Inside 'out'

Since the early '80s, when Jimmy Johnson launched the Forced Exposure fanzine, the name has been entrenched in the underground. It's been two years since he last published the 'zine. But Forced Exposure, now located in a commercial space in Somerville, has emerged as a primary, and in many cases exclusive, distribution outlet for dozens of obscure imprints, including Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore's Ecstatic Peace. To anyone other than an avant-garde enthusiast, Ecstatic Peace may be the only near-familiar label in the Forced Exposure catalogue. Moore also qualifies as the only high-visibility name on a bill that Johnson has put together for this Saturday at T.T. the Bear's Place, which also features the New Zealand instrumental trio Thela, avant-garde guitarist Loren MazzaCane Connors, and Moore performing with free-jazz drummer Tom Surgal.

"The main impetus behind putting the show together was Thela," explains Johnson. "They released a CD on Ecstatic Peace and they were very eager to come over to the US. When I mentioned that to Thurston, he said that he'd be willing to play with them, that we should go ahead and set up a tour of the East Coast. So Thurston's going to be playing with Tom Surgal, a drummer he met playing with Rudolph Gray's Blue Humans. Rudolph, by the way, is one of the original inspirations for Sonic Youth. He's a '70s no-wave guitarist who was fairly legendary among the 200 people that cared."

Johnson was probably one of those 200. And these days he's perhaps one of the most knowledgeable and devoted fans of artists who fall outside the realm of rock, jazz, and classical. Forced Exposure had a hand in promoting the scene that fostered noise-rockers like Sonic Youth and Pussy Galore. But as the mainstream absorbs much of what was considered alternative 10 years ago, Johnson digs for more obscure artists who are otherwise underrepresented.

"It's something I've always gravitated to," he explains. "To me the ideal music exists in and of itself on its own terms. One thing that Byron Coley [a rock critic associated with Forced Exposure] and I have in common is that we believe in true individualism, in people doing stuff because that is their need, not because they're trying to cater to an audience's expectations.

"MazzaCane, for example, is somebody we became interested in about 10 years ago, when we discovered that he was releasing records on his own labels in Connecticut. He's completely outside of any stream, which is part of his appeal. He's even changed his name several times over the years. First he was Loren Mattei, then he was Loren MazzaCane, then he changed his name to Guitar Roberts, and more recently he changed it to Loren MazzaCane Connors. These were," Johnson adds with an admiring laugh, "official, legal name changes."

Forced Exposure has released two MazzaCane CDs, the latest of which is 9th Avenue (Black Label), an impressionistic collection of dark, distortion-laden solo guitar pieces. There was the Thela disc, which was manufactured for Ecstatic Peace by Forced Exposure; and Johnson was also the American distributor for a beautifully packaged live CD that Moore and Surgal recorded in NYC early last year. The disc features two long improvised pieces (total running time 39:44) that highlight Surgal's persistent, energetic polyrhythms. Moore's scraping, atonal guitar is actually quite subtle at times, but it's more out-there than anything he does in Sonic Youth these days.

"Thurston's been doing various improv stuff since . . . well, it sort of started when we did a record back in 1987 called Barefoot in the Head, which was Thurston and the two sax players from Borbetomagus. That was Byron's idea. It was a challenge to Thurston, you know -- `Why don't you do something interesting instead of all that pop shit,' as kind of a joke. I still like Sonic Youth. But when you talk to Thurston as a person, he is very into the heaviest free jazz from the '60s."

Pushing others to explore and discover difficult or otherwise hard-to-find music is Forced Exposure's ongoing mission. "There is so much out there," Johnson concludes, "a lot of revelations to be found if you dig far enough. That's something we are going to continue to document one way or another."

Write to Forced Exposure at Box 9102, Waltham 02254-9102. Thurston Moore and Tom Surgal, Thela, and Loren MazzaCane Connors perform Saturday, February 17, at T.T. the Bear's Place in Central Square, Cambridge.