OLD NICK MAGAZINE... 2012

JIMMY VARGAS: "I don’t write love songs, I write ‘lost’ songs. As a crooning Lucifer locked out of the heaven of his lovers kiss, he is forced to ‘Sleep in the limbo rain’ (Girl you left Behind ). The songs are a temporary catharsis, but we all know that one whiff of her fragrance, can bring back the heroin of her. The work don’t heal nothing, it merely gives the desolation a name. In the pain of the song she stays sealed but alive, and you can still cha-tango with the ghostess of her somehow."

JAVA BACHELOR PAD....MARCH 2011

INTERVIEW CONDUCTED BY PUBLISHER EDITOR JASON 'JAVA' CROFT OF JAVA BACHELOR PAD MAGAZINE ( ISSUE 15)

JASON CROFT: "Jimmy, after reading your opus "Torchin at the Tallulah's Boudoir", I felt like I woke up in a back booth of a some dim bar reeking of gin and haunted by lipstick. What is going on with this noir ghost story of yours?"

JIMMY VARGAS: "My world is a sub-terrain of the Los Angeles of 1947, where the phantasms of racketeers, B-movie stars and showgirls still cavort in crumbling nitrate reels ion the astral plane. They never die.That's the basic premise of my new work 'Tallulah's Boudoir'.

KOOP KOOPER'S COCKTAIL NATION

KOOP KOOPER: "There is what I think. a hunger in your music."

JIMMY: “What's more paramount is the desolation... I'm reaching, tapping into certain elements, that I fear are simply disappearing away...I find there's an energy in particular streets of the skid-row, that I visit, and I regard myself as a kind of 'forties noir ornithologist' trying to capture it all before it dissipates. The warehouses, old diners, theaters, skid cribs like the 'King Edward' and the 'Hotel Rosslyn' downtown in the desolation block are a true home to me, and those places hold all the great melodies and the stories."

BIEDERMEYER SPHINX

PIA SANTAKLAUS, HOST OF HIS CULT CABLE T.V. SHOW 'THE BIEDERMEYER SPHINX' INTERVIEWS JIMMY VARGAS IN MAY 2010

PIA: "Drugs...Drugs and creation do you use them?"

JIMMY: "No, the drug is the work, however I used to love the Gadang Garam, Indonesian cigarettes, the apple clove ones, Lily and I used to go through alot of those during recording and filming sessions...It was 'our' choice cigarette..The perfume was so exotic just like her...But as for drugs or drink, I think you have to live life hardcore...Also you've got to be at one with the work, at one with the entity that manifests itself in the work, that is passing ideas through to you...You've got to be worthy of it...And I don't think you can go running around creating under false consciousness."

PIA: "You are now in the mastering stages of the Seventh album (Due for release February 2012)...How are you developing this direction? Do you sit down deliberately, and see whatever comes up?"

JIMMY: "No, I generally stockpile songs and recordings, and then it eventually develops it's own theme...The last albums ( 5 & 6...BLACK HALO / BLACK WIDOW), was a 'bridge' album between the Shadow Bride years, and this new i.d. of a Black Halo Lucifer persona, for the seventh and eighth album series"

PIA: "Who are you doing this with?"

JIMMY: "I work with a number of floating musicians."

PIA: "Dylan did that."

JIMMY: "I think you got to do it, to keep the work fresh, I've gone away from working with piano players for this next stage, and I'd rather just now drive it by guitar..."

PIA: "I've noticed all your earlier work was very 40s / 50s authentic, particularly because of the piano..."

JIMMY: "Yeah, but the more current pieces such as BLACK HALO, TWILIGHT FIFTH AND MAIN, the new ones like SATAN NEEDS, DESOLACIONE, they are driving differently, it suits and refelects where I am at preset."

PIA: "Your new work is less forties and fifties..."

JIMMY: "Well, its neo-vintage, its more blues, the new direction reflects the change, you know I started as a crooner, then went the burleycue 'tit serenader' route,and then by 2007 getting jack of it, because the burlesque thing became just this nasty girly eunuch' parade, so I decided to go back to a total masculine ideal thing, getting a small combo with a bunch of guys and it became about the musical performance, the art of being able to move a room by the voice, not by the flash of flesh..."

PIA: "Well, so yes you got to keep it fresh."

JIMMY: "I've gone onto the bluesman stage, this is also complementing the next archetype...One has to change every seven years with the next archetype that represents and sovereigns over that period...I've got plenty of reference points...."

PIA: "I've noticed in your videos, you have a cane, you use it like your divining something, what's that all about?"

JIMMY: "Well a cane has a mystical import to it, it represents many things, from the gnostic to the comical...It's 'Mosesian' for starters...Moses when he used to go out in the desert used the staff to pick up snakes, and sought their wisdom, this is one thing that the Christian Church cut out...Remember the Snake is not the adversary, he is the beholder of information...Also my bearing of a cane is a tip of the hat to Charlie Chaplin and that vaudeville burleycue connection. So its used as a gnostic showbiz totem...For what I fundamentally do is gnostic entertainment."

PIA: "With the muse, we are always chasing the muse, to me she possesses a three or four identities...She is the Virgin, the Whore, the Matriach, the Haag...Are they different women?"

JIMMY: "No, they are all one...Women go through those four stages...The problem with feminism is that they deny it, try to cut it out...Accusing Men of having this virgin whore complex...They are all one and the same...I find that there are Women I look to, who are Matriachs, they are 70 / 75 years of age, they are the ones I always turn to for advice...Very rarely a man...I''ll ask em whats the next move, and they'll say..Try this tack...And they are never wrong."

PIA: "Well its a mother thing.."

JIMMY:"No it ain 't mommism, its a matriachal wisdom."

PIA:"Probaby the oldest religion in existence....Robert Graves did a wonderful study of that with the book the 'White Goddess'."

JIMMY:"One of my favourite tomes from 1947...Right up there with the Red Lion."