thought it'd be funny to mention it in this interview.

Painful Burning:
Are you concerned about them reading this at Thanksgiving?

John Sharkey III:
Yeah, they do get together with my father quite often. Hopefully I haven't told Andy and Mike my feelings about my grandfather. Hopefully I haven't spilled the beans to those guys or I'm in deep shit.

-Z