Feb. 2, 2004

As I entered the front door of Walford Recording studio at Sonoma State University, the home of Lessons In Self-Destruction frontman and songwriter Arjay Burks, it was apparent that I was attempting to trace a very masked past. Here stood a scrawny little guy who controlled every presence in the room. He constantly was calling the shots and yet refusing to accept any spotlight for his actions. A walking contradiction that sang and wrote songs of sadness and broken hearts backed by bright arrangements and catchy melodies. A guy who seems every bit as much John Lennon as he is Paul McCartney, and Kurt Cobain and W. Axl Rose.
“When I was five, I remember hearing ‘A Day In The Life’ (The Beatles) and thinking John Lennon was just the most brilliant man ever, and that’s what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. My parents were absolutely terrified of telling me, after a year of this (1986), that John Lennon was dead. When they finally did, they gave me Paul McCartney’s ‘Band on the Run’ album to get me out of the depression of it. I didn’t want to be a rockstar after I found that a crazy fan killed John. But I saw that Paul wrote better songs, so I kinda went after that. It was kind of like, ‘oh hey that’s who the other voice in The Beatles was.’”
To this day Arjay, is some what reluctant of any kind of success, traumatized by the death of his first hero. But in Paul McCartney he found his work ethic. “write as much as possible. Even before I was writing songs, I was writing poems and lyrics. Basically because I saw how much work Paul McCartney would crank out. I just thought that was the way to do it, just write.”
The Beatles consumed most of Arjay’s elementary school days, interrupted only by listening to 8-track tapes on the ride to school. “The rides to school were really long because there were four kids and three different schools. We had Creedence, Queen, Elvis, The Stones and The Doobie Bros. on constant cycle. And then when I got home from school we did chores while my step-dad blasted Roth-era Van Halen. Strangely enough, I never really got into Van Halen until I was in the 4th grade and saw them (at that point with Sammy Hagar) on MTV alongside Guns N’ Roses. That was what sort of came into my life and put the Beatles on hold for a bit.”
Aside from The Beatles, another tragic group would enter Arjay’s life and take up what he calls “the 2nd largest half of my influences musically”. Late one night, visiting his father for the weekend, he witnessed the world premiere of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on MTV. “What was that? Was all I could say. I wasn’t sure if I loved it or hated it. It wasn’t Guns or Halen, it was just so different than anything else I’d been exposed to at that point. I was only 11 for goddsake.”
Nirvana quickly became one of Arjay’s favorite bands and he begun learning to play bass, nailing “Teen Spirit” in time for the 6th grade talent show. The performance wasn’t quite appreciated by their classmates, but his makeshift band did earn some respect for owning their own equipment. Middle school brought on learning guitar and more Nirvana records until ultimately Kurt Cobain’s death on April 8th, 1994. “Totally shocked, I couldn’t believe it. I was 13, nothing like that had ever happened. I heard it over a store radio, ‘The John Lennon of Generation X, was found dead by suicide today’. Those were harsh days. I think he said more about the climate of the times than anyone at that point. And to just kill himself? It makes sense to me now, but at 13, even as messed up as I was, you just don’t consider that an option.”
Hell bent to follow his idols’ self-destructive paths, Arjay flung himself full force into learning guitar and writing songs. The first song he ever wrote, being on that very day. After tears and anger were calmed, he wrote a tribute to his hero, which he says he still remembers how to play. Arjay’s first song, “Memory”, has never been recorded or performed in concert. After “Memory”, a string of grungy tunes, some of which would eventually wind up on DULCET’s 12 Song Demo , came flowing steadily through. The tracks ranged from sweet and melodic, to wall of sound, to bizarre noise experimentation. He perfected his chops with a band known as BLISS and even won a battle of the bands competition his freshman year of high school. By the following year (1996), he had formed DULCET, which would last a lengthy and traumatic 6 years.
“I think musically, not much was changing with me. The summer of 8th grade, the first Foo Fighters record came out, and I thought that was really cool. ‘Hey, if Dave Grohl can move on from Nirvana, and still make kick ass music, why am I still moping?’ Grohl was pretty instrumental in helping me move on. And I think today, I appreciate the Foo Fighters more than I do Nirvana because Dave stepped up to the plate and made amazing songs.”
But, sophomore year, Arjay was introduced to a new trend in music: ska. Taken to the legendary Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma, California, Arjay witnessed one of the final shows of underground champs, Skankin’ Pickle. Peer pressure and a respect for Skankin’ Pickle and a few other ska bands, added a horn line to DULCET, adding ska to their current grungy formation. With ska came 2nd generation punk bands like NOFX and a then, still underground, Blink-182. “I’m not sure if I really ever liked those bands because I liked their songs or because it was what everyone was force feeding me at the time. I liked bands like Oasis and Third Eye Blind at about the same time I was listening to all those punk and ska bands. But, nowadays I find it kinda funny that people in the punk circles say that Blink-182 isn’t real punk. I still like Blink-182 a lot. I think they write really great catchy tunes. But they aren’t ‘really’ punk as far as I’m concerned. They kinda remind me of a New Wave band on crack and no keyboard player or drum machine. But at the same time bands like NOFX aren’t really what I would consider punk either. The Ramones are a punk band, the Sex Pistols too. Nirvana is closer to what I would call punk than most of these new punk bands. But hey, to each his own.”
During this period the Beatles also made a heavy comeback, which lead to some distaste in the punk circles. But DULCET remained a “punk-ska” band through the release of 1999’s Self Titled Debut album. But, after going into an Eddie Van Halen-ish guitar solo at a 2000 performance at the Phoenix Theatre, the punks wanted nothing to do with DULCET. And it was clear that Arjay wanted nothing to do with punk or ska.
“They (the punk scene) were all just hypocrites. There was no growth in the punk or ska scene. If you went outside the clique, they disowned you. So, for the last few years DULCET played kind of like heavy metal with horns. I was really into Black Sabbath and Van Halen at the time. A lot of people really liked what we were doing and thought it was pretty original. And some people wished we’d go back to playing ska. Funny thing was, they hated us when we were playing ska.
After awhile though I got tired of screaming into a mic all the time and wanted to write more thoughtful lyrics about what I was going through. In 2002, before we released Journey Into The Superego, our second album, I split up the group and started making a demo e.p. of mellower stuff recorded by myself. I was listening to a lot of Prince’s music at that point so I thought I’d try playing all the instruments myself. And Paul McCartney’s first solo record was done that way too as was the Foo Fighters first. So I felt like, it could be done. But I didn’t want to be a solo artist so I created a band name.”
Realizing that after years of writing what everyone else wanted him to write, he had tapped into some pretty emotional subject matter, Arjay broke down. He felt as if he were self-destructing and his new songs were teaching him how. He dubbed the project “Lessons In Self-Destruction”, a name which he says a lot of people think is too heavy or morbid for his melodic catchy rock music. After finishing a 5 song e.p. (Death of February), Arjay assembled a real band called Lessons In Self-Destruction and began doing shows and writing more songs. Which brings us to today, the final sessions for “LiS-D’s” debut full-length Genre: Rock.
“The music is just about me and my experiences with other people. Some people call it ‘romantic’ or ‘love songs’ but I think most of it’s about when there is no love. After all these years I still believe ‘All You Need Is Love’ and The Beatles are constantly in the player. Most modern music doesn’t really do much for me anymore. Nirvana, Foo Fighters, Halen, GN’R, Prince, Devo, solo Beatles, that’s about it. Occasionally a band like Dashboard Confessional will come to play for awhile, but I always go back to those bands. Especially the Beatles. And I think to an extent they all have a bit of an influence on my music, but the lyrics are all 100% influenced by my life. And yeah, it still kills me a little bit every time I write one. Rock N’ Roll is and has always been about self-destruction. Who am I to try and stop that kind of force?”
A lesson in self-destruction indeed.