99 Burning still stoked by flames of early ’90s grunge
An Interview with 99 Burning
Written by Claude Walls
It could be said that 99 Burning are one of the remaining dinosaurs. If that is so, an apt comparison would be with the T. Rex. 99 Burning channel the force and fury of early ’90s grunge, which was actually during the time that 99 Burning originally formed. Although not from Seattle (neither were Sonic Youth so don’t even go there), 99 Burning drank from the same poison that their Emerald City peers did. The biggest difference is that 99 Burning haven’t flamed off; in fact, with the release of the album and book Midnight in America, lead singer Don Eminizer is more on fire than ever.
Claude Walls: You’ve written a novel from which the album is based. What is the book about? Did it originate in your mind as a novel first before the CD?
Don Eminizer: The novel is based on non-fiction. It is about being abandoned. Lost. M.I.A. Wasted. The music and the book are symbiotic. The music is a soundtrack by 99 Burning that matches a story about what my early life was like, and what would have happened had I continued down that road. The CD came from effort by me and three other talented guys that know what it feels like to be abandoned. We think other people know how it feels to be abandoned, too.
Walls: You’re a veteran of the music industry, and everybody has road experiences to share. What were the worst for you?
Emiziner: The worst for me is not being on stage. I don’t care about the size of the audience or the circumstance. I just want to enjoy the music and tell everybody there how much I enjoy it. And how much life is a sham, so you might as well enjoy the show.
Walls: What does the name 99 Burning refer to?
Eminizer: The 99% of us that are being burned up by the 1% elite, the Bushes, et al. The powerful. We are burned and consumed by a tiny fraction of wealthy and powerful people and given the lesser of two evils to choose from. The winner of the lesser of two evils takes 1/4 of our labor (money) and spends it killing people in foreign lands. Most people are tired. I am. I want to burn down the paper that makes us all slaves and start over.
Walls: Your songwriting reminds me somewhat of Jim Morrison’s. Was he a key influence for you?
Eminizer: Yes. Moreso Nietzsche and Kerouac and Paine and Rand and Poe, but I think we have those influences in common, and I dug him too. He turned me onto many things. Like rebellion. Like dissension. that’s what rock & roll and this country was founded on. Like to get back to that please.
Walls: You used to be a wrestler. How far did you go with that? Why did you hang up the ropes?
Eminizer: Three years. Went far. Had a regional TV show on HTS (Comcast now), a national magazine column in Wrestling’s Main Event, and a national radio show called “Wrestling Spotlight” on the American Radio Networks in 86 markets nationwide. Won titles. Got laid. Made friends. Quit at 21. I realized it was like politics. It was fake and pre-arranged. It had perks, like girls and drugs and money, but I felt dirty doing it, and I quit. Not because of the wrestling, because I saw it as a symptom of the problems with society.
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