"This whole tour has been about smashing dicks together."
(Photo by Ross Farrar.)
Nothing has released the best rock record of 2014. So when I saw them play at The Roxy a few nights ago I needed to interview Nicky about the illest shit. He was too drunk so instead he gave me his phone number.
I called him a few days later and he was in a van with Ceremony. He was drunk again. But we did the interview anyways.
Painful Burning:
What are you doing right now?
Dominic Palermo:
I'm on the way to Bakersfield. I'm fucking wasted. I drank all the shit.
Painful Burning:
It's 3:30 p.m.
Dominic Palermo:
We don't waste any time. We got Mad Dog at the rest stop. It was funny but it's not so funny anymore. I actually feel like I'm gonna throw up.
Painful Burning:
Oh boy.
Dominic Palermo:
Fuck it, let's do it. Let's talk.
Painful Burning:
We could-
Dominic Palermo:
Nope, nope.
Painful Burning:
We're doing it now?
Dominic Palermo:
Yup.
Painful Burning:
I saw you guys hanging with Trinidad James. I also saw he got dropped from Def Jam. Is that a coincidence?
Dominic Palermo:
Anybody who fucks with us will get dropped from their label. We got a couple homies out in Atlanta, these twins that are trying to start a clothing label, they always fucked with Nothing. They used to wear Nothing shirts out all the time. They lived next door to Trinidad. Trinidad used to holler at them, asking about the Guilty of Everything t-shirts. So he started listening to it and now he fucks with us. I got him all fucked up at the show off moonshine and coke. He started stripping.
Painful Burning:
He got naked at the show?
Dominic Palermo:
He ain't about that life, man.
Painful Burning:
Okay. At the Roxy you wore a shirt that was written on with sharpie saying, "YOU DID THIS." What did I do?
Dominic Palermo:
When I was in prison I read an Irvine Walsh book, Filth. At the end of the book, kind of a spoiler, the dude hangs himself wearing a shirt that says, "You did this."
Painful Burning:
So I shouldn't take it personal?
Dominic Palermo:
You should, you're the worst person ever, Zed.
Nothing playing to a sold out show at The Roxy.
Who's Daniel Oslovsky?
Dominic Palermo:
Why do you know that name?
Painful Burning:
Why would I know that name?
Dominic Palermo:
We sat in a bar in Philadelphia and made the Nothing logo together.
Painful Burning:
Didn't he also do art for Death Of Lovers?
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah. He's a really smart guy. He's one of those dudes that I hang out with and we smash our brains together and come up with cool shit. He's one of the smartest designers out of Philly for sure.
Painful Burning:
Here's a vague question. When do you know that it's over?
Dominic Palermo:
I constantly think that everything is over. I always think I'm gonna be dead every night. I'll end up dead sooner or later. But usually people like me end up living longer than expected. So I'm hoping that's the case but we'll see.
Painful Burning:
So you think it's over already?
Dominic Palermo:
Literally right now as I'm talking to you, my eyes are completely closed and I want to go to sleep so bad.
Painful Burning:
Sorry if I'm preventing you from sleeping right now.
Dominic Palermo:
I don't want to go to sleep either. I wish I had cocaine. Ross is supposed to have cocaine but he's a pussy.
Painful Burning:
How much cocaine is too much cocaine?
Dominic Palermo:
There's no such thing. I've done it to the point where it feels like my heart is going to stop. I have concerns.
Painful Burning:
What are you looking forward to?
Dominic Palermo:
I'm looking forward to watching black people lighting themselves on fire on Youtube.
Painful Burning:
I have no follow up questions on that.
Dominic Palermo:
I've seen your naked pics.
Painful Burning:
Okay.
Dominic Palermo:
We've been looking at your dick for two days now.
Painful Burning:
Oh god.
Dominic Palermo:
You want to ask me some questions, I have a question to ask you. How did you take that selfie where your dick is all the way down there? That angle is sick.
Painful Burning:
It's like asking a magician, "Where's the rabbit?" I can't reveal it.
Dominic Palermo:
You can't reveal it? You're the man, Zed, I fuck with you.
Painful Burning:
Have you been taking a lot of dick pics on this tour?
Dominic Palermo:
I haven't taken a dick pic in a long time. I have a lovely girlfriend at home that I fuck with heavy. She's tight as hell. She already knows what my stupid ass shrimp dick looks like so I don't have to text it to her. But I've been enjoying your dick for a long time.
Painful Burning:
I don't want to make this about my dick so we'll move on.
Dominic Palermo:
We should talk about it a little bit during this interview.
Painful Burning:
I think this constitutes a little bit. So I'm gonna jump back to Nothing if you don't mind.
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah, that's cool.
Painful Burning:
What do you think the proper response to the break in "Bent Nail" is?
Dominic Palermo:
Man, that's a tight question. Basically Brandon and I wrote that song. Brandon wrote verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Just like a lot of the songs we wrote for Guilty of Everything, we didn't know where to go with the song after the structure. That's where I came in. I just wanted to make powerful parts in all these songs. Similar to a breakdown in a hardcore song. Or a bridge in normal music. We were playing that riff back and forth... I was like, "What if we just put this song in a standstill right after this part?" Just drop out to a peak where it didn't even make sense to a slow doom beat. It's not that slow anymore, but it was at first. Bam bam bam, pshhh. People always mosh to it which is tight.
Painful Burning:
That's one of my favorite parts on the record.
Dominic Palermo:
We did the same thing for "Get Well." Brandon had verse and chorus and I wrote that last part.
Painful Burning:
Is that the part where you've thrown your guitar in the crowd?
Dominic Palermo:
I don't really have an agenda. I threw my guitar in the middle of a song and still had a whole song to play and never got the guitar back. I'm wylin' out sometimes and it makes the set sound worse. But to me, it's like, why not?
Painful Burning:
If it's just about the sound then stay home and listen to record.
Dominic Palermo:
Exactly.
Nicky hanging out with some pals.
Painful Burning:
Why do you say you're not good at playing guitar?
Dominic Palermo:
I'm not good at playing guitar. I taught myself how to sing and play a guitar a year and a half ago. I've been playing guitar my whole life but I only played punk songs. I never tried to learn anything else besides punk and hardcore songs. I suck at guitar but I'm also the best at guitar.
Painful Burning:
You're being a jerk to yourself.
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah. I'm the best at guitar.
Painful Burning:
That's nicer. What would you say you're not guilty of?
Dominic Palermo:
Someone asked me this recently and I came up with the most brilliant answer. Let me ask Ross.
Dominic asks Ross.
Dominic Palermo:
Being a pussy.
Painful Burning:
What's better, this interview or that interview?
Dominic Palermo:
Your interview is the best because of your long schlong. Later tonight we'll smash our penises together in a non-gay way.
Painful Burning:
I only know the gay way.
Dominic Palermo:
Fine, the gay way then. We're going to smash our penises together in a gay way.
Painful Burning:
Is that one of the tropes of this tour with Ceremony?
Dominic Palermo:
This whole tour has been about smashing dicks together... in a gay way.
Painful Burning:
Did you and Ross know each other before this tour?
Dominic Palermo:
This is the first tour we've really got to kick it together but we've met each other a couple times before.
Painful Burning:
Every time I see a picture of you two together it looks like you're having the best time ever.
Dominic Palermo:
If you've ever met a person who you felt like you should've been with your whole life... That's how I feel.
Painful Burning:
When you said on stage, "This is the first time I've been on tour where I don't like the other band," you were obviously being sarcastic.
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah, just talking shit. I think it's funny to talk shit on the band you're supporting. Not many people get a chance to do it. We're fortunately lucky enough to be really cool with these dudes where we can talk shit on them, the headlining band. It doesn't happen often.
Painful Burning:
Has anybody heard this and thought you were being serious? And then later were like, "They were right, Ceremony does suck"?
Dominic Palermo:
Hopefully.
Painful Burning:
I heard there was some funny tension between you and Boris?
Dominic Palermo:
Me and Ross rolled up into the green room. The past couple shows we did with Boris they took all the green rooms because they had a kid with them. So me and Ross made a joke that we were going to go in there and corrupt the kid, feed him acid or something, behind Boris' back. Then I met Boris and they were tight as hell. So I felt bad even thinking about poisoning their kid.
Painful Burning:
There's been a lot of celebrity run ins on this tour.
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah, celebrities love this tour because they know we're the best.
Painful Burning:
You just ran into Ian Brown on the street?
Dominic Palermo:
No, Ian Brown was coming to our show. He was trying to buy tickets but there was none left. So we had to tell him he couldn't come in.
Painful Burning:
I should've given Ian my spot.
Dominic Palermo:
Honestly, you should've. I felt so bad telling Ian Brown no. It happens.
Painful Burning:
All that he wants is to be adored.
Dominic Palermo:
He's made of stone so he'll be alright.
Guilty of everything.
(Photo by Ross Farrar.)
Painful Burning:
You played a new song at The Roxy, what song was that?
Dominic Palermo:
It's called, "July the 4th." It's about independence.
Painful Burning:
Independence as a nation or independence as a person?
Dominic Palermo:
Independence.
Painful Burning:
Is that for an upcoming album?
Dominic Palermo:
It's for a split we have coming out with Whirr coming out in October. It's that song and another song about chloroform. That song is about being abducted.
Painful Burning:
The last time I saw you you didn't play anything from prior to Guilty of Everything, are you over those songs?
Dominic Palermo:
We play them sometimes. We try to save that shit for our headlining shows. We don't like taking up too much time. We try to keep our set between twenty five and thirty minutes.
Painful Burning:
I noticed you guys are always quoting things and when I saw you live you were sampling things. What's up with that?
Dominic Palermo:
That's me kinda. I'm a huge literature fan and there's a lot of authors who say things that are meaningful to me and so much more intelligent than anything I could ever write. It's tight to hear that coming through the PA before we play a song. Throughout the set and make it weird as fuck.
Painful Burning:
How did Horror Show affect you in Nothing?
Dominic Palermo:
I don't know. In 2000 when Horror Show was in their pinnacle I didn't really want to do it, I wanted to play in a band similar to Slowdive. But I didn't have any abilities to do that. It was cool to get the crowd to vibe. All my friends loved it. I lived for my friends back then. Nowadays it's cool trying to do some music shit that we're actually getting paid enough where I don't have to work. Not not work, just work less. Are you there?
Painful Burning:
Yeah, it's just really loud there. Are you listening to LCD Soundsystem?
Dominic Palermo:
Yeah.
Painful Burning:
I always read in interviews about cocaine and My Bloody Valentine. Those two always come up together. Why would you want to listen to My Bloody Valentine when you do cocaine?
Dominic Palermo:
This story always gets so twisted out of control. At one point I was with a friend who was supposed to drop off two keys of cocaine to somebody else. That's like five pounds of cocaine. We were in the car, which to me at this point I would be shook as fuck to ever ride with that much drugs in the car. But back then we didn't really give a fuck. We were vibing out listening to Loveless. Driving around that with much weight on you and listening to such a peaceful beautiful record. That's kind of puts everything in perspective... what I'm about anyways.
The phone call ended at this point. I felt like the interview needed better closure so I asked Nicky if he felt better by the end of the interview. He told me he didn't even remember doing the interview.
-Z
Nicky and Ross before the interview.
(Photo by Ross Farrar.)
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